The Kate presents its Spirit of Katharine Hepburn Award every year to “an individual who embodies the spirit, independence and character of the legendary actress.” Most of the recipients have been female movie stars, but others come from broadcasting, sports or the stage.

Bening will receive the award during a gala fundraiser at The Kate on Aug. 29.

Hepburn and Bening appeared together in the film “Love Affair” in 1994. It was the final film appearance for Hepburn, who died in 2003 at the age of 96. Bening has appeared in over 40 films, among them “The Grifters,” “American Beauty,” “Being Julia,” “The American President,” “Regarding Henry,” “Mars Attacks!,” “The Kids Are All Right,” “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” (in which she played Hollywood star Gloria Grahame), “Nyad” (as champion swimmer Diana Nyad) and “Valmont.” She has been in four movies with her husband Warren Beatty: “Love Affair,” “Bugsy,” “The Book That Wrote Itself” and “Rules Don’t Apply.”

Biggest winners at the Tonys have some deep CT theater connections

Bening started her career on the stage and appeared on Broadway in Tina Howe’s “Coastal Disturbances” in 1988 and Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” in 2019. Her TV credits range from playing herself in an episode of “The Sopranos” in 2004, hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 2006 and starring as Beulah Jackson in the new “Yellowstone” spin-off “Dutton Ranch.”

Previous Spirit of Katharine Hepburn Award honorees include, Jane Fonda, Laura Linney, Candice Bergen, Martina Navratilova, Sam Waterston, Cher, Christine Baranski, longtime WTNH broadcaster Ann Nyberg, Glenn Close and Dick Cavett.

Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, acted at local theaters such as the Ivoryton Playhouse and the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, and regularly visited her family estate in Old Saybrook throughout her long Hollywood career, retiring there in the 1990s until her death in 2003.

Unlike previous executive directors (except for the interim appointments), okoro is already well established in the New Haven arts community. She teaches at Gateway Community College, has also taught at the Yale School of Art and the University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School and was the first executive director of the New Haven-based nonprofit arts and community organization NXTHVN. She is the founder and CEO of the self-styled “arts innovation platform” The Building Fund.

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas festival has been run by interim directors since Shelley Quiala left in 2024 for personal reasons after serving as executive director for four years. Longtime board member “Rev Kev” Ewing oversaw the 2025 festival. This year’s festival was arranged by managing director Melissa Huber, lead programmer Thérèse LaGamma, community impact manager Shannon Miller and longtime festival employee Tiffany Hopkins.

Previous executive directors include Paul Collard, who was from England, Mary Miller ,who was from Scotland and longest-serving artistic director Mary Lou Aleskie, who was originally from New Jersey and had previously led the La Jolla Music Society in California. All the International Festival of Arts & Ideas executive directors had previous experience presenting or producing cultural arts events, sometimes as one element of larger jobs.

In a statement announcing okoro’s appointment, Creative Evolutions, Arts & Ideas board co-chair Risë Nelson said, “Her vision of the festival as a platform for cultural expression and engagement that is ‘locally rooted, regionally supported, and globally oriented’ resonated deeply with us. As we look to the future, we are excited to welcome a leader whose experience, values, and deep appreciation for our community will help strengthen the Festival’s role as a vibrant gathering place for artists, audiences, and neighbors alike.”

The leadership transition has already begun for okoro, who will officially begin her new position on Aug. 1.

One of CT’s longest-running LGBTQ film festivals is getting bigger and shorter

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas was created after New Haven’s hosting of the Special Olympics World Games in 1995 proved that the city could benefit from a large-scale summer festival. Key events such as free outdoor concerts and the Ideas series of lectures, seminars and conferences take place in mid- to late June, where the festival has become a needed tourism boost at a precarious time of year for local businesses, between the departure of college students in May and the vacation period that begins later in the summer. Over time, the festival became more of a year-round endeavor. While it had begun as a way of bringing international acts to New Haven, from the start it also involved Connecticut artists, whether by encouraging local fringe festivals, booking local bands (and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra) for free concerts on New Haven Green, or commissioning shows by New Haven-based theater companies.

okoro spoke to both the local and global aspects of the festival in a statement accompanying the announcement of her hiring: “The word ‘international’ in our name is a call to action, to build spaces of belonging that hold each of us in our full complexity and transform difference into shared possibility. I envision a festival that deepens its roots in New Haven, while boldly reimagining our city as a living nexus — a global gathering place where the artists, thinkers, and movements that shape our world converge and collide to spark the civic imagination.”

For more information on the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, including tickets to events happening this month, go to artidea.org.

When John Lithgow accepted his Tony Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role on Sunday night for playing author Roald Dahl in the biodrama “Giant,”  the actor recalled the first time he’d won a Tony 53 years ago. That first win was “The Changing Room,” which had its U.S. premiere at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven before transferring to Broadway with the same cast. Lithgow distinguished himself among a strong cast of 22 actors in David Storey’s ensemble piece about a rugby team to win a Tony for Best Supporting Actor. In his autobiography and in a one-man show, Lithgow has credited Long Wharf for starting his professional acting career. He returned to Long Wharf in 1984 to star in “Requiem for a Heavyweight” and visited again with one of his solo shows in 2014.

Bess Wohl, who won for writing the ensemble play “Liberation,” set during the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, wrote her first play, “Cats Talk Back!” while she was a student in the acting program at the Yale School of Drama (now the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale). She graduated from the drama school in 2002. Her breakthrough drama “Small Mouth Sounds” played Long Wharf Theatre on its national tour in 2017. Her play “Make Believe” (a dark drama which had a cast of young children performing its entire first act) had its world premiere at Hartford Stage in 2018, directed by fellow Yale drama school alum Jackson Gay. Earlier this year “Liberation” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Connecticut has a strong connection to dozens of 2026 Tony nominees. Here are some familiar faces

Wohl’s “Cats Talk Back!” was a satire based around imagined feelings of the performers in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s long-running Broadway phenomenon “Cats,” deconstructing the musical and seeing it from other cultural and religious perspectives. Those who remember seeing “Cats Talk Back!’ when it was done at the student-run Yale Cabaret around a quarter century ago find it amusing that another big Tony winner this year was “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” It similarly found a new framework in which to examine the musical that Lloyd Webber based on the poetry book “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” by T.S. Eliot.

“Cats: The Jellicle Ball” was co-directed by Bill Rauch, who had just one previous Broadway directing credit (for “All the Way” in 2014) but has been a legendary figure in the regional theater world for decades. Rauch’s itinerant Cornerstone Theater Company, which adapted classic plays to fit and involve the communities in which they performed them, devised “The Good Person of New Haven” (based on Brecht’s “The Good Person of Szechuan”) for Long Wharf Theatre in 2000. James Bundy, who just left his position as dean of the Geffen School of Drama at Yale last month after 22 years, worked with Rauch when they were both undergraduates at Harvard University and later in Cornerstone. When Bundy became dean in 2002, the first show he produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre was Rauch’s landmark mash-up “Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella.” Rauch also directed Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” for Yale Rep in 2005.

Another connection between “Cats,” “Liberation” and Connecticut is costume designer Qween Jean, who was nominated for her designs for both “Liberation” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” and won for the latter. Jean designed the costumes for the Yale Rep presentation of “Macbeth in Stride” in 2024, which was written and performed by “Liberation” director Whitney White.

The most lauded revival at the Tonys this year was of “Death of a Salesman,” which won for Best Revival of a Play, Best Direction of a Play, Best Featured Actress in a Play, Best Scenic Design of a Play, Best Lighting Design of a Play and Best Sound Design of a Play. Arthur Miller wrote the immortal American tragedy in a writing studio he built himself at his longtime home in Roxbury. That writing studio is currently the subject of a preservation campaign. The Connecticut theater with which Miller was most closely associated in his lifetime was the Long Wharf, which did major revivals of several of his plays and also world-premiered one of his last, “Broken Glass.” In recent years, Hartford Stage has done productions of Miller’s “All My Sons” and “Death of a Salesman,” while Long Wharf Theatre staged Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” on the New Haven waterfront.

The directing career of Joe Mantello, who directed the “Death of a Salesman” revival, is largely New York-centered, but he did helm the world premiere of a curious collaboration between solo theater artists David Cale and Dael Orlandersmith, “The Blue Album,” for the Long Wharf in 2007. Many of Mantello’s Broadway hits have visited Connecticut on tour, “Wicked” foremost among them.

The scenic design for “Death of a Salesman” was by Chloe Lamford, whose design for the outrageous choral play “Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour” by Lee Hall was seen in New Haven when it had its U.S. premiere at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in 2015.

Mikaal Sulaiman’s win for Best Sound Design for a Play for “Death of a Salesman” made him the first Black sound designer to win that award. Sulaiman served as the head of the sound design concentration at the Geffen School of Drama at Yale and sound design advisor at Yale Repertory Theatre from 2021 to 2024.

“Schmigadoon,” the parodic musical comedy based on the theatrical fantasy Apple TV series of the same name, won the Tony for Best Musical as well as Best Book and Best Score for its main creative force, 1986 Yale University grad Cinco Paul. “Schmigadoon” was also was honored for its tricky orchestrations, which must exert a contemporary power while paying homage to classic musical stylings of the mid-20th century. Those orchestrations won a Tony for Mike Morris, who was director of music at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School from 1999 to 2017, and his regular collaborator Doug Besterman. Morris has worked with Ivoryton Playhouse, TheaterWorks Hartford and Goodspeed Musicals. Besterman did the arrangements, orchestrations and musical supervision for the world premiere of the stage adaptation of “Summer Stock” at the Goodspeed Opera House in 2024.

All four people who won Tonys for the hit vampire musical “The Lost Boys” have notable Connecticut theater credits. Shoshana Bean, who won for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical, did a solo concert in 2021 that was televised as part of the PBS series “Stars On Stage From Westport Country Playhouse. Bean also visited Connecticut with national tours of Broadway shows, as far back as “Leader of the Pack” in 2021, plus some gigs singing with the esoteric New York musical ensemble Postmodern Jukebox. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who won for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical, played four separate roles as young men seduced by the father character in “Fun Home” at TheaterWorks Hartford in 2022 and was also at The Bushnell in the national tour of the musical “The Band’s Visit.” Dane Laffrey, winner for Best Scenic Design for a Musical for “The Lost Boys,” designed the world premieres of “Deathless” in 2017 and “Theory of Relativity” at Goodspeed Musicals’ Terris Theatre. Jen Schriever, who won a Tony for co-creating the musical’s lighting design with the show’s director Michael Arden, also workers on “Theory of Relativity” at the Terris Theatre and has two other Goodspeed credits, “A Connecticut Christmas Carol” and “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter.”

Awards not presented at the main televised Tonys ceremony include the honorary awards given for lifetime achievement. One of those honorees was James Lapine, the playwright and director known for his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim (“Into the Woods”) and William Finn (“Falsettos”). Lapine directed the world premiere of his play “Fran’s Bed” at Long Wharf in 2003. One of the stars of that production, Harris Yulin, who died in June 2025, was among those remembered in the 2026 Tonys telecast’s “In Memoriam” segment.

Mary Mitchell-Campbell, who received the Tonys’ Isabelle Stevenson Award for philanthropic or advocacy work, is a respected musical arranger and music director. Mitchell-Campbell, who was honored for co-founding Musicians United for Social Equity and co-founding Artists Striving to End Poverty among other activities, worked on Julie Andrews’ “The Great American Mousical” at Goodspeed’s Terris Theatre in 2012. The many Broadway shows she contributed to that have toured to Connecticut include “Water for Elephants,” which was at The Bushnell just last week and will be at the Waterbury Palace in January.

The Tonys are chiefly meant to honor Broadway theaters but for the past 50 years has also given a Special Tony Award for Regional Theater. Connecticut theaters which have won the award include Hartford Stage, Goodspeed Musicals, Long Wharf, Yale Rep and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. This year, the regional theater award went to the League of Regional Theaters, a national organization which unites, promotes and advocates for regional theaters around the country, including in collective bargaining agreements. Hartford Stage, Goodspeed, Long Wharf, Yale Rep and Westport Country Playhouse are all member theaters of LORT.

The theater is known for goofy, campy, original musical theater shows that riotously riff on fairy tales, folklore, TV shows and other familiar cultural tropes. It is also one of remarkably few theaters — in Connecticut or in America in general — to embrace the British holiday tradition of rowdy “panto” variety shows, known for call-and-response routines involving the audience, bad puns, lavish costumes and over-the-top performances.

Pantochino has developed a deeply appreciative, fun-loving audience for what it does. Its shows routinely sell out but it’s too happy at the MAC right now to move to larger quarters. The shows are carefully created to suit all ages — the kind of shows where some lines go over kids’ heads and hit the funnybones of an older crowd.

“We have an amazing fan base of adults who come see our shows,” said Pantochino co-founder Bert Bernardi, who writes all the company’s original shows, including the three in the 2026-27 season. “They come from Hartford, Danbury, the Shoreline, all over. We’re always asking them, ‘How did you find us?’”

Bernardi called the style that Pantochino has honed for its shows “family-friendly, within reason. Our audiences will go for whatever we do.”

A committed fan base means that Pantochino can do the shows it wants to do the way it wants to do them. “Ideas can come from many different places,” Bernardi said. “They can come from things I’ve read in the newspaper. Our show ‘The Waffle House Five,’ about some friends who said they’d share the winnings from a lottery ticket, then didn’t, was based on a true story. We can get a little edgy.”

Besides its MAC mainstage season, another wildly popular program the company runs is a summer youth theater summer camp in Milford in which a new musical is written by the company and performed by children each week. This year, all 160 spots in the program were filled by eight minutes after the registration period opened, Bernardi said.

Pantochino Productions grew out of a children’s theater company that Bernardi ran for nearly 30 years at Downtown Cabaret Theatre in Bridgeport. In 2010, the Pantochino company was created to continue doing children’s theater but also extend the company’s singular style to other theater formats. The founders were Bernardi and his husband/muse Jimmy Johansmeyer, who played most of the bad guy roles in the Downtown Cabaret children’s theater and who has become a busy actor beyond his prolific work with Bernardi. Johansmeyer has acted in several shows at the Legacy Theatre in Branford, as well as at theaters in New York state and Maine. He also has a behind-the-scenes theater career as a costume designer.

The third key person in the Pantochino company is composer Justin Rugg, who writes all the company’s original musicals alongside Bernardi. “We met Justin at the first audition for the first show we did, “Cinderella Skeleton,” Bernardi recalled.

“We were originally renting space in New Haven. Then we were invited by the Milford Arts Council to perform there.”

Pantochino also has a rehearsal, scene shop and storage space in the Connecticut Post Mall, where it can develop its shows. “We can’t perform there, but it’s perfect for rehearsals,” Bernardi said,

“Oue rehearsals are very workshoppy,” he explains. “’What can we do? How can we change it?’ We have such a great time putting it together.”

The way the company usually operates is that Bernardi writes a script, then gives it to Rugg who offers suggestions while starting to gather ideas for the score, and then involved Johansmeyer. “Justin has a sharp vision for what it can be,” Bernardi says. “Jimmy has a lot of ideas of how things can be improved. Something the scripts go untouched, other times they change a lot.”

Bernardi rarely performs in the shows he writes, though he might occasionally make an appearance as Victoria Sautee, a Dame Edna-type drag character he created years ago and who hosted a semiweekly streaming program called “Let’s Learn Stuff” during the COVID shutdown. Sautee has been a fairy godmother, a genie and other fairy tale characters.

A grander inspiration for Bernardi’s work than Dame Edna is the legendary writer and actor Charles Busch, known for such disparate works as the Broadway hit “Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” the Broadway adaptation of the musical “Taboo” and the cult theater classics “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom,” “Psycho Beach Party” and “Red Scare on Sunset.” Busch himself, who once made a special concert appearance at the MAC thanks to Pantochino, will be in Connecticut this month performing his cabaret show “My Leading Ladies” on June 28 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford.

Pantochino Productions has announced four shows for its 2026-27 season at Milford Arts Council:

“The Real Housewives of Sleepy Hollow,” Oct. 9-25, blends the Washington Irving short story about a horrific moonlit ride set in New York State’s Hudson Valley area with the ubiquitous outrageous “housewives” types from modern reality TV. “It’s a love story,” Bernardi said. “I love seeing those characters from ‘Sleepy Hollow’ like Ichabod Crane and Katrina von Tassel through the eyes of these catty women.”

“Christmas Carol, the Panto,” Dec. 4-20 is a rare return engagement for Pantochino. Bernardi prefers to craft a new panto each year but the enthusiastic response to the company’s irreverent 2022 reworking of the Charles Dickens classic, both from audiences and from the actors who were in it, led to this revival. He also appears as Victoria Sautee in a cameo role in the show. “It will be very similar to the last time. We had such a fun time, and it really is something everyone loves to see,” Bernardi said.

Pantochino’s Teen Theatre company will perform “Urinetown, the Musical” Feb. 26-28, 2027. For the teen company, Pantochino licenses existing musical theater shows rather than writing new ones. Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’ political satire about a repressive government that charges citizens for the right to relieve themselves was an unlikely Broadway hit in 2001 and has since become a staple at small theaters and college theaters.

“At This Performance,” April 23 through May 9, 2027, is about what happens on the opening night of a star-studded new Broadway show when the leading lady does not show up and the show must go on.

“‘At This Performance’ is loosely based on a situation I was involved with,” Bernardi said, telling a tale that sounds too ridiculous to be true about “when a star couldn’t go at the last minute and the director went on instead. The director was male and the role was Evita. I was amused by what could happen if that happened on a Broadway scale.”

Tickets for all Pantochino Productions shows in the 2026-27 season go on sale Aug. 1. The shows are presented in a cabaret style with some table seating at the Milford Arts Council space inside the Milford train station building at 40 Railroad Ave. South in Milford. More information is at pantochino.com or milfordarts.org.

When you lean in to appreciate the detail, you find that most of these intricately interrelated shapes and colors and symbols are more abstract than they at first appear. Instead of an encroaching reality, you get prompts for the creative imagination. That’s an extraordinary talent, deconstructing the world into a dream and entrancing viewers who might have expected something very different.

The preparation for these new works created especially for this exhibit has the same unexpected blend of extreme real-world detail and imaginative bursts of artistic invention. Capanna’s art is about connections, but it defies easy patterns.

Capanna lives and works in Philadelphia. Process is important to her work, and it shows. She apparently likes to have movies or videos on while she paints. She paints fast and freely in oils enhanced with wax and marble dust that gives her work an extra shine.

MATRIX artists are given special latitude about how their work is displayed in the space and are also given special access to The Wadsworth and its collection to inspire them. For this exhibit, Capanna used canvases of the same size as the entrance of the gallery, then based a series of new works on well-known pieces from The Wadsworth’s permanent American Art collection including mid-20th century works by Florine Stettheimer and Bob Thompson, as well John Trumbull, who died in 1843.

Program notes explained that Capanna found movies she felt responded to the art that inspired her and had them on while she painted. Titles such as “Flowers, Ladders, Fires, Flags” reflect her range of influences. The room is capped off by a patterned frame for the entranceway whose dimensions provided a format for the paintings. That fabricated panel of plaster and red earth pigment is amusingly titled “Sinopia for an Egress.”

The exhibit works just as well if you don’t have information about its origins as it does if you do. The sense of something fitting a space well can be felt without being overstressed with text and diagrams.

Capanna’s work is lively, colorful, fresh and inviting. It is also layered in ways that term does not usually cover. These works have layers of life, art, research and lived-in appreciation for the place where it’s hanging. Whether you access these layered through your own study and preparation or just sense them, you feel well taken care of by this art.

Fourth-floor exhibits at Yale Art Gallery are separate and independent but line up beautifully

Mariel Capanna’s MATRIX 198 exhibit is on view through July 26 at The Wadsworth, 600 Main St., Hartford. Hours are Wednesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Museum admission is $22, $18 for seniors, $10 for youth and students and free for Hartford residents. thewadsworth.org.

This year’s event runs June 12-20 and features nine days of in-person screenings followed by a several days of streaming films. Except for the closing night screening at the Connecticut Science Center at 250 Columbus Blvd. in Hartford, all the in-person screenings are at Cinestudio on the Trinity College campus, located at 300 Summit St. in Hartford.

The festival is one of the oldest still-running film festivals in the state. For years, its director and president has been Shane Engstrom, who has served the organization for over a quarter of a century under various titles. The films are selected by a committee whose members each watch hundreds of films a years. There can be over 700 submissions to the festival each year. From those titles, under a hundred make the cut, most shown in public with others available to stream.

The festival happened in June for decades, but when many Hartford-based Pride activities shifted to October due to a surfeit of parades, festivals and other events in June, the 2023 event took place in the fall. June has been known as Pride Month for over a half a century, since the New York City Gay Pride parade tradition began in the wake of the Stonewall Uprising of June 28, 1969. The Connecticut LGBTQ Film Festival returned to a June schedule in 2024 and remains there.

There are always films with a Connecticut connection at the festival. Last year, one of the main features was a documentary about the couple that ran the vegan restaurant Bloodroot in Bridgeport. This year there are at least seven films with local talent either acting or directing. They include “My Friend Kim” (made by Connecticut residents about other Connecticut residents and filmed at local landmarks like TheaterWorks Hartford, The Buttonwood Tree and Wind Hill Farm), “The New Gardener” (whose writer/producer grew up in Connecticut), “Speechless” (filmed at Dudleytown Brewing Co. in Windsor with actors from that area), “Welcome Home, Jeremy Diaz” (by Bridgeport-based directed Jason Coombs who is actively involved with the Bridgeport Film Fest and the Bridgeport Pride Center), “You First” (a student film made at Wesleyan University) and “About Face” (made in Hartford by Hartford native Robin Cloud).

This year, there is a special focus on short films. While the Connecticut LGBTQ Film Festival has always had a focus on short films, there are more of them this year, including shorts programs nightly for most of the festival’s first week and many more shorts online. Part of the reason for the shorts theme is that the festival recently became one of the organizations that can submit films for consideration for the Iris Award, an international queer cinema competition based in Wales, which awards 40,000 British pounds to the winning short.

None of the films in the 2026 Connecticut LGBTQ Film Festival is more than a couple of years old and most released this year. There are some amusing pairings of films with similar titles: “On the Road” and “On the Sea” both playing on June 13, and  “Dreams” and “Dreamers” both playing on June 14.

The lineup includes six features, most of them accompanied by an opening short film or two, being screened in the festival’s opening weekend June 12-14. There are then separate short film programs Monday through Thursday, and one feature (and opening short) on June 19 and 20.

The feature films being screened are, in chronological order:

“In a Whisper,” June 12 at 7:30 p.m. The opening night screening, followed by an opening night party, is Leyla Bouzid’s drama about a woman investigating her uncle’s death while dealing with her own family issues. The opening short is “Ronita Rambo.”

“We Are Pat,” June 13 at 4 p.m. The controversial “Saturday Night Live” character Pat, whose gender was the object of speculation by others, is explored through a contemporary trans/nonbinary lens by director Rowan Haber and features the involvement of Julia Sweeney, who played Pat.

“On the Sea,” June 13 at  7 p.m. Helen Walsh directed this British feature about a mussel farmer who encounters a young drifter. The opening short is “A Cold One.”

“On the Road,” June 13 at 9:30 p.m.  Not the Jack Kerouac title but a Spanish-language Mexican film about a hustler and a truck driver. The festival notes that “On the Road” contains explicit sexual and violent content. The opening short is “Fragile.”

“Dreams,” June 14 at 4 p.m. A Norwegian feature about a girl whose journal writings out her to her mother and grandmother. The opening short is “Salsa!” and there is also a pizza party following this screening.

“Dreamers,” June 14 at 7:30 p.m. A British film concerning a Nigerian woman struggling with the immigration system. There are two opening shorts, “Dandelion” and “Always Azizam” plus a pizza party before the screening.

“Eva,” June 19 at 7 p.m. A French/Arabic production directed by William Reyes about a trans woman and her family. The opening short is “Zari.”

“My Brother’s Killer,” June 19 at 9:30 p.m. Rachel Mason’s film examines the death of gay porn actor/producer Billy London, a murder that went unsolved for over 30 years. There are two opening shorts, “Witness & Exhausted” and “Sore.”

“Departures,” June 20 at 7 p.m. The closing night film, screening at the Connecticut Science Center, is about two British airline passengers who get to know each other intimately. The opening short is “Kiloran Bay.”

The shorts programs are “Men in Briefs: Gay Shorts,” June 15 at 7:30 p.m., “Friends of Carol: Lesbian Shorts” June 16 at 7:30 p.m., “And the Winner Is: Award-winning Shorts” June 17 at 7:30 p.m. and “Authenticity: Trans and Nonbinary Shorts” June 18 at 7:30 p.m. There is a reception before the “And the Winner Is” program at 6:30 p.m. on June 17.

There is also an online streaming Virtual Encore series running for a week after the main public festival has ended. Those titles include: Joonho Parks’ “3670,” set in the Korean gay community (screened with the short “Fairy Play”; Ivona Juka’s Croatian post-World War II drama “Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day” with opening short “Apnea”; Donncha Gilmore’s “Girls & Boys,” a relationship story set in Dublin with opening shorts “Precious Fantasy” and “Anyway, I Piss Sitting Down”; Jeffrey McHale’s “It’s Dorothy” about “The Wizard of Oz”’s gay icon Dorothy Gale with opening short “Arman”; Alice Douard’s “Love Letters” about a lesbian couple having legal issues regarding their soon-to-be-born child with opening short “The Loon”; Xiaodan He’s “Montreal, My Beautiful” about a forlorn Chinese woman in Canada with opening short “Close to September”; Terry Loane’s “Tomorrow’s Too Late” about a transitioning celebrity with opening shorts “Period and “The Ties That Bind” plus the shorts programs “Global Entry: Shorts from Around the World:” “Truth Be Told: Documentary Shorts” and a selection of personal favorites shorts from the selection committee members,

Tickets to single in-person screenings are $13 or $11 for seniors or $30 ($25 seniors) for the opening night and closing night screenings and receptions. All in-person screenings are free to students with ID. Ticket for streaming offerings are $13, $11 for seniors and $5 for students. A pass to the entire festival, including the public and virtual screenings and the various receptions, is $125, $200 for a household. Five-show passes good for either in-person or online screenings are $50, $90 household. A Virtual Encore Pass for the streaming events in the second week of the festival is $60.

For more information about ticket sales and events, go to outfilmct.org.

These types of concerts are part of a tradition that’s older than Broadway. Expect classics from the American songbook, wily new interpretations of contemporary pop songs, Broadway standards and lots of sweet between-song patter.

There are several other acts adding personal twists to surefire musical formats this week. The midwestern ensemble Greensky Bluegrass adds modern jam smarts to old folk instrumental traditions. Indie folk artist Melissa Ferrick has stood out from the New England folk crowd for decades. Besides creating her own distinctive solo style she teaches songwriting and “psychology of creativity” classes as a faculty member at Northeastern University and previously taught at Berklee School of Music. Joyce Manor broke out of the cookie-cutter second generation punk rock scene in California and is still touring and recording with the vitality of a new band. You could say almost the same thing about Young the Giant except it’s less punky. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy has taken a love for the sort of rocking swing band jazz found on groovy LPs from the ‘60s and has made it their own sound for the past several decades. They dress cool, too.

The band whipping through Connecticut this week that really can’t be said to have burst from a large previously existing musical genre. Devo’s early live shows are the stuff of legend. By the time of their second major label album “Duty Now for the Future” in 1979, the band was playing large theaters on the East Coast. A concert would begin with a preshow soundtrack of unearthly throbbing sonic vibrations which the band announced were designed to make the audience defecate in their pants. It didn’t quite do that, but you could feel it in your stomach. The music was always entrancing, if polarizing.

Not only does Devo stand out on any given week in any given year or decade, a Connecticut show is a rare sighting. Devo has not played Connecticut since July 1980 on the “Freedom of Choice” tour. That show was at the now defunct Stage West in West Hartford, the site of the better-known venue the Agora Ballroom. A casino show by Devo seems like a whole new opportunity for the band to practice its experiments on political, social and capitalist systems. The band’s current motto (and tour title) is “mutate, don’t stagnate,” and it’s one Devo has lived by for half a century of dedicated devolution.

Matt Doyle

Matt Doyle has appeared on Broadway in “Company,” “Book of Mormon,” “Spring Awakening” and “War Horse.” He’s the June attraction at John McDaniel’s bimonthly Sunday Broadway Concert Series. Legacy Theatre, 128 Thimble Islands Road, Branford. June 7 at 2 p.m. $41.50-$61.50. legacytheatrect.org.

Bridging the Gaps: An Afternoon of Poetry

The Mark Twain House & Museum, a bastion of literary virtues, holds a benefit poetry reading for the Nook Farm Writers Collaborative, a summer writing program for teens, at the museum. Those reading include Sean F. Forbes, Iris Hida, Joyce Hida, Emily Hockaday, Tom Lagasse, Steven Straight, Elizabeth Thomas and T’challa Williams. The hosts are Victoria Nordlund and Karen Warinsky. Mark Twain House & Museum, 351 Farmington Ave., Hartford. June 7 at 3 p.m. Suggested donations are $5, $10 or $25. marktwainhouse.org.

Joyce Manor

The California punk band Joyce Manor formed in 2008. Two founding members, vocalist/guitarist Barry Johnson and Chase Knobbe, are still in the band, as well as bassist Matt Ebert, who joined in 2010. The drummer, that’s what changes. A new Joyce Manor album, “I Used to Go to This Bar,” was released this year. Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. June 7 at 7:30 p.m. $59.25, $48.25 in advance. toadsplace.com.

Melissa Herrick

The indie rock folk singer Melissa Ferrick, a legend in the Boston music scene, released nearly 20 albums between 1993 and 2015, a number of them on her own record label Right On. Fairfield Theater Company, 70 Sanford St., Fairfield. June 9 at 7:30 p.m. $43-$51. fairfieldtheatre.org.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

The rocking swing jazz ensemble, a longtime favorite at the Connecticut casinos, has a couple of nice club and theater dates upcoming: June 10 at 8 p.m. at Infinity Music Hall, 32 Front St., Hartford. ($47.42-$82.99; infinityhall.com) and June 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. ($69; thekate.org).

Greensky Bluegrass

The Michigan-rooted bluegrass jam band Greensky Bluegrass plays a big outdoor show on June 11 at 7 p.m. at Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts, 40 Jesup Road, Westport. $110, $50 lawn; discounts for pavilion members. levittpavilion.com.

Marcus King Band

Marcus King has been playing guitar for a quarter century now, and he’s only 29 years old. The rock/soul/blues axeman and his band will be performing at Foxwoods Resort Casino’s Premier Theater, 350 Trolley Line Blvd., Mashantucket. June 11 at 8 p.m. Penelope Road opens. $39.95-$121.75. foxwoods.com.

Inner Groove

The Old State House’s Summer Music Series began last week and continues with Inner Groove, a classic rock cover band with diverse tastes and even a few original songs. Connecticut’s Old State House, 800 Main St., Hartford. June 12 at noon. Free. wp.cga.ct.gov/osh.

Jordan Davis

Jordan Davis, whose earliest hits were “Singles You Up,” “Take It From Me” and “Slow Dance in a Parking Lot,” released his third album last year. Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater, 500 Broad St., Bridgeport. June 12 at 7 p.m. hartfordhealthcareamp.com.

Megan Hilty

The Broadway (“Death Becomes Her”) and TV (“Smash”) star brings her concert show to the Shubert Theatre, 247 College St., New Haven. June 12 at 8 p.m. $46.40-$119. shubert.com.

Curtis Hasselbring’s The Curhachestra

The singular jazz ensemble The Curhachestra is led by a trombonist, backed by lap steel guitar, electric bass and drums. Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. June 12 at 8:30 and 10 p.m. $20. firehouse12.com.

Nook Farm Lawn Party

The Stowe Center holds its annual outdoor lawn party, noting that this year marks the 215th anniversary of Stowe’s birth and the 150th anniversary of her neighbor Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” There are activities, refreshments, info booths and talks. Stowe Center for Literary Activism, 77 Forest St., Hartford. June 13 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free. stowecenter.org.

Young the Giant

The California rock band Young the Giant formed in 2004, put out its first album in 2010 and its sixth album “Victory Garden” just this year. With Cold War Kids. Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater, 500 Broad St., Bridgeport. June 13 at 6:30 p.m. $53.50-$816.25. hartfordhealthcareamp.com.

Latino Comedy Fest

Angel Rentas and four or five other stand-ups comedians will perform to benefit the 2026 Hartford Latino Fest. The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. June 13 at 7 p.m. $40. bushnell.org.

Giselle

Connecticut Ballet stages the classic 1841 ballet composed by Adolphe Adam. There are two performances: June 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Palace Theatre, 61 Atlantic St., Stamford ($53.40-$120.05; palacestamford.org) and June 20 at 7:30 p.m. at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford ($49.50-$116; bushnell.org).

Devo

The Ohio band/art movement/social prognosticators Devo make its first Connecticut appearance in decades. Foxwoods Resort Casino’s Premier Theater, 350 Trolley Line Blvd., Mashantucket. June 13 at 8 p.m. $49.35-$132.15. foxwoods.com.

The Big E, formally known as the Eastern States Exposition, behaves like a sort of state fair for all of New England. It happens takes place year from Sept. 18 to Oct. 4 on the fairgrounds in West Springfield, Massachusetts. Connecticut has its own building on the grounds and holds its own state-themed events.

The Court of Honor concerts are free with admission to the Big E, though a few of them offer “premium” reserved seats at a cost. Several artists have yet to be announced. The current 2026 schedule includes:

Chubby Checker, Sept. 18 at 2 p.m. The voice behind one of the biggest rock ‘n’ roll dance crazes of all time, “The Twist,” Checker is still gyrating at the age of 84.

Recycled Percussion, Sept. 18-23 at both noon and 5 p.m. A lively, physical percussional ensemble seen on “America’s Got Talent.”

Uncle Kracker, Sept. 18 at 8 p.m. The midwestern singer/songwriter originally blended hip-hop and rock in the 1990s, when he was associated with Eminem, and has since become a country star.

Ireland with Michael, Sept. 19 and 20 at 2 p.m. Michael Londra’s live show weaves together Irish history, music and storytelling.

The Calling, Sept. 19 at 8 p.m. This marks the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles rock band’s signature hit “Wherever You Will Go.”

Jamie MacDonald, Sept, 20 at 8 p.m. The contemporary Christian music singer/songwriter’s songs include “Ain’t No Way.”

Experience Queen, Sept. 21 and 22 at 2 p.m. Queen tribute act with Jess Agan hitting the Freddie Mercury notes.

Aldo Nova, Sept. 21 at 8 p.m. The Canadian singer/songwriter, whose album “Fantasy” was a hit in 1982, has also co-written and co-produced hits for Celine Dion.

Dax, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. The Canadian rapper and Christian hip-hop artist’s hits include “Dear Alcohol” and “To Be a Man.”

Noah Royak, Sept. 24-28 at both noon and 5 p.m. A comedy juggler and variety act.

The Weeklings, Sept. 25-27 at 3 p.m. A New Jersey-based Beatles tribute band that also records its own original albums and whose members have played live with many major rockers.

The Smithereens with Marshall Crenshaw, Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. When Pat Dinizio, the frontman and main songwriter of New Jersey power pop icons The Smithereens, died in 2017, the band decided to enlist a rotating group of guest vocalists. One of them is singer/songwriter Marshall Crenshaw (“Someday Someway”) who will join The Smithereens for this performance, singing hits like “A Girl Like You,” “Behind the Wall of Sleep” and “Only a Memory.”

Sammy Kershaw, Sept. 27 at 8 p.m. The country star has had hits for decades, among them “She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful,” “Cadillac Style”  and “Queen of My Double-Wide.”

Frankie Avalon, Sept., 28 and 29 at 3 p.m. Even before his fame as a film star, with credits from “Beach Party” to “Grease” to “Casino,” Avalon was a pop star due to the hits “Venus” and “Why.”

Jet, Sept. 28 at 8 p.m. The Australian band Jet was big in the 2000s with the song “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” Jet reunited just three years ago.

Great White, Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. The L.A.-based metal band had back-to-back platinum albums, “Once Bitten” and “…Twice Shy” in the late 1980s.

The Family Stone, Sept. 30 at 8 p.m. Authorized by the late Sly Stone himself to play classic Sly and the Family Stone tunes live, this ensemble is led by the original saxophonist on a lot of those songs, Jerry Martini, plus vocalist Phunne (aka Raw Syl), the daughter of Sly Stone and Cynthia Robinson.

Switchfoot, Oct. 1 at 8 p.m. One of the San Diego alt-rock band’s early hits was “Meant to Live.”

Rock legend Roger Daltrey from The Who added to jam-packed Big E Arena fall schedule

The Click Five, Oct. 2 at 8 p.m. The Boston pop rock quintet with the mod haircuts scored with “Just the Girl,” a song written by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger.

The Songwriter Sessions, Oct. 3 and 4 at 3 p.m. Nashville singer/songwriters Mark and Jay O’Shea, Chris DeStefano, Tim Nichols and Kelley Lovelace perform songs they’ve done themselves as well as hits they’ve written for Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley, Tim McGraw, Jason Aldean and others.

Franklin Jonas & the Byzantines, Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. The Jonas brother who’s not part of the Jonas Brothers act, Franklin Jonas, has gone his own way with an Americana sound and his backing band the Byzantines.

Drew Baldridge, Oct. 4 at 8 p.m. The Nashville country artist of “She’s Somebody’s Daughter” and “Tough People” fame.

The Court of Honor Stage is centrally located on the fairgrounds near the Coliseum building. The Court of Honor concerts are free with admission to The Big E, which is $17.50 for one day or $11.50 in advance; multi-day passes and other admission deals are available. The free seats at the Court of Honor Stage can not be reserved and are on a first come, first served basis. Paid premium reserved seating in front of the free seating section is available for a few of the concerts. Dax, Switchfoot or Jet premium tickets have been on sale for a few days at $54 per ticket. Premium tickets for Frankie Avalon, Uncle Kracker and Sammy Kershaw were scheduled to go on sale Friday.

The Big E previously announced the big-name ticketed acts playing at the 5,000-capacity Big E Arena on the fairgrounds, including Jessie Murph on Sept. 18, Alice Cooper on Sept. 19, Roger Daltrey on Sept. 20, The Beach Boys on Sept. 24, Brad Paisley on Sept. 25, All Time Low on Sept. 27 and Ice Cube on Oct. 3.

For more information about the entertainment offerings at the Big E, go to thebige.com.

This first national tour of the Broadway hit crafted by the PigPen Theatre Co. and “Jersey Boys” writer Rick Elice doesn’t go for the usual slick spangly artifice that has defined circus-themed musicals from “Carnival” to “Jumbo” to “Barnum.” “Water for Elephants” is gritty and earthy. It gets bleak and dark and hostile. It uses circus artistry to lift the drama and add graceful physical heft to the emotional turmoil. The results are magical.

“Water for Elephants” may not have a lot in common with prior Broadway circus musicals (the closest kin you might find is “Side Show” from 1997), but it is a great tradition of circus theater as practiced by troupes who eschew flashiness in search of deep sensitivities and truths. Several of those have come to Connecticut over the years through New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas or college-based performance venues like the Yale Repertory Theatre or UConn’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.

The company responsible for devising the circus routines for “Water for Elephants,” the Canadian circus ensemble 7 Fingers has visited Connecticut numerous times with its own shows and was also involved the circus-like Broadway revival of “Pippin,” which toured to The Bushnell in 2015. Some signature 7 Fingers styles are used to great effect in “Water for Elephants,” from performers descending rapidly headfirst down climbing poles to performers casually walking up and over each other to gorgeous balletic movements done in midair using draped cloths or trapezes.

Shows linking the circus arts with narrative storytelling, and often with dark psychological themes, are not hard to find if you know where to look. What’s unusual is to see these elements presented so grandly on a stage as big as The Bushnell’s and presented in a manner that doesn’t compromise a dark tale of anger, revenge, dangerous romance, desperation and survival. There’s no fluff in “Water for Elephants.” It is a display of massive feelings and it has the canvas it needs for such emotional extravagance. In its best scenes, so much is going on that you don’t know where to look.

Gruen’s book is about an elderly man named Jacob recalling a life-shaping adventure he had in 1931, when he was in his 20s and recovering from the sudden death of his parents. The young Jacob finds himself on a train boxcar with a traveling circus troupe. He ends up becoming the company’s veterinarian. He falls for the circus’ star performer, an equestrian artiste named Marlena. Together they train a new animal act, a reticent elephant named Rosie brought in from another circus where she’s been mistreated. Though she is loved and gently handled by Jacob and Marlena, Rosie continues to be abused in her new home by Marlena’s husband August, the owner and ringmaster of the circus.

August is a violent, domineering, bullying boss who starves and beats the animals in his circus and doesn’t treat his human workers much better. He has ample charisma, which he uses to get his wife and colleagues to forgive his outbursts but they also see through him. The joblessness and despair of the Great Depression has created a debilitating culture at this small traveling business where everyone is living on top of each other and driving each other to more and more distressing extremes.

Hit musical ‘Water for Elephants’ brings circus arts, puppetry and romance to The Bushnell

“Water for Elephants” works on many levels, melodramatic and metaphorical and realistic and fantastical. To achieve this, it works in many styles. Actors and singers are obliged to learn a few fancy circus tricks. Skilled acrobats and aerialists are required to act. This is one of those shows where the depiction of a job and the result of that job are basically the same thing. Here, working behind the scenes at a circus is exactly the same as performing in a circus.

Workers use sledgehammers to pound stakes for the big top, then toss the sledgehammers to each other in a sort of juggling routine. When the big top is raised, the workers clamber and flip with acrobatic flair. The main clown Walter is as funny and manic offstage as he is on. The animals, including Rosie the elephant, a lion named Rex, an orangutan named Agnes and a dog named Queenie, are portrayed either with puppets or with circus performers wearing elaborate costumes. The exquisitely textured and colored puppet bodies are the work of Ray Wetmore and JR Goodman of More Good Productions and Camille Labarre of LAB LAB.

The scripted dialogue by Elice has the same high literary quality he has brought to shows about everyone from the Four Seasons to the Addams Family to Cher. Elice’s writing elevates any show he’s involved with. There are a few places in “Water for Elephants” where plot points from the novel have to be made so obvious or so simplified that specific lines can sound ridiculous. But most of the issues of bringing Gruen’s novel to the stage are smoothly handled by the visual luster and endless creativity of the PigPen Theatre Co.

Pigpen also created the show’s score, which artfully balances conventional showtune songcraft with instrumentation appropriate for a 1920s freight train odyssey. There are steady accents of bluegrass, blues and juke joint jazz. The pit band has the two keyboards, violin, reeds and brass that are customary for Broadway tours. The bassist plays both acoustic and electric.Tthere’s fiddle and harmonica in the mix and the percussion covers everything from a rattling train car sound to a rampaging elephant. The music is a constant, able to rise and fall with the sweeping moods and intense details of the complex storyline.

This is a rare first national tour that does not use Equity actors and goes straight to non-union performers. The singing and acting talent is nonetheless exceptional, partly because the tour’s director Ryan Emmons (maintaining the original Broadway staging by Jessica Stone) has clearly let the performers find their own characters and voices.

There is excellent ensemble work here. A natural community forms even if some members of that community are leaping and soaring and clambering up poles while others are sitting on the ground brooding and drinking. Standout performers include Helen Krushinki who brings an ephemeral glow to Marlena (you truly believe that she has a spiritual connection to the animals she so respectfully rides), Tyler West as Walter the clown (who gets real laughs, not just “laugh because he’s playing a clown” laughs), Yves Artières (who executes a divine aerial routine as the soul of a dying horse) and Robert Tully (who plays the elderly version of Jacob, the ostensible narrator of the show who also gets inserted into it dramatically).

Some of these star performers bring actual circus experience to their roles: Tully was a ringmaster for Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey, West’s bio blurb bills him as a “full-time clown” and most of the ensemble — the players that anchor the most elaborate circus routines in the show — have such impressive circus theater credits as Cirque du Soleil, the National Circus School of Montreal, Vermont’s Circus Smirkus, Cirque Éloize and, of course, 7 Fingers.

“Water for Elephants” does a marvelous job weaving together such seemingly disparate elements as literary storytelling, romance, American history, bluegrass, clanging metal, vulnerable animals, wounded psyches and circus fun. It’s a highly affecting piece of entertaining art. On a whole other level, it was nice to see an information booth in The Bushnell lobby for the Connecticut Humane Society and its pet resource centers. The show’s message of care for others will stick with you and may move you to look out for the welfare of people and animals in your own community — even you don’t happen to live in a circus.

“Water for Elephants,” with a book by Rick Elice, music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co. and based on the novel by Sara Gruen, runs through June 7 at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. Remaining performances are Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. $43.50-$158.50. bushnell.org.

In a post on social media, Seven Angels’ producing artistic director Constantine Pappas said the cancellation was “due to financial challenges, including declining ticket sales and diminishing support,” adding “we know it feels like something rotten indeed.” Pappas stated that the theater was already contacting “Something Rotten” ticketholders about the change in plans.

In the statement, Pappa compared the difficulties at Seven Angels with problems at other small theater in the area, noting the imminent announced closing of Downtown Cabaret Theatre in Bridgeport after 50 years, the closing of Phoenix State Company in Watertown last year and Pa’Lante Theatre Company (which once presented shows on the Seven Angels stage) losing its storefront space in downtown Waterbury.

Yet Pappas also struck an optimistic note, writing that “this past year, we’ve made great strides in internal organizational management, responsible budget adjustment and the recently announced honor of being accepted into the second cohort of theaters with Collective CT through Yale Ventures.” The post encouraged audiences to see the theater’s next show, a community theater production of the jukebox musical of Elvis Presley songs “All Shook Up,” which is going on as scheduled July 24 through Aug. 9.

In an interview with the Courant, Pappas explained that Seven Angels experienced an unsettling drop off in audience numbers in recent months, a phenomenon that he has noticed at other theaters including Downtown Cabaret and which he feels is unrelated to the quality of the work being presented or to transitions in leadership.

“What is it about this year that is causing theaters to flip?,” he asked. He noted that even established area theaters of reliable quality that have built up devoted audiences and have low ticket prices are experiencing an unexpected drop in attendance.

He said the “Something Rotten!” cancellation came because “we could see the writing on the wall — not in terms of the theater closing but in terms of needing to cover our costs for this show. If we went ahead with ‘Something Rotten!’ I’d be writing a very different letter to our patrons.” He said he held out until “the last possible day” before making the announcement. The show had not yet been cast and the sets had not been built.

“Something Rotten!,” about a disgruntled contemporary of Shakespeare’s trying to better the bard’s “Hamlet” by writing a musical called “Omelette,” would have been especially expensive to produce due to its two-dozen-member cast, live musicians, Elizabethan-era costumes and multiple large sets.

Historic collaboration between two renowned CT theaters takes stab at Sondheim’s ‘Sweeney Todd’

Pappas became the new leader of Seven Angels Theatre just over a year ago. Initially a managing director came on board alongside him, Craig David Rosen, but Rosen left the company in December and Pappas has been going it alone since then as producing artistic director. Besides running both the artistic and business sides of the company, he also occasionally acts in Seven Angels productions. It was as a performer that Pappas first worked at Seven Angels years ago. His major acting credits include a big national tour of “Phantom of the Opera.”

Seven Angels was founded by Semina DeLaurentis in 1990. DeLaurentis ran the theater for 35 years, announcing her retirement at the beginning of the 2024-25 season. Following DeLaurentis’ departure and the announcement of him becoming her successor, Pappas had just a few months to plan his first Seven Angels season, which besides “Something Rotten!” included the musicals “Lucky Stiff” and “A Grand Night for Singing” and the comedy plays “Art of Murder” and “Farce of Nature.”

Besides its professional theater season using Equity union actors, Seven Angels also presents community theater productions using local amateur talent. Community theater productions of musicals such as the upcoming “All Shook Up,” while still incurring costs for performance rights of the shows, copies of the scores or pre-recorded tapes of the music, some technical positions and other behind-the-scenes necessities, are less expensive to produce than shows with professional casts because the community theater actors are not paid.

Other local theaters have bemoaned the expense of producing musicals on the professional level. Leaders of both Hartford Stage and TheaterWorks Hartford, major Hartford theaters which joined forces to create the production of “Sweeney Todd” that opens this week, have said that one reason for the collaboration was that it is increasing hard for either theater to produce a full musical on its own, considering the cost of both the performance and live musicians.

That said, musical theater remains a crowd-pleasing element of any theater’s schedule, as long as the theater is confident it can draw a crowd. Playhouse on Park in West Hartford stages one or two musicals a year, often with creative cost-cutting measures like smaller bands or its clever reshaping of “Singin’ in the Rain” with a smaller cast and a deliberately simplified scenic design. Community theater companies that regularly stage large-scale musicals include Landmark Theatre in Thomaston, the Warner Stage Company in Torrington and Curtain Call in Stamford, whose current production of “Guys & Dolls” has sold nearly all its tickets for its three weekend-run several days before the show has even opened.

Besides plays and musicals, Seven Angels also presents frequent concert events, including local artists and tribute acts. Concerts listed now on the Seven Angels schedule aren’t happening for a while — “Back to the Garden 1969” on Aug. 22, a John Denver tribute on Aug. 29 and Waterbury-based vocalist Lee-Ann Lovelace on Oct. 25 — but Pappas said a summer concert season announcement is imminent.

“The concert schedule is one of the things that keeps us going,” he said.

Besides the concert bookings already in development, Pappas may be able to fill in some of the dates left open by the “Something Rotten!” cancellation with one-night concert events.

Another key to Seven Angels’ ongoing success has been the support of the Waterbury community. The theater building, a former big band dance hall and roller skating rink, is owned by the city of Waterbury. Seven Angels has made community outreach a core part of its mission as an arts organization. It has done shows based on community history or featuring local celebrities. The ads and sponsorships and thank-yous in Seven Angels playbills are a who’s-who of the Waterbury business community.

There are more ways to give to a theater than just money,” Pappas said. “There is always a role you can undertake. We can use volunteers. We need ushers and people to paint our sets.”

The diversity of Seven Angels programming — professional productions, community theater shows, concerts, stand-up comedy and community events — is exactly what small theater companies need to survive these days.

Despite the setback of having to cancel a mainstage musical, Pappas is optimistic about Seven Angels Theatre’s survival in a changing theater world. “There is an audience for live theater we haven’t tapped into yet,” he said. He vows that Seven Angels “will continue to bring enriching original, great entertainment to our community.”