Pontine Theatre Announces 2016-17 Portsmouth Performance Season

Now celebrating its 39th Season, Pontine Theatre, a resident company at Strawbery Banke Museum, announces its 2016-17 Performance Series. Some productions will be presented on the campus of Strawbery Banke Museum and others at select locations in the Greater Seacoast community. Pontine's season is supported by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.

Performances are offered on Fridays at 7pm, Saturdays at 4pm, and Sundays at 2pm. Advance tickets may be purchased online ($24) at www.pontine.org. Tickets may also be purchased at the door a half-hour prior to each performance, based on availability. Information: info@pontine.org / 603-436-6660.

Full season schedule is below:

November 4-6 • Jay O'Callahan (Marshfield, MA)

Performance Location: New Castle Historical Society, 120 Main Street, New Castle NH

Underwritten by Piscataqua Savings Bank, Accommodations provided by Martin Hill Inn

If you grow up in New England the leaves seem to whisper Emily Dickinson. She haunts us. And yet Dickinson is thought of as a lonely recluse in a white dress writing in her room.

In fact, as she said herself, "I find ecstasy in living. The mere sense of living is joy enough." She was fascinated with all of life: its beauty, its struggles and its terrors. She loved language and worked at her craft so her language is fresh and startling. For instance, "The moon is just a chin of gold." And "All be death can be adjusted." Dickinson was a passionate, deeply thoughtful artist who never lost her sense of play.

Jay O'Callahan takes a bare stage and single-handedly transforms it into a dynamic and sensitive world filled with compelling characters. His solo performance at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, National Theatre Complex in London, the Olympics, Lincoln Center, Boston Symphony Orchestra and other theaters throughout the world have been applauded by the media including The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly.

December 9-11 • Pontine Theatre

A NEW ENGLAND CHRISTMAS

Performance Location: Seacoast Science Center, Odiorne Point, 570 Ocean Boulevard, Rye NH

Underwritten by Gillian Aguilar

This season, Pontine Theatre's annual holiday celebration features an adaptation of Frank Stockton's delightful Christmas story, Captain Eli's Best Ear. Cap'n Eli Bunker, a retired sea captain, is inspired, after many lonely years as a widower, to try his hand at celebrating Christmas once again. After much cogitation, he conspires with his friend and neighbor, Cap'n Cephas Dyer, to mount a fitting holiday event. An orphaned girl, Minerva, and Mrs. Trimmer, whose husband "sailed away in a schooner and never returned," fill out the cast of this delightful tale. The characters are played by a beautifully crafted cast of bunraku-style puppets.

February 3-5 • Pontine Theatre

DUNNET LANDING STORIES

Location: Strawbery Banke Museum, 14 Hancock Street, Portsmouth NH

This evocative portrait of a Maine coastal village is based on the stories of South Berwick native, Sarah Orne Jewett. Her masterpiece, The Country of the Pointed Firs, and her subsequent Dunnet Landing Stories have been highly regarded since their first appearance. Willa Cather called the work an American classic and foresaw a prominent place for Jewett's stories in the canon of American literature. Jewett's romantic depictions of life among the coastal village people of Maine in the mid-nineteenth century, strongly evoking their connection to the land and the sea, have long been heralded for their carefully crafted characters and loving descriptions of the natural world.

March 3-5 • Diane Edgecomb (Boston, MA)

A THOUSAND DOORWAYS: Journey Among the Kurds of Turkey

Location: Strawbery Banke Museum, 14 Hancock Street, Portsmouth NH

Accommodations provided by Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel

A Thousand Doorways is the true account of Diane Edgecomb's decade long quest to document the vanishing folkloric tales of the Kurds of Turkey. The performance takes us on an exotic journey from Diane's first humorous meetings with carpet dealers and chain-smoking octogenarians to her travels up sheer mountain passes to the remote Kurdish villages usually forbidden to outsiders.

April 21-30 • Pontine Theatre

THE STORY OF A BAD BOY

Location: Strawbery Banke Museum, 14 Hancock Street, Portsmouth NH

Thomas Bailey Aldrich's classic story of a boy's adventures in semi-fictional Rivermouth (Portsmouth NH), come to life in Pontine Theatre's production of The Story of a Bad Boy. Aldrich's childhood home is now open to the public as part of Strawbery Banke Museum.

With an innovative use of puppetry and projected images, Greg Gathers and Marguerite Mathews tell the autobiographical story of a lively boy and his companions in mid-nineteenth century Portsmouth, where he was sent to live under the watchful eye of grandfather and maiden aunt. Those eyes were not so watchful as to keep the boy completely out of mischief.

Unlike earlier children's stories, The Story of a Bad Boy was not an idealized narrative. Hailed as the first realistic depiction of childhood in American fiction, it was considered an inspiration for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Aldrich's friend, Mark Twain.

In addition to its mainstage season, Pontine will produce its annual Zest-Fest: New Vaudeville Festival December 26-30 at Strawbery Banke Museum. This family-friendly festival features 2pm matinees of King Pong with the Maine-based Michael Trautman, YoYo Show with the Massachusetts-based duo, John & Rebecca Higby, and World of Wonder with the Maine-based performer, Leland Faulkner. Tickets for these shows are $15 and may be purchased in advance online: www.pontine.org.

Founded in 1977, Pontine Theatre has earned a sterling reputation for its innovative performances. With an impressive repertoire of original productions, the company serves both its home on the Seacoast of New Hampshire and audiences throughout New England and neighboring states. Pontine is a permanent two-person ensemble; Greg Gathers and Marguerite Mathews research, develop and enact each of the company's distinctive productions. Greg Gathers creates all the design elements: costumes, set pieces, toy theatre figures, projected images, masks and puppets.

In Portsmouth, NH an at-home performance series showcases the company's premieres and the works of a national roster of guest artists. One thing unite the wide range of work presented: all are original stagings created by the artists who perform them.

Pontine's touring programs travel to audiences throughout New England. The company offers performances, workshops, and residencies at community centers, historical societies, libraries, museums, and assisted living communities for seniors.

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