WORD UP

WordStage launches a new season with smart and sassy fare

Excerpt of an article by Elizabeth Crean, Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice (11 November 2009)

Attendance stats as low as zero — that’s as rocky a start as any performing arts group could have. Montpelier’s Tim Tavcar faced this two years ago when he founded WordStage, which brings together chamber music and staged readings around literary and historical themes. Audiences have warmed to Tavcar’s innovative scripts, however, and four shows are slated for the group’s third season. It kicks off this weekend with An Entertainment at the Court of the Sun King, which celebrates how the monarch known for his love of power — Louis XIV — also loved art.

This year’s eclectic programming mix begins in 17th-century France with Molière’s cutting comedy and Lully’s kicky keyboard music, and ends next May in the American Jazz Age with Dorothy Parker’s catty, chatty crew, the infamous group of writers, wags and critics who made up New York’s Algonquin Round Table. In between come Stradivari and the “Davidov” Cello, in December, and Proust in Love, in March.

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