Pontine Premieres TALES OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE this April

Alice Brown was born in 1857 on a farm in Hampton Falls, a community that acted as a template for the villages depicted in her stories. She attended Robinson Female Seminary in Exeter, where she displayed a talent for writing at a young age. It was during her early years in Boston that Brown published her first novel Stratford by the Sea (1884), set in a small coastal community. Her rich descriptions and candid characters established Brown as a popular regional color writer. Brown was best known for her popular New England short stories. Collected into volumes, her tales of New England life portray the traditional simplicity and bounteous goodness of country life: Tiverton Tales(1899), The County Road (1906), Meadow Grass (1886), and Country Neighbors (1910). Pontine Co-Directors, Marguerite Mathews and Greg Gathers, have selected four of Ms. Brown's evocative tales to bring to life on stage: Farmer Eli's Vacation (1895), Gardener Jim (1910), A Poetess in Spring (1910) and The Flat Iron Lot (1899). Each story introduces a cast of colorful characters portrayed by Gathers and Mathews through storytelling and Toy Theatre figures created by Greg Gathers.