Nine-Hour Marathon Performance Begins Chandler Centennial Season

The anything-but-sleepy Vermont town of Randolph (pop. 5,000) will celebrate the 100^th anniversary of its beloved opera house with a host of special events in 2007-08.

There will be 30 music, dance and theatre performances by noted soloists and ensembles, eight gallery exhibitions, children’s programs, the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival, the New World Festival, the Fiddlehead Festival, and even a softball game between two fierce rivals in Randolph’s cultural substratum.

Arlo Guthrie will be on hand. So will Natalie MacMaster. The Chiara String Quartet, the Hilliard Ensemble and others will play new works by noted local composers, commissioned for the centennial.

All of these will have their moment, but it’s likely that two will attract particular notice nationally. One is a live broadcast of the popular National Public Radio show "From the Top" to stations all over the country, direct from the music hall stage. The other, the season opener on September 15, is a nine-hour marathon performance called "101 Premieres—Albert’s Big Bash."

The century-old theatre is performance space of the Chandler Center for the Arts. The premieres will be 101 short presentations of works of art that appeared in the U.S. or abroad between 1907, the year the Music Hall opened, and the present. The "Albert" whose bash it is was Colonel Albert Chandler, the Randolph benefactor whose generosity made possible the building of the music hall and its adjacent art gallery.

The September marathon performance at Chandler was conceived by Chandler board member Anthony Keller, who is directing the project. Keller says "We couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate the birth of our cultural center a century ago, and the inspiration of its founder, than to pay tribute to the creative artists whose work, since the earliest recorded history, is the reason institutions like ours exist all over the world."

Over 150 performers will appear on the Chandler stage during the marathon to present excerpts from plays, musicals, choreography, novels, poems, operas, symphonic, folk, chamber, jazz and pop music that came to life between 1907 and 2007. Great photography, paintings, sculpture, movies, and architecture of the past and present will also be seen by the audience as digitally projected images.

The show has been divided into ten decades, each of which is being researched, organized and directed by a different central Vermont artist. The ten "Decade Directors" are now at work, casting and preparing their half-hour productions: John Jackson of Randolph, Bob Eddy of Braintree, Maria Lamson of South Royalton, Dorothy Robson of Hancock, Tony Keller of Braintree, Nina Gaby of Brookfield, Charlie McMeekin of Braintree, Kep Taylor of Bethel, Dawn Butterfield of Randolph and Shari Dutton of Chelsea.

Betsy Cantlin of Randolph Center, the production manager, is in charge of the demanding technical aspects of the event, which will require tag teams of lighting and sound technicians and stagehands.

The show starts at 3 p.m. and ends at midnight. It is assumed that no production this long or this ambitious has ever before been staged in Vermont. Keller’s idea for the marathon goes back to a production he saw in New York during the late 1980s, Peter Brook’s dramatization of the ancient Indian epic, "The Mahabarata," the world’s longest poem.

Why a marathon?

"We could have divided the century into three standard length evenings," Keller says, "but only by doing it all at one sitting will the audience experience the sweep of history. Besides, nine hours isn’t really such a big deal. It’s not all that much longer than many people’s work day or a double-header that goes into extra innings, and it’s much more interesting!"

Reserved seating will be $25, tickets for Part I (1907-1956) and Part II (1957-2007) will be $13 each.

"We are giving awards to folks who sit through the whole thing—and stay awake," Keller noted, "but those with shorter attention spans can also come in and pay 25 cents a year."

A sidewalk parade from Mari-Castle, Colonel Chandler’s home, to the theatre, featuring the whole cast in costume, will precede the show. There will be a one-hour dinner break mid-way, and a party afterward. At midnight, the bell in the Chandler belfry will be rung for the first time in many years.

This project is sponsored by The Bare Mexican Restaurant and the Vermont Community Foundation.

For tickets, please contact the box office at 802-728-6464 or tickets@chandler-arts.org.

"101 Premieres" is running concurrently with the Tunbridge Fair. Taking in both events is being sold as an attractive weekend tourist package.

"But the show is first and foremost a hometown event," says Becky McMeekin, Chandler’s executive director. "We’re celebrating an amazing century—in the arts worldwide and here in central Vermont."

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