Lux Radio Theatre-style presentation of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ as heard on NPR’s Maine Calling!

Everyman Repertory Theatre opened their 2023 season with this ‘radio’ adaptation as part of the Camden Opera House’s SoundCheck series on January 6th.

Featuring Dean Jorgenson, Scott Anthony Smith, Ryan Jackson, Dagney Ernest, Joseph Cote, Jim Reitz, Andrea Itkin, Jan Zimmermann, Beverly Scott, Robin Jones, Paul Hodgson and Jennifer Hodgson, with Geoff Parker on SOUNDFX, and the show was directed by Paul Hodgson.

The Painting Speaks: Will Davis’ The Builders

Click here to watch

All are invited to the Everyman Repertory Theatre’s 2019 Fundraising Party The Next 10 Years. The donate-what-you-can event will be a celebration of the upcoming Everyman Repertory Theatre season. A cash bar will be on hand as will delicious treats from some of the top local chefs in Midcoast Maine. Live performances from a few of Everyman Rep’s company members over the past ten years will take place amid one of the most idyllic spots in the midcoast. Camp Bishopswood, originally built in the mid-30s, is nestled in the woods on the shores of Lake Megunticook in Hope.

Everyman Rep’s upcoming season will include a late July production of the Jed Feuer/Boyd Graham two-man musical The Big Bang, featuring John Burstein and David Troup, and a November production of Bertolt Brecht’s fascinating The Threepenny Opera, at the Rockport Opera House, directed by Everyman Rep Artistic Director Paul Hodgson.

“As the only professional non-profit theatre in the midcoast, we’re so grateful to the support of our local community,” commented Mr. Hodgson. “We live in such a beautiful environment, fast becoming a cultural hub – but there are very few big corporate sponsors available to a small theatre such as ours. We’re very dependent on the support of local theatre-lovers and theatre-goers year-in and year-out. We certainly hope everyone will come out, not only to support the theatre, but to have a fantastic time at one of the most beautiful spots in our area.”

Advance tickets for The Big Bang will be available at the party as will more information on the upcoming season. For more information about the event or Everyman Repertory Theatre call 207-236-1073 or visit www.everymanrep.org

Join Everyman Rep at the Farnsworth on Saturday, January 12 at 2pm for a series of short dramatic readings by playwright Don Nigro. The plays will include: Picasso, a monologue by Georges Braque about an argument he and Picasso had about finding a squirrel in one of his paintings; Dutch Interiors, a monologue by Vermeer about finding the Girl with a Pearl Earring in a tiny perspective box he has become obsessed with; The Daughters of Edward D. Boit, featuring the four girls in the painting of that name by John Singer Sargent; and Europe after the Rain, a WWII-era interrogation of artist Max Ernst by two FBI agents.

Actors include Dagney Ernest, Eliza Robinson, Eva Hopkins, Andrea Itkin, Robin Jones, Ryan Jackson, Paul Hodgson, David Troup and myself. The production is directed by Jennifer Hodgson and stage managed by Mary Ann Giasson.

Tickets can be purchased by visiting the Farnsworth Museum website or www.everymanrep.org (Snow date: Sunday, January 13, 2pm)

Everyman Repertory Theatre will present the world premiere of “Hold Onto Your Hat!” The one-woman show, written and performed by Andrea Itkin of Camden, will open its statewide tour Saturday, Sept. 1, at 7:30 p.m. at the Marsh River Theatre, 24 Monroe Highway/Route 139.

The show is part memoir, part social commentary, written from the perspective of youth through old age — delivered all in rhyme and a bit of song with a lot of humor. “Andrea kept bringing in these poems to our Actors’ Studio last year and reading them, and we were all just blown away by how good they were; how funny, how sad, how, sometimes, angry,” said Everyman Rep’s artistic director Paul Hodgson. “We knew we had to help her get it on stage and in front of people.”

Itkin said that although she had written some plays and monologues, short stories and poems over the years, she had never attempted rhymes or songs before starting work on this show.

“It was initially inspired by Patti Smith’s memoir, ‘Just Kids,’ which got me thinking about that time of my life and experimenting with expressing experience in a new way,” she said.

“Hold Onto Your Hat!” is a multimedia production featuring photographs by Cig Harvey and Scott Anthony Smith; collages by Tammam Azzam; paintings by Natasha Mayers; a short film by Dylan Itkin; and original recordings by Mary Anne Driscoll and Curran Reynolds of Body Stuff. It is directed by Scott Anthony Smith.

Itkin has been writing and performing in Maine for over 35 years. Most recently, she was in the reading of “Lost and Guided” by Irene Kapustina; and has had roles in many Everyman productions including Givola in “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” Nat in “Rabbit Hole” and Carrie Watts in “The Trip to Bountiful.”

Tickets are $20; $10 students, available online at everymanrep.org. The tour continues Sept. 20 through 23 at the Portland Ballet Studio Theater; Sept. 29 and 30 at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland; Oct. 5 at the UMaine Hutchinson Center in Belfast; Oct. 18 and 19 at The Theater Project in Brunswick; and Oct. 27 and 28 at the Michael Klahr Center in Augusta.

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100% of ticket sales will be donated to Meals on Wheels! You can purchase tickets ($25.00) at www.camdenoperahouse.com or call 207-536-5850.

The Night Kitchen is a full length, original musical comedy. The cast comprises some of the very best acting talent you will see anywhere. Actors from New York City, England and around the state are joining forces to bring you this wonderful theatrical experience!

The musical explores the inner workings of the restaurant business, and the importance that food plays in people’s lives. It also provides loads of laughs and features imaginatively costumed characters from the kitchen coming alive and singing about their joys and sorrows – a frying pan who dreams of flambéing, a dish and spoon who fall in love, and the Pasta Nostra Clan plotting to take over the kitchen.