Auditions are ongoing for Eastport Arts Center’s 15th Annual Moose Island Follies, to be held as two performances, 4 and 7:30 pm, on Wednesday, July 3, as city-wide Fourth of July festivities are coming to a peak. Acts should be two-to-eight minutes in length and may consist of any type of performance—music, dance, physical stunts/comedy, theatrical scenes or skits, recitation, vaudevillian arts—truly, anything goes. To arrange an audition, email Chris Grannis at chris@eastportartscenter.org or call (207) 853-4650. Video submissions will also be accepted. The Eastport Arts Center is at 36 Washington Street, Eastport, and at www.eastportartscenter.org, and is handicapped-accessible.
Eastport Arts Center
where creativity and community meet
Community members willing to push up their sleeves and help with an EAC-wide spring cleaning effort are invited to join in for a work party. For details, please email Chris, chris@eastportartscenter.org.
Eastport Arts Center’s KinderArts program has received a Kars4Kids grant in support of expanded educational outreach efforts for the 2018/2019 school year. In collaboration with Theresa Fisk, District Early Childhood and Youth Coordinator for Washington County of the Cutler Institute, EAC has organized outreach visits of the KinderArts program for the Passamaquoddy Child Development Center, KidzFirst childcare center, Calais Head Start and Pre-K, Passamaquoddy Head Start and the St. Croix Early Care and Education Center. More than 60 local preschoolers have enjoyed learning yoga and meditation through dance, music and storybooks with instructor Caroline DiLio. Owner of Maine Moon Kids Yoga, DiLio is a certified children’s yoga instructor and a mother of three. She also leads the Tiny Yogis program at Eastport Arts Center, which will resume weekly starting March 21.
“Caroline’s quiet and patient presence when working with young children helps them to become fully involved in the activity.” said Marcia Rogers, Site Manager for Head Start at Child and Family Opportunities.
“The yoga and music experience can be relaxing and fun when the instructor is able to capture their interest. Caroline excels at this, which is evident in the excitement of our children when they learn she is coming to visit their classroom.”
Prior to receiving the Kars4Kids funding, EAC’s KinderArts program did a series of outreach visits to private home-based caregivers in Eastport and Perry, with support from the Crewe Foundation and the Maine Arts Commission.
“We reached out to area childcare centers because these children did not have the opportunity to travel to our center,” said Alison Brennan, EAC’s Education and Outreach Director. “Early arts learning is so important to the well-rounded growth of healthy children.”
Eastport Arts Center’s mission is to stimulate and nurture an appreciation of the visual and performing arts and the creative process and to provide a home and an environment within the community where they can prosper. More information may be found at eastportartscenter.org/education.
Shop Local—from Home! What could be easier? Shop EAC Gift Certificates online, or purchase your certificate in person at the arts center. Certificates are redeemable at the box office for any EAC event, and make a perfect one-size-fits-all gift for everyone on your list!
As you enjoy the diamonds on the water, the treasures on the beaches, the produce from your organic gardens, your stunning flowers, the shore birds, the boats on the water, are you gathering ideas and nature’s bounty to be one of the 25 decorators who participate in the 9th Annual Festival of Trees on December 8?
Back by popular demand: Tree-trimmers are welcomed to join the fun on Friday evening the 7th by joining with other decorators in the comradeship of decorating on-site after picking up their trees.
As for decorating ideas—feathers, flowers, vegetables and fruits that can be dried, sea shells, small pine cones, packets of seeds, inspirations that make you want to sing or paint or mold some clay, play a flute, dance or pick up a fiddle all present ideas to get you excited. Unable to get outdoors? Books, buttons and beads, jewelry, fabric scraps, the unusual shapes of small items headed for recycling, sheet music, or dreidels, playbills, fishing lures and bobs stashed on those shelves you have been meaning to clean off, tiny cars or boats or miniature lobster buoys or pots, aromatic teas or coffees in lovely little bags, cookies, treats for pets and wildlife and all the stuff of life can turn into a charming tabletop tree celebrating nature, the arts, hobbies and being alive in beautiful Downeast Maine.
Contact Marged Higginson at margedhigginson111@gmail.com with any questions or if you’d like to sign up for one of the 25 decorator slots. The Festival of Trees is an important fundraiser which helps ‘keep the lights burning’ all winter long at EAC.
by Susan Coopersmith
I signed my 8th grade photo to my grandmother “Love your actress granddaughter”. Throughout high school I was active in drama club, playing the “spirit” in our senior production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. My plan was to go to UCLA to study acting. My parents, who were paying for my college education, had other ideas.
Fast forward four decades. I am not an actress, I am anthropologist who is returning to the US after living twenty years in Central and East Africa. “What are you going to do when you come home?” asks my now grown daughter. “I am going to write and I am going to be an actress,” I told her. “Good luck with that in Maine, Mom,” she encouraged me.
In 2016 I landed an acting role in Stage East’s New Year’s Eve production. Being back on stage was all I imagined it would be, but now I was more aware of all the people working to make the production a success. Nervously pacing backstage, going over lines in my head, I looked at the stage manager and stage crew and thought, “Maybe I want to be one of them. It looks like they are having a good time.”
Chris Grannis, a backstage pro and enthusiastic coach, started me off with small crew jobs. My first big test was running a dress rehearsal for the 2017 Moose Island Follies. I had to lower something onto the stage on cue. Chris and I ran through it several times but I still held my breath during the performance until I made it through that scene. Since then, I have crewed for several EAC productions including the Children’s Theater Workshop’s Macbeth.
When Stage East’s 2018 summer production, Neil Simon’s I Ought to be in Pictures (IOTBIP), was in the planning stages, I felt daring. Although ill prepared, I volunteered to be the production’s stage manager and they accepted me. As an actor I never thought about who was telling the sound and lighting people that I was in my place and ready to go. That was just the “magic of theater”. The music came on and the lights came up, I walked onstage and delivered my lines. The IOTBIP sound person, Bernie Cecire, and lighting person, John Morton, patiently taught me how those illusions come to life and that it is the stage manager’s responsibility to make sure it all happens at the right time.
So, with my newly developed skills, do I plan to stay behind the curtain forever? Not a chance. One of the amazing things about becoming involved with Stage East and Eastport Arts Center—when you want to be an actor, you can be an actor, when you want to be a stage manager…
Art lover Dagny Silins enjoys chatting with painter Keith Andreucci about his work at the opening reception for Washington Street Gallery’s Nothing But Nudes! exhibition, which will run through September 30. The show features 45 artists, who have contributed 63 works in many media, including oil, watercolor, sculpture, jewelry, encaustic, photography, and drawing.
Read more about the exhibition, and Washington Street Gallery, here.
The EAC seeks a photographer to document events. Please inquire about compensation and perks for this temporary position by emailing Chris Grannis, chris@eastportartscenter.org; include 5-10 examples of your photographic work.
In its first 10 years PBSO has performed 72 concerts with 94 works by 52 composers; premiered 5 new compositions by Maine composers, and reached more than 2,000 children with 10 Music for Children performances. You can help assure that the next decade is rich with many more inspired performances by supporting the PBSO, and one great new way to do so is to purchase a PBSO T-shirt!
With your donation of $15 and $5 for shipping and handling, PBSO will send you a commemorative t-shirt, which is black and features a caricature (created by local artist Tom Brennan) of conductor and music director Trond Saeverud.
To order your shirt, please make your check payable to PBSO, print and complete this form, and mail both to: PBSO, PO Box 114, Eastport, ME 04631.
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The work of Eastport Arts Center is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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