Áine Minogue Plays Harp From the Heart
Born and raised in Borrisokane, County Tipperary, Ireland, Áine Minogue says that she grew up surrounded by traditional Irish music. Scattered throughout her home were all sorts of instruments: “piano, an accordion, tin whistles, you name it,” she says. Of all of them, Minogue chose to study the Irish harp. “It’s smaller than the full-sized orchestral harp,” she explains. “It’s about five feet tall. It has a sweeter sound because the strings are shorter.”
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Minogue is bringing her harp to Wellfleet Preservation Hall (335 Main St.) on Saturday, March 9 at 3 p.m. “I hope people will leave feeling rejuvenated and in touch with their Irish heritage,” she says. “It will be a little break from the turmoil of the world.”
Minogue is known for her Irish slow airs, a type of song marked by a lack of strict meter and structure. “The tunes are exceedingly melodic,” she says. “A lot of the music is tied to birth, like lullabies, or to laments and death.” The Irish harp has over five octaves, which allows Minogue to achieve a wide range of emotional expression.
Minogue’s first music gig in Ireland was at a medieval castle banquet for tourists where she performed five hours a night. She continued playing background gigs after she came to the U.S. “A lot of musicians don’t necessarily love doing background music or weddings,” she says. “But I always have. I think being a community musician is a wonderful privilege.” She has played for births, weddings, and funerals, sometimes all within the same family. “Ancient harpers were genealogists,” she says. “They kept family histories.”
Minogue has released more than a dozen solo albums and has composed soundtracks for several major broadcast networks. “As much as I’ve listened to and played music from around the world,” she says, “there’s something about Irish music that I keep coming back to. I suppose we all come back home in the end.”
Tickets for the concert are $25. See wellfleetpreservationhall.org for information. —Eve Samaha
The Bold Company Challenges New Actors
In recent weeks, Provincetown resident Joan Butterton has been listening to Shakespeare while she’s driving, running, and spending time alone. Two phone apps have helped her go over lines in Shakespeare’s As You Like It preparing to play the play’s villain, Oliver, in the Cape Rep Theatre’s Bold Company’s upcoming production.
BoldCo, as it is known, is a free program for actors 55 and up. Butterton says she’s loved her involvement in the project and the opportunity to train with professional actors — but she also notes that memorizing lines is harder at 66 than it was during her last theatrical production in high school.
“How come I do this for hours, then stop and can’t remember what I just did?” Butterton says. “It takes time, but when I get it, it’s magic. And that’s been incredibly important because Shakespeare is a heavy lift.”
This is Butterton’s second BoldCo show; she appeared in Branden Jacob-Jenkins’s Everybody last year. In 2022, however, she was in the audience for BoldCo’s production of Tiny Beautiful Things to watch her friend and former Provincetown resident Barbara Bradley, who’s in her 80s.
“We were congratulating Barbara after the show, and she turned to me and said, ‘Would you ever do this?’ Without thinking, I said, ‘In a heartbeat!’ ” Butterton says. “The next year, I got there and thought, ‘Wow, this is fantastic.’ You think you go for the acting, but you stay for the community.”
Three afternoons a week is a considerable time commitment, but Butterton, a retired vice president at Merck, has enjoyed adding structure to her days by collaborating with people she’d likely never have met otherwise.
Directed by Julie Allen Hamilton, members of this year’s cast come from all over the Cape, Sandwich to Provincetown. The gender-bending production of As You Like It, which involves mistaken identity, politics, and romance in a forest, will be presented on Friday, March 8 at 7:30 p.m. and on Saturday, March 9 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at Cape Rep’s Indoor Theater (3299 Main St., Brewster). Tickets are $10 ($5 for students under 18). Call 508-896-1888 or visit caperep.org for information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Hannah Stowe’s Sea Story
Why are so many of us drawn to life on or near the sea ― and what might the water be able to teach us? Author Hannah Stowe explores such questions in her 2023 memoir Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea and will give a virtual presentation for Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill on Wednesday, March 13.
The monthly off-season book chats at Castle Hill are led by author Karen Dukess (The Last Book Party), who chose Stowe’s memoir, with its chapters named for sea creatures and Stowe’s original drawings, because of how its themes might resonate with Cape Codders.
“It was a no-brainer for our audience of ocean-loving people,” Dukess says. “And many in the Castle Hill community who enjoy these talks are artists, so I thought this would be really interesting to them.”
Stowe lives in Germany — and will Zoom from there — after growing up on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales. She works as a marine biologist and sailor and has traveled the world’s oceans to “explore the human relationship with wild waters,” according to press materials.
Dukess, a Castle Hill teacher and board member, began the virtual chats in January 2021 to highlight the center’s writing programs. She aims to mix access to best-selling writers with introducing lesser-known books in the discussions, which all include time for audience questions.
Recordings of some previous discussions are available on the Castle Hill website. All talks are free; donations are appreciated. For more information and to register for the March 13 discussion, visit castlehill.org. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Bringing a Queer Voice to Boston
A Provincetown writer’s story about an aging gay couple preparing to renew their marriage vows as one of them struggles with memory loss will be among seven scripts spotlighted in the Boston Theater Company’s inaugural Queer Voices short play festival this month.
Patrick Riviere’s Remembering When I Used to Remember explores relationship changes as a man works to ensure that the rest of his partner’s life is as happy as possible and that his best memories are kept alive. The nurse helping them once had an affair with the ailing man, who doesn’t remember it.
“It’s a look at caring for one another, what does love mean — especially when there’s someone suffering from memory loss — and how there’s more than one way to have a relationship,” Riviere says. “It’s something I think about more as I get older.”
Riviere, an actor and filmmaker who is also finishing up his second short film, wrote the play during the pandemic. While it was presented in a virtual reading in 2021, the Boston production will be the first time the play has been fully staged.
The Queer Voices showcase — which was created, according to the theater, “to share the community’s stories and perspectives, celebrate its diversity and resilience, and promote representation” — features seven plays written by playwrights from New England and beyond. Performances will take place at Boston Center for the Arts (539 Tremont St.) on Friday, March 8 and Saturday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 10 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25. See bostontheater.org/queervoices for information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Celebrating Women’s Voices at WOMR
In celebration of International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8, WOMR will feature an all-day program of 22 female DJs from 6 a.m. to midnight. The day will feature interviews and music selections meant to “celebrate women’s musicianship, women’s voices, women’s ethos, and women’s accomplishments,” according to lead coordinating DJ Pandora Peoples.
“Some of us start working on this program in December,” says Denya LeVine, who has been a volunteer DJ at WOMR for 38 years. For International Women’s Day, LeVine will broadcast an interview with Irish musician Éilís Kennedy, whose 2020 CD So Ends This Day is a collection of songs inspired by ship’s logs and personal journals of whalers in the 19th century. Many of the songs were written by women, often wives who either accompanied their husbands aboard whaling ships or were left behind.
Dinah Mellin, who has been a DJ at WOMR since 1997, will play recordings of American roots music including songs by Kala Farnham, Roni Stoneman, Tin Hat, Amythyst Kiah, and the Irish band I Draw Slow. She will also broadcast a prerecorded interview with sociolinguist and writer Daphné Romy-Masliah, a French-born Scottish baroness who currently lives in Switzerland. “She’s a professor and the author of many books,” says Mellin, who sees the station’s Women’s Day programming as a reminder that part of activism is insisting to be heard. “I think it’s very important that we keep on talking,” she says. They’ll discuss, among other things, the last Swiss canton to give women the right to vote in 1990.
Peoples, who will broadcast a live program called “Outrageous and Outspoken Rebels,” agrees. “It’s an opportunity to take up some space,” she says. “We’re all in this thing together. We’ve all got to connect, communicate, and create the world we want.” See womr.org for a complete schedule and more information. —Dorothea Samaha
