Every Brilliant Thing – Accessible Program

Every Brilliant Thing – Accessible Program

by | Feb 5, 2025 | Accessible Programs

Every Brilliant Thing 

by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe

 

BNH Stage

February 7, 8, and 9, 2025

 

Winnipesaukee Playhouse

February 21, 22, and 23, 2025

Director’s Note

Every Brilliant Thing is a play unlike any other theatre KAPOW has produced in its 17 year history, and I think you’ll probably find it’s unlike any theatrical experience you’ve had either. As you sit here reading this, you’ve likely already been greeted by the actor performing today, the house lights are illuminating the entire room and the space is almost entirely stripped bare. Fellow audience members sit across from you, and you’ll see and hear them, be in community with them, throughout the entirety of the play. Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s text bends the boundaries between audience and actor that we typically expect we will meet in the theatre; it requires an absolute presence from everyone in the room. Just like in real life, that presence can be full of discomfort. It can be full of uncertainty, or surprises, or even mistakes; always, it is full of vulnerability and magic. 

It’s my feeling that no play should ever feel like a thing to be merely witnessed; rather, coming to the theatre should feel like a communal event and exchange, a symbiosis of energies. With this play, evoking that feeling is necessary. Every Brilliant Thing tells the story of a person grappling with their mother’s depression, and about the endless search for what makes this life worth living. So often, the answer to that question comes down to the people around us. That’s what Macmillan is reminding us by inviting you, the audience, to be a part of the story; the only way through is together.

Every Brilliant Thing reminds us how important it is to hold each other. How important it is to really look at, really listen to, really be with someone. It is so easy to feel isolated, overwhelmed, alone. It is easier than it has ever been to tune out. First and foremost, I’d like to thank you for spending your afternoon or evening here with us at the theatre. Your presence is not only necessary for this particular play, but your commitment to local arts is essential to our culture. One of the most important things we can do during challenging moments is to show up, so thank you for doing so. Secondly, I’d like to urge you to be brave; to arrive in this space, look at each other, see each other, hold each other and live in the ridiculous, uncertain, vulnerable, surprising, and magic present – together. Brilliant things are everywhere. Reasons to stay are everywhere. If you’re having trouble seeing them, maybe start by looking to the people sitting right next to you – we will help you find them.

 – Emma Cahoon, Director

 

theatre KAPOW presents

Every Brilliant Thing 

by Duncan Macmillan
With Jonny Donahoe

Featuring Peter Josephson (February 7, 9, and 22)

Carey Cahoon (February 8, 21, and 23)

Director …… Emma Cahoon

Stage Manager ….. Kate Dugas

Consent Consultant …… Kyrie Ellison

Costume Design …… Barbara Holbrook

Scenic Design …… Matt Cahoon

Live Musician Coordinator …… Jake Hudgins

Director of American Sign Language …… Deb McKinney

ASL/English Interpreters … Nicole Comtois and Jola Leary

Every Brilliant Thing is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection (www.dramatists.com).

Every Brilliant Thing was first produced by Paines Plough and Pentabus Theatre, on 28 June 2013 at Ludlow Fringe Festival. The play had its North American premiere at Barrow Street Theatre, New York, on 6 December 2014, where it was presented by Barrow Street Theatre and Jean Doumanian Productions.

The Company

Peter Josephson (Storyteller 2/7, 2/9, 2/22 ) is in his fourteenth season as a company member of the/atre KAPOW. An accomplished actor and director, he has been nominated for Seacoast Spotlight awards for both acting and directing, and has won two New Hampshire Theatre Awards for his roles in Penelope and Exit the King (both with tKAPOW). In addition to tKAPOW he has performed with the New Hampshire Theatre Project, the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, and the Seven Stages Shakespeare Company, and has directed for tKAPOW, the New Hampshire Theatre Project, Threshold Stage, and Glass Dove Productions. Peter’s most recent productions with tKAPOW include Macbeth, Mr. Wolf, Tiny Beautiful Things, The Thanksgiving Play and Life Sucks. He leads occasional acting workshops in the Michael Chekhov technique. For more than 40 years (!) he has benefited from the love and support of his wife Becky, without whom he would be a shadow of his present self.

Carey Cahoon (Storyteller 2/8, 2/21, 2/23) was seen on stage last season with tKAPOW as Woman in On the Exhale and as Alex in Paradise Now!. She has won 3 NH Theatre Awards for Best Actress in tKAPOW’s productions as Briseis in Living in Exile Queen Marguerite in Exit the King, for her roles in tKAPOW’s 3-person Macbeth.Other favorite roles include the woman in On the Exhale, Sarah Goodwin in Time Stands Still, Cassandra in Agamemnon, Hedda Tesman in Hedda Gabler, Jessie in ‘night, Mother, the Pilot in Grounded and Penelope in The Penelopiad. Carey has also performed, directed or designed with Glass Dove Productions, Boston Playwright’s Platform, Stage One Productions, the Palace Theatre, and the Anselmian Abbey Players. She holds a BA in Classics from St. Anselm College, and trained at the Atlantic Acting School, Shakespeare & Company, and with SITI Company. careycahoon.com

Emma Cahoon (Director) is a theatre-maker dedicated to the art of asking questions. A graduate of Boston University with a BFA in Theatre Arts, Emma has worked with organizations across the country including Central Square Theater, What Would the Neighbors Say?, the Seven Devils New Play Foundry, and more. Emma is very grateful to be working with theatre KAPOW again, with her previous directing credits including A Midsummer Night’s Dream for St. Anselm College’s Shakespeare on the Green and performance credits including Life Sucks. (Sonia), The Penelopiad (Maid), and Translations (Sarah). Emma’s directing practice centers elevating and exploring dramatic texts to their fullest depths, while creating collaborative environments built on equal parts creativity, joy, and rigor, and working on Every Brilliant Thing has been a challenge and a joy for her.

Kate Dugas (Stage Manager) is a multi-hyphenate theatre maker based in New Hampshire. Their work is both physical and ephemeral as they cross between design, management and the choreographic, working as a technical director, scenic artist, stage manager and Intimacy Director. They are based in Portsmouth and started this past August as New Hampton School’s Technical Director as well as Visual and Performing Arts Faculty. Before that, they worked at the Seacoast Rep for about 6 years as Resident Stage Manager, Asst Production Manager, Scenic Charge and other odd jobs. They have a lifelong dream of driving a Zamboni and owe all their success to their two cats, Riff and Hades. 

Kyrie Ellison (Consultant) is a performance maker, Intimacy Director, and Fight Director based in New Hampshire. Her work utilizes the choreographic, through stage combat and movement, to build femme communal spaces & speculative narratives to confront oppressive forms. She’s curious about the stories we tell each other to “just get through it” and how they relate to the fairy tales and tropes made popular by writers. She is passionate about the facilitation of safe spaces for artists, audiences, and creatives to engage with their communities, both locally and globally. Her work has been seen on stage at the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, Bank of New Hampshire Stage (theatreKAPOW), and Sarah Lawrence College. She’s ecstatic to be working with Winnipesaukee Playhouse on another performance. Currently, she works as the Associate Director of Theatre at New Hampton School. Past credits include Witch (Winnipesaukee Playhouse), The Thanksgiving Play (theatreKAPOW), Sweeney Todd (Winnipesaukee Playhouse), Tiny Beautiful Things (theatreKAPOW), Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor (Winnipesaukee Playhouse), Mr. Wolf (theatreKAPOW), Breadcrumbs (theatreKAPOW), Weekend Warrior (Sarah Lawrence College), Athena (Sarah Lawrence College), Small Mouth Sounds (Sarah Lawrence College), Spring Awakening (Russell Sage College) & Cabaret (Russell Sage College). www.ellisonarts.com

Matthew Cahoon (Artistic Director/Scenic Designer) is a theatre maker who specializes in Direction and Production Design. He is one of the co-founders of theatre KAPOW and during his time with tKAPOW, Matt has directed over 30 productions for the company.  He has received multiple NH Theatre Awards for his work with tKAPOW including Best Director (3x) and Best Scenic Design.  Matt has also directed at St. Anselm College, the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, Jean’s Playhouse, and LaMaMa Umbria.  He is a three-time recipient of the NHSCA Artist Entrepreneurial Grant Award and was named one of the Union Leader’s 40 Under Forty (back when he was under forty!). Matt has an MA in Arts Administration from Goucher College and an M.Ed. in Leadership and Management from Fitchburg State University.  Additional training includes work with Double Edge Theatre Company and the Tectonic Theater Project. After spending 18 years as the Director of Cultural Programming and Director of the Stockbridge Theatre at Pinkerton Academy, Matt became the Director of Theatre at New Hampton School. In July 2024, Matt was named New Hampton’s next Academic Dean. 

Barbara Holbrook (Costumer) has a BA in Theatre, an MFA in Costume Design, and a passion for creative collaborations on stage and off. She’s thrilled to be returning to theatre KAPOW for another season, continuing an artistic relationship that began in 2022. Past projects with special places in her heart include Pippin, The Secret Garden, Annie, Godspell, The Imaginary Invalid, Merrily We Roll Along, Candide, The Good Person of Szechwan, and The Man of La Mancha. Barbara’s also a certified meditation instructor, Reiki Master, yoga teacher, and co-founder of 4th Wheel Flow, where she brings all those threads together under the umbrella of energetic intelligence. She lives north of Boston in a multi-generational household where she hones her practices of love, humor, resilience, and unapologetic self-care. 

Duncan Macmillian (playwright) is an award-winning writer and theatre director whose plays include Lungs, Every Brilliant Thing and 2071. His play People, Places and Things transferred from the National Theatre to the West End in 2016. Duncan Macmillan’s other plays include: 1984, co-adapted/co-directed with Robert Icke (Headlong/Nottingham Playhouse, UK tour, Almeida Theatre and West End), The Forbidden Zone (Salzburg Festival/Schaubühne Berlin), Wunschloses Unglück, adaptation with Peter Handke (Burgtheater Vienna), Reise durch die Nacht, adaptation Friederike Mayröcker created with Katie Mitchell and Lyndsey Turner (Schauspielhaus Köln, Theatertreffen, Festival d’Avignon), Atmen (Schaubühne Berlin), Monster (Royal Exchange/ Manchester International Festival).

theatre KAPOW is in its seventeenth season and has established a reputation for presenting important classic and new dramatic literature including productions by Henrik Ibsen, Sam Shepard, Sarah Ruhl, Tony Kushner, Lauren Gunderson,  and Paula Vogel. In 2019, tKAPOW won the NH Theatre Award for Best Production of a Play for The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. tKAPOW has also won Best Production of a Play for Penelope by Enda Walsh (2014), Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies (2015), and Exit the King by Eugene Ionesco (2017). In 2021, tKAPOW was honored with a Silver Lining Resilience Governor’s Arts Award for creative and innovative solutions offsetting challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, tKAPOW became the resident theatre company of the BNH Stage in Concord, NH. 

theatre KAPOW is supported in part by a grant from the NH State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Braille material printing supported by the Henry Lord Scholarship Fund

 

theatre KAPOW is proud to be a Senior Fellow in the New Hampshire Dance Collaborative’s Accelerator Program and we are grateful for their support.

 

theatre KAPOW thanks the following people and organizations for their support of Life Sucks.

  • BNH Stage
  • Winnipesaukee Playhouse
  • Full Circle Vinyl
  • Capital Art Therapy
  • Future in Sight
  • Perkins School for the Blind
  • National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
  • The Jason R Flood Memorial Fund
  • New Hampton Schoo

VISUAL DESCRIPTION

The audience seating creates a rectangle, so everyone can see everyone else in the room. Vinyl Records are suspended from the lighting truss above the Audience.  Full stage and house lights remain on for the performance 

Meet the Cast of the Rembrandt

Meet the Cast of the Rembrandt

by | Jan 13, 2025 | Blog

Robert Fabricio Armstrong (Jonny/Martin)  has been traveling an actors path since the age of 9. His training includes: studying/performing at Davenport School of the Arts in acting/music/dance, attending various local acting and dance programs in Davenport, FL , and attending The New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts for college. Notable performance credits include “In the Heights” directed by Eliseo Roman (OBC of In the Heights) at Broadway Palm (Fort Meyers,FL), performing with Camp Broadway at Carnegie Hall and the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade, being a Seacoast Rep Company Member for the 2023 season, “Jasper” in “The Aliens” directed by Bardo Theatre Company at The Players Ring, and most recently “Rum Tum Tugger” In “Cats” at the Seacoast Repertory Theatre. He encourages everyone to find what makes them happy in life and pursue it with unrelenting faith.

Charlie Berger (Dodger/Titus) is an Actor, Director, Comedian, and Writer based in the Boston area. Charlie received a BFA from Boston University in Theatre Arts Performance with concentrations in directing and playwriting. Charlie is also an improvisational comedian and is currently performing at Improv Asylum, where he also runs tech for scripted and unscripted comedy. Charlie explores how to engage with the serious acting training as a comedic actor, constantly looking for new ways to experiment with the pedagogy. Charlie is a strong advocate for new works in theatre. His passions for playwriting and directing have been cultivated in the new works festival at Boston University, in which he developed seven new plays written by his peers, concluding in his senior year by directing in the Booth Theater. Charlie was awarded the Milan Stitt New Works Award for his work as a director of new plays at Boston University.

Samantha Griffin (Madeline/Henny) is a theatre artist currently based in New Hampshire. This is her sixth time working with theatre KAPOW and her first in the ARTiculate series. In addition to acting, she has recently worked as an intimacy choreographer across the state. Favorite acting credits include A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (theatre KAPOW), SEUSSICAL! THE MUSICAL (Firehouse Center for the Arts), and SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (Columbia College Chicago). Samantha holds a BFA in Musical Theatre Performance with a minor in Playwriting from Columbia College Chicago. 

Peter Josephson (Henry/Rembrandt) is in his fourteenth season as a company member of the theatre KAPOW. An accomplished actor and director, he has been nominated for Seacoast Spotlight awards for both acting and directing, and has won two New Hampshire Theatre Awards for his roles in Penelope and Exit the King (both with tKAPOW). In addition to tKapow he has performed with the New Hampshire Theatre Project, the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, and the Seven Stages Shakespeare Company, and has directed for theatreKapow, the New Hampshire Theatre Project, Threshold Stage, and Glass Dove Productions. Peter most recent productions with theatre KAPOW include Macbeth, Mr. Wolf, Tiny Beautiful Things, and The Thanksgiving Play. He leads occasional acting workshops in the Michael Chekhov technique. For more than 40 years (!) he has benefited from the love and support of his wife Becky, without whom he would be a shadow of his present self.

Walter Maroney (Homer/Simon) has previously appeared with Theatre KAPOW as the Professor in this season’s production of Life Sucks and as Robert Lyon, an art teacher, in a staged reading of The Pitmen Painters at the Currier. 

Jessica Dickey (playwright) hails from Waynesboro, PA, and lives in Brooklyn. She received her BFA from Boston University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Jessie made her playwriting debut with The Amish Project, about the 2006 Nickel Mines school shooting in an Amish community, premiered at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater to rave reviews. The Amish Project has been produced all over the country and the world. Jessie’s play Charles Ives Take Me Home also premiered at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, which resulted in a nomination for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for playwriting. The Convent, a dark comedy about a group of women who try to live like nuns in the middle ages, premiered Off-Broadway this year in a sold-out co-production with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Rising Phoenix and WeatherVane, and is now being developed into a series for Sarah Jessica Parker’s company Pretty Matches.  Her next world premiere is coming up this season on the west coast: Nan and the Lower Body is a dark comedy about the creation of the Pap Smear and her maternal grandmother (commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club and the Sloan.)

Choreographing Life’s Un-Choregraphed Moments: A Conversation on Intimacy and Combat for the Stage

Choreographing Life’s Un-Choregraphed Moments: A Conversation on Intimacy and Combat for the Stage

by | Oct 15, 2024 | Blog

#TKapowConversation #Season 17

Since returning to in-person rehearsal rooms and performance spaces after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, safety and well-being took top priority among tKAPOW’s practices. Of course this meant testing, masking and livestreaming whenever possible and necessary, but it also meant reconsidering our theatre-making process with our actor’s wellbeing as the top priority. Like all art forms, acting is incredibly vulnerable. It requires one to put their body into various states of physicality and emotion, and even though we know cognitively that the circumstances are fictional, our bodies cannot always tell the difference. This is the reason that Intimacy and Combat choreographers have become essential members of well-rounded, safe theatrical teams.

Theatre KAPOW has been working with Intimacy and Combat Choreographers consistently since the start of our fifteenth season. At the most basic level, Intimacy and Stage Combat Choreographers are responsible for creating the sequences of movement that make up moments of physically intimate contact between two or more characters, such as stage kisses, slaps or even weapon work. It’s a means with which to choreograph a character’s most raw and impulsive actions while keeping them organic and appearing completely un-choreographed.

“A stage combat choreographer looks at the violence of a piece. So if there is either scripted violence, or a director has an idea of violence that might occur based on the acceleration of the scene, we are brought in to look at the background of the characters and dramaturgically assess what kind of choreography would fit on the bodies of two people engaged in a violent encounter, or the bodies of two characters who are engaged in a violent encounter and where those intersections come together,” shared Kyrie Ellison-Keller, who has worked with tKAPOW as both an intimacy and combat choreographer. Kyrie has choreographed two instances of violence for our September production, LIFE SUCKS. “My favorite Stage Combat Company to study with, Neutral Chaos Combat, they call us all Violent Dance Magicians. What we’re doing is we’re choreographing violence, but violence on stage is inherently not real, so it’s choreographed illusion. And if it’s done well, it looks violent.”

Samantha Griffin, Intimacy Choreographer for LIFE SUCKS., grew up as a dancer and finds the two artforms very comparable. “My dance background informs a lot of the ways that I choreograph without using sexualized language,” she says. “With dance, we’re very specific, like: on this exact count you move your hand this way, and on the next count you step here. That’s how I approach choreographing intimacy. I give people counts. I ask: how many steps will it take you to close this gap between you? I give actors a certain amount of seconds to hold a kiss or an embrace, and use the language of music and dance like ‘staccato’ or ‘languid.”’

Kyrie shared similar sentiments, saying that “a lot of the language [fight choreographers use] is co-opted from dance words, because most of the time when you walk into the room as a fight choreographer, you’re not getting to work with people who have been trained in weapons. You get to work with people who might have a really strong movement background, or who might have danced for 20 years, and you have to find ways to adapt.” Plus, she shared an interesting tidbit about the origins of swordplay language; dating all the way back to the 15th century, Fencing and Ballet were studied by the upper middle class simultaneously, which created an overlap in their terminologies.

That being said, creating choreography is not the only purpose of having an intimacy professional in the space. “Intimacy choreography is a practice that’s been developing over generations. In simple terms, yes, it’s the practice of consent and boundaries for actors. We are people who can come into the space and arm actors and professionals with language and tools to create a consent-based environment that will safely allow us to step into characters and emotions that are not our own,” says Griffin. “A lot of my practice is working with actors playing emotionally-turbulent roles to figure out how they can connect and disconnect from them, so that they do not carry it with them into their personal lives.” Ellison-Keller adds: “There’s so much about stage combat and intimacy that looks really easy, because we do our jobs really really well. The people who come into those spaces to choreograph instances of heightened emotional turmoil have sensitivity training, have trauma-informed training, have choreographic training, and have experience beyond just looking at how to make something look violent or intense.”

A shared sentiment between the two was that their work goes beyond simply creating movement sequences. Sam says she thinks of herself as “an advocate for the actors,” and Kyrie says that “for a lot of people we’re check boxes, but we empower creators and creatives to tell risky narratives in a way that doesn’t end their careers.” Kyrie encourages any theatre professionals or companies who are interested in the work but are unsure where to start to simply ask questions. Both Kyrie Ellison-Keller and Sam Griffin remarked that the two mediums are commonly misunderstood and shied away from, but that the work is essential to the sustainable creation of bold theatre.

—

Join us for the first production of our 17th Season, LIFE SUCKS. by Aaron Posner (sort of adapted from Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov) at the BNH Stage in Concord, NH on September 20, 21, and 22! Tickets are available here.

Thanks to Samantha Griffin and Kyrie Ellison-Keller for providing their insight and for the incredible work they do!

Life Sucks. But this play doesn’t.

Life Sucks. But this play doesn’t.

by | Jul 18, 2024 | News

theatre KAPOW opens its 17th season with Aaron Posner’s profoundly humane and hilariously quirky comedy Life Sucks. at BNH Stage in Concord, NH September 20 through 22.

A group of old friends, ex-lovers, estranged in-laws, and lifelong enemies gather to grapple with life’s thorniest questions—and each other. What could possibly go wrong? Incurably lustful and lonely, hapless and hopeful, these seven souls collide and hilariously stumble their way towards a new understanding that life sucks! Or does it? And how do we get through it?

Egos clash, hearts hunger, and souls cry out for meaning in this raw and cleverly funny reimagining of Anton Chekhov’s timeless classic Uncle Vanya. In Posner’s fresh take, the audience directly impacts what is happening on stage. The characters often talk to and ask questions of the audience. You might just learn something about your companion to the theater. Or you might reveal something.

The theme for tKAPOW’s 17th season is ‘conversation.’ This season emphasizes their commitment to bring stories to the stage that start conversations. Life Sucks. eliminates the wall between audience and actors and brings the two into direct dialogue about so many of the struggles and joys that we have in common.

Why this play? And, why now? Matt Cahoon, Artistic Director says: “I think that over the past several years we have all found moments to say ‘Life Sucks’ and it seems to me that in almost all cases, the way to make life suck just a little bit less is to make connections with other people. While far from being a perfect family, we do see in this play a group of people connected by a shared history, a desire for connection, and a hope that things can get better.” 

This is the second time that tKAPOW has produced one of Posner’s adaptations of Chekhov’s plays. The company’s incredibly successful 2016 production of Stupid F-ing Bird was hailed by critics as “exquisite theatre, writ large by a company at the top of their game” (Caught in the Act Blog). Actress Deirdre Bridge was in that production in the role of Emma Arkadina, and is also performing in Life Sucks. “At its core, Stupid F%cking Bird reminded us that all of our actions have repercussions for others; whether our acts are brazen or subtle, loving or hurtful, our interconnectedness is inescapable,” she said. “Aaron Posner is just so good at writing what happens between people, in the negative spaces among us.”

Seven actors return to tKAPOW again to perform in Life Sucks.: Deirdre Bridge, Emma Cahoon, Peter Josephson, Rachael Chapin Longo, Walter Maroney, Katie Proulx, and Glenn Provost. Life Sucks. is directed by Matt Cahoon and Intimacy Choreography by Samantha Griffin. Longtime tKAPOW collaborator Tayva Young will be providing the lighting design, and Barbara Holbrook the costume design.

Performances of Life Sucks. are September 20 and 21 at 7:30pm and September 22 at 2:00pm at the BNH Stage in Concord, NH. ASL Interpretation will be available at the Sunday, September 22 matinee performance at 2:00 pm at the BNH Stage in Concord, NH.  Braille programs are available at all performances. For tickets or more information, visit www.tkapow.com.

About theatre KAPOW

theatre KAPOW (www.tkapow.com) develops ensemble productions of great dramatic literature to explore the human experience and inspire and challenge both artist and audience. tKAPOW places emphasis on the importance of rigorous formal training to develop an ensemble of skilled and dedicated theatre artists.

theatre KAPOW is supported in part by a grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and NH Dance Collaborative.

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