The Garfield Center for the Arts production of Little Women is as much about four sisters growing up during the Civil War as it is about the spirit and ingenuity it takes to do community theatre.

Minimalist in budget and set-design—the crew brought in their own furniture!—Louisa M. Alcott’s famous novel adapted by playwright Kate Hammill unfolds with a strong all-women cast and seasoned director in Hester Sachse. Sachse is otherwise immersed in the arts as Deputy Director at the Kent Cultural Alliance.

At least two the actors had never set foot on stage, but according to Sachse, the cast grew into their roles to become a family not unlike their roles as the March sisters. It was that kind familial bond that Sachse says illuminates the story of the four girls making life choices as they grew up.

Published in 1868, Little Women challenged societal expectations for women and emphasized individuality, ambition, and the pursuit of personal goals. Alcott’s portrayal of strong female characters navigating love, career, and family still resonates with readers across generations as a a cultural touchstone, celebrated for its wisdom and the empowerment to forge one’s own path.

“Macy Morris portrays Jo March, Maryanna Shoge appears as Meg, KT Pagano plays Beth, and Izzie Squires Southworth performs the role of Amy. Their mother, Marmee, is played by Minnie Maloney. Sam Holdgreve plays the role of Laurie, Allison Jones appears as John Brooks and Parrot, Cassi Pinder plays Hannah and Mrs. Mingott, and Rebekkah Napier plays Mr. Laurence and Robert March.

The production is assisted by a well-experienced crew of artistic contributors. Costumes are by Connie Fallon. KT Pagano is Fight Captain. Props are by members of the cast and by Hester Sachse, who is also doing the sound and projection designs. GCA Theatre Manager Nic Carter is designing lights. Artist Emily Kalwaitis has contributed artwork to the production, and Natalie Hagan has provided choreography,” Sachse writes.

The Spy caught up with Hester via Zoom to talk about the production.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. Little Women continue its run weekends through December 17th. Show times are 8pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 2pm on Sundays. Tickets are available on the Garfield Center website, 

Twenty plays later, Michael Whitehill still searches for the magic of community theatre, that moment when cast, script, and audience merges into a transcendent moment of shared experience…..or even fails to project the heart of the play beyond the stage.

After all, every moment of live theatre is an experiment performed by volunteers who willingly risk self-doubt to reach that moment of joy in their craft and the pleasure of drawing us into their story.

It takes an intuitive director like Whitehill to help community theatre actors discover their characters and how they move in concert to unfold a script into a live performance true to the author’s intent.

Church Hill Theatre’s God of Carnage is one of those plays seasoned directors love to get their hands on: it’s a high-wire act of four characters—husbands and wives— on a mission to solve an incident involving their children.

In fact, what is experienced is a complete devolution of manners and best intentions as they unmask their own painful issues. But don’t let the title fool you. The emotional bloodletting is a comedy, the way comedy can reveal our own truth and, in that moment of honesty, laugh out loud in recognition.

 The Spy recently talked with Michael White about God of Carnage and working as a director with actors.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. God of Carnage plays through November 19, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. For tickets and reservations, call 410-556-6003 or go here.

Flash fiction lives between poetry and its expansive mother, long-form narrative fiction. In its infancy, this abbreviated form was limited to 1,000-1,500 words, but as, in all things art, experimental subsets spread like phragmites along the Chester River. There’s “micro fiction” at 100 words and “sudden fiction” at 750 words, all challenging the writer the writer to come though in on a micro-scale.

In other words, it’s brief, and for it to work, an author must condense meaning and feeling in a quick narrative that often implies a larger story but is complete as it stands.

On Wednesday, October 18 at 6 pm. Galena author—and local flower farmer— Lisa Lyn Biggar will read from her novella-in-flash as part of the Bookplate/Kitchen author event series.

Her recently published book, Unpasteurized, is an intergenerational story about her family farm in Pennsylvania and reads as a series of short flash events with Biggar’s grandmother as the connective narrative tissue.

Writer Dan Crawley, author of Straight Down the Road, The Wind it Swirls praised Biggar’s flash novella as “breath(ing) new life into this form, deftly creating one unforgettable flash fiction after another, revealing the vivid intergenerational characters of a family, with their fierce love, bittersweet regrets, and a young narrator who longs for another path on life’s journey.”

In an interview in Little Patuxent Review, where she is also the Fiction Editor, she said, “I just knew I had to record the stories she had been telling me for so long. I needed permanent documentation of them, and I also knew I had to capture her voice, which was the voice of a true storyteller filled with joy and sadness and all those places of contemplation in between. She took the recordings so seriously. She knew that I would be writing her story one day.”

The Spy recently interviewed Biggar via Zoom and talked about flash fiction, how she developed her book, and how the form has given insight into writing her longer novel.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more about Lisa Lynn Biggar, go here.

Two new sculptures from the Peter and Hanna Woicke Sculpture Collection brighten the Chestertown landscape with whimsy, charm, and those moments American poet Robinson Jeffers described as a “joy is a whim in the air.”

The two new installations by North Carolina artist Adam Walls, “Ball and Red Arches” and “Taking the Hill” are found on the southwest corner of Cross Street and along the Wayne Gilchrest Trail, respectively and are part of the 24 sculptures to be placed throughout the community by the Chestertown Public Arts Committee.

Walls, a professor of art at UNC Pembroke says he is drawn to creating sculptures that express the joys found in children’s toys and likes to create structures that convey “play” while including messages of encouragement and the kind observations about life depicted in the “following the leader” motif in “Taking the Hill.”

Discovering that he had a natural talent for drawing at an early age, Walls sought a creative challenge he could not find in painting or ceramics. Large, colorful steel fabrications fulfilled that artistic need, and his work continues today to be discovered brightening many landscapes and galleries.

Never losing his sense of whimsy, the artist says his greatest payoff is to see people physically engage with his work.

Walls also says that after visiting Chestertown, he considers the community’s commitment to public arts as having the potential to become a showcase for the arts on the national stage.

This video is approximately eight minutes in length. To find out more about Adam Wall, go here.