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Memorable characters are the heart of great storytelling. Since cavemen and women first started spinning tall tales around the campfire, the essence of fiction has remained constant: Create imaginary people who reflect our desires, needs, hopes or fears. The best stories — whether in a book, on screen or on the stage — have characters that draw us into their world.... Read more

Antique theatrical lights. A Dunkin’ Donuts bucket from the early 1970s. An autographed letter from Bea Arthur. The room can barely hold its tag-sale finds. The apartment’s occupant is clearly eclectic — or, as he puts it, “a big queer.”... Read more

Never underestimate the power of fan mail.

In the mid-’80s, Wolcott poet-playwright David Budbill read an interview in the Canadian jazz magazine Coda with a young bass player from New York City named William Parker.... Read more

Ask a French Canadian and he’ll tell you: Vermont is an English-speaking colony of New France. Before you bristle in indignation, consider all those mailboxes in your town that end with an “-ard” or “-ette.” Then consider that the Québecois in question is an actor at Cabaret du Roy in Old Montréal who calls himself Tèlsphore Jolie and claims it’s still the 17th century. He’s not boasting, just stating facts.... Read more

Free speech is a perennial political hot topic. But what does speaking freely mean in one’s personal life? Actor and Champlain College professor Eric Ronis delves into both the personal and political in his one-man show Things I’m Not Supposed to Say, debuting this weekend at Burlington’s Waterfront Theatre.... Read more

Langston Hughes and Anne Frank never met. But Johnson State College professor F. Reed Brown is bringing the Harlem Renaissance poet and the teenaged wartime diarist together on stage — along with Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson and Helen Keller — in a new play called Voices. Brown has fashioned a script from the historical figures’ own words.... Read more

I’m an adult who never outgrew the dress-up box. But where does cutting-edge fashion come from, if not playful experiments? Hoping an actual costume closet would yield wackier finds than my thrift-store runs, I headed up the hill.... Read more

The gods doth smile upon Saturday and make fair weather o’er this blustering land! Shakespeare might have declared something like that, had he been on hand for the Strange Capers’ outdoor performance of The Taming of the Shrew last Saturday.... Read more

Outdoor performances of Shakespeare are a favorite summer ritual for both actors and audiences. But why would New York City-based thespians trek north to put on plays in the Champlain Islands? For Jena Necrason and John Nagle, founders of the Vermont Shakespeare Company, the productions are not an excuse for warm-weather lakeside idylls. Rather, they serve as a beachhead for an eventual relocation to the Green Mountains and plans to bring the Bard to Vermonters, especially schoolchildren, in a more comprehensive way.... Read more

Imagination brings a blank page or an empty stage to life. A composer’s song can take a theatergoer anywhere his mind and heart allow him to travel.... Read more