Ah, for those halcyon days when the president of the United States was an intellectual and a serious reader. And he can sing, too!

In Grace, Cody Keenan, Obama’s chief White House speechwriter, takes us back to the period from Wednesday, June 17 through Friday, June 26 in the penultimate year of the Obama presidency during which some of the most consequential events during his administration happened and played themselves out.

Prior to working in the White House, Keenan began his career in politics as an unpaid employee in the windowless mail room of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. By the time he left to attend the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he was a legislative aid. Over one summer break during the first Obama presidential campaign, he worked as an intern for Jon Favreau, a junior speechwriter formerly with John Kerry’s presidential campaign staff, and then returned to college in the fall to finish his degree. After Obama’s election, he was hired by Favreau to become part of the speech writing team at the White House. When Favreau left, Keenan was named chief speech writer.

July 14 – August 19, 2023
Cultural Arts Center, 139 W. Main St

Curated by Char Norman, invited eight artists explore themes around climate change and conservation. As the world rushes headlong into a climate crisis, learn how art can help us understand what’s happening and give us inspiration to confront the challenge.

“That boy came from nowhere and went everywhere,” is a quote from the documentary “Jimmie & Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues,” which tells how Stevie Ray Vaughan became one of the most influential artists of all time.

Writer/director Kirby Warnock strikes a nostalgic chord, blending music, memory, and raw emotion into a bittersweet symphony. It harks back to a time when music served not just as a backdrop but as the cornerstone of coming together and connecting with others.

The film hilariously begins by suggesting that attending a Beatles concert was the secret ticket to meeting girls considering they transformed the world. It signaled a cultural shift, turning the “cool kid” blueprint on its head––you no longer needed to be the handsome football player to win a girl’s heart; all you needed was a guitar and a dream.

Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum goes Bollywood, with Terrence McNally’s India-set A Perfect Ganesh, which opens with a barefoot Apsara (Shivani Thakkar) or celestial nymph in Hindu mythology, traditionally dancing onstage in age-old Indian radiant raiment. The dancer is followed by Ganesha (Mueen Jahan), the narrator wearing an elephant mask, denoting the Hindu god Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, bearer of good luck and patron of arts.      

Enter two Connecticut friends, Katharine Brynne (Ellen Geer, WGTB’s Producing Artistic Director) and Margaret Civil (Melora Marshall), who are flying to the subcontinent. In doing so, the New Englanders are walking in the footsteps of characters in a well-trod genre of Westerners leaving their more “advanced,” materialistic societies to live in “exotic” cultures which are closer to nature and often endowed with a heightened spirituality. As is the case with both Katharine and Margaret, they carry pain and are on quests for a healing they yearn to find in these faraway lands. Katharine’s favorite expression, which she repeats throughout the paly, is taken from “Shakespeare’s Henry V: “O for a muse of fire.”