Diving Into a Summer of Free Movies
The Provincetown Film Society is teaming up with the Crown & Anchor for free poolside movie screenings every Tuesday night this summer.
The movies, which will be shown on outdoor screens installed at the Crown & Anchor’s Beach Club, will be preceded by entertainment by local musicians and drag performers. General admission tickets will be free; for a suggested donation, V.I.P. experiences will include special seating in cabanas and on poolside couches and a floating lounge that Crown & Anchor owner Jonathan Hawkins describes as “a raft with cocktails.”
The series begins on Tuesday, June 10 with a screening of Footloose, which will serve as a preview of sorts for the Film Society’s ’80s-prom-themed fundraiser on June 14 at Fishermen Hall, which will feature performances by Liza Lott and other local entertainers.
The rest of the series schedule was also organized with local events in mind. The horror film M3gan, which screens on June 24, coincides with the opening of its sequel, M3gan 2, at Waters Edge Cinema, which is also the backup location for rainy evenings. Other films in the series include Heavyweights on July 15 during Bear Week; a singalong screening of The Little Mermaid on July 29 during Provincetown Family Week; Jaws on Aug. 12 to mark the 50th anniversary of the classic thriller; and Wet Hot American Summer on Aug. 18, which will reflect this year’s Carnival theme, “Summer Camp.”
See onlyatthecrown.com for more information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Doubling Down on Pride
All over the world, June is celebrated as Pride Month in commemoration of the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York’s Greenwich Village, considered the origin of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. In larger cities, Pride is celebrated the last weekend in June. Smaller ones generally mark the occasion earlier in the month. Pride has been celebrated in Provincetown (where it’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s celebrated year-round) over the first weekend in June since 2017.
This year, the Outer Cape will see two Pride celebrations on consecutive weekends: Provincetown Pride will take place from Friday, June 6 to Sunday, June 8, and the newly organized Lower Cape Pride, with events in Eastham, Orleans, Brewster, and Harwich, over the week starting Friday, June 13.
The centerpiece of Provincetown Pride is a rally — described as “a joyful, powerful celebration of identity, visibility, and community” — on the steps of Town Hall on Saturday, June 7 at 3:15 p.m., which will be followed by a “Sashay to Tea” down Commercial Street to Tea Dance at the Boatslip (161 Commercial St.) at 4 p.m. Other highlights of the weekend include an opening reception for the “New Ptown Resistance” art exhibition at the Provincetown Pride Center (115 Bradford St.) on Friday, June 6 at 5 p.m.; a queer comedy showcase at town hall on Saturday, June 7 at 8 p.m.; and an evening of poetry, storytelling, and comedy by Tamora Israel, with music by local artists Olivia Yingling and Zihali Peters, at Gifford House (9 Carver St.) on Sunday, June 8 at 4 p.m.
Lower Cape Pride celebrations begin on Friday, June 13 with an Intergenerational Pride BBQ in the newly christened Pride Pioneers headquarters at the Orleans Council on Aging and Senior Center (150 Rock Harbor Road). In a testament to the popularity of the new event, the gathering was already sold out as of press time, but there is a wait list. A Pride Social featuring Provincetown drag performer Mackenzie will follow the Intergenerational Pride event at The Alley (191 Rt. 6A, Orleans) at 8 p.m. that evening.
Other Lower Cape Pride events over the weekend include a family-friendly “people-powered” Pride parade beginning at the Orleans Village Green on Saturday, June 14 at 9 a.m. and an afternoon of free LGBTQ programming at Cape Rep Theater (3299 Main St., Brewster) on Saturday from 12:30 to 6:30 p.m. Celebrations will continue over the following week with a presentation by musician and historian Katie Castagno on “Our Queer Elders” at Chapel in the Pines (220 Samoset Road, Eastham) on Sunday, June 15 and a Pride Tea and Talk at the Harwich Council on Aging (100 Oak St.) on Monday, June 16, among several other events.
For a complete schedule of Provincetown Pride events, see ptowntourism.com. More information on Lower Cape Pride can be found at lowercapepride.org. —John D’Addario
The Worlds of Greta Van Campen
Historically, the Maine coast and Cape Cod have been two of the most significant places for American landscape painting. Their natural beauty and the artistic communities they have nurtured continue to draw artists. If you’re a landscape painter on the East Coast, you probably gravitate toward one or the other. But that’s not the case with artist Greta Van Campen, whose exhibition of new work is currently view at On Center Gallery (352 Commercial St., Provincetown).
Van Campen, who lives in mid-coast Maine, seems at home painting in both places. The paintings in her current show are split evenly between depictions of Maine and Cape Cod, but they’re united by her interest in using geometric forms to articulate the wide-open spaces where water and sky meet. Van Campen’s tendency to eschew the organic forms typically favored in landscape painting for something more hard-edged and geometric introduces a synthetic element to her coastal scenes.
Her landscapes reverberate with elements of design, photography, and, reaching further back, the legacy of precisionism, a 20th-century art movement associated with Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. Their paintings — like Demuth’s 1920 work depicting what is now the Provincetown Public Library — used geometry to reflect an increasingly industrialized America. Similarly, Van Campen reflects a contemporary approach to landscape. One thinks of the iPhone and Photoshop when looking at her sharp, pristine images.
That’s not to say that Van Campen isn’t sensitively attuned to nature. She excels at finding nuance in the subtle colors of New England spring: the grays and light blues of that somewhat dreary season. Kennebec Greens and Greys is a standout as an image that is both simple and precise. She captures a similar quiet moment in Early April Morning — Provincetown. In both paintings, there’s a synchronism between the slow, controlled movements of her hand and the serene subjects she paints.
The show is on view until June 11. See oncentergallery.com for information. —Abraham Storer
Mason Jennings’s Musical Contrasts
Singer and songwriter Mason Jennings was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but he grew up in Pittsburgh, where he says his parents played music constantly — old folk songs, classical, early rock and roll — in the house and in the car. Currently based in Minneapolis, Jennings has released 16 studio albums since his debut self-titled album in 1997.
As part of the Twenty Summers series at the Hawthorne Barn (29 Miller Hill Road, Provincetown), on Thursday, June 12 Jennings will perform songs spanning his whole career, including ones from his new album, MAGNIFIER, which will be released on June 20.
Jennings has passed his love of music along to his own family. After his son was born, Jennings developed a habit of bringing him downstairs in the mornings so that his wife could sleep. “I would play the guitar and sing to him,” he says, “and he would lock into the music and move and coo along.” His son’s singing is heard in the background of the demo recordings for Jennings’s 2023 album Underneath the Roses.
Babies like contrast, says Jennings. Perhaps that’s why his son responded so enthusiastically to his father’s music. “I like good contrast in a song,” he says. “Dark and light. Sweet and sour. Earthly and mystical.”
Or maybe his son understood that music is something that brings people together. When Jennings performs for an audience, he says, “I hope it makes them feel less alone with what’s going on in their life, both inside their head and outside.” If listeners are inspired to make their own music, he says, that’s a great thing, too.
Tickets are $45 at 20summers.org. —Dorothea Samaha
Four Solo Shows Share Unusual Perspectives
Four acclaimed performers will make their Cape Cod debuts during Provincetown Theater’s fifth annual 4-Star Solo Show Festival this month.
The series begins on Thursday, June 5, with O’Keeffe!, Lucinda McDermott’s look at American artist Georgia O’Keeffe. McDermott premiered the show off-Broadway in 1992 and subsequently toured the country with it. She returned to it in 2021, adding newly discovered research that provided a fresh look at her subject.
“We’re an art colony, and this is a perfect mix of history, art, and feminism,” says Provincetown Theater Artistic Director David Drake. “Intelligent women who’ve made it in the world are very appealing to our audiences.”
Joshua Gershick’s TRANScripts, which explores the writer’s personal journey and its relationship to the larger legacy of transgender lives in America, will premiere during the festival over the weekend of Thursday, June 12. Gershick’s show examines older trans people at a time when lawmakers nationwide are increasingly focused on limiting help for younger members of the trans community.
“Because of how trans people are being attacked right now, we thought it was our responsibility to serve our larger LGBTQ community and people who support and love them,” Drake says.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith will perform her 2024 play Spiritus over the weekend of Thursday, June 19, coinciding with the Juneteenth holiday. The show, described as a story about “how we live and pass,” looks at “life, death, and how much we take for granted.” Drake notes that Orlandersmith has forged a rare path for Black women playwrights and poets to perform on a national stage.
The series concludes over the weekend of Thursday, June 26 with It Goes Without Saying, written by and starring Broadway actor and mime Bill Bowers. The solo work blends storytelling and movement into a silent theatrical experience that Drake says explores Bowers’s Montana upbringing “and how mime and clowning helped him become who he is and build a bridge into the larger world.”
Performances begin at 7 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays each weekend at Provincetown Theater (238 Bradford St.) Tickets are available at ptowntheater.org or by calling 508-487-7487. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
