Audi events upcoming

Page to Stage, the innovative theatre project fostering new works by New Hampshire playwrights, announces Concord playwright Eugene Shear will introduce his new play, “Crossed Hearts,” at this season’s “fourth act” on Sunday, March 14, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Concord City Auditorium reception lobby.
The Friends of the Audi host the event, which is free and open to all as a Sunday afternoon salon with an author Q&A and dramatic desserts.
Eugene Shear describes “Crossed Hearts” as a full-length romantic comedy set in the present. Two sets of three siblings in their late 40s/early 50s rent a hotel suite on the weekend of their triple wedding. One of the brothers must resolve his guilt over his previous wife’s death before his fiancé will marry him. “Crossed Hearts” is the sequel to his earlier work, “The Matchmakers”, which was produced at Players Ring in Portsmouth in January 2009 and published by Big Dog/Norman Maine Publishing.
The workshop performance of “Crossed Hearts” includes nine of the state’s leading actors – Mary Chase, Chris and Paula Demers, Dale Gregory, Russ Rattray, Gregory and Sarah Stuart -- plus Kevin Guimond, who is also directing the staged reading and the author himself.
Eugene Shear and his wife live in Concord, where he is a psychiatric social worker. His previous play, “Beneath the Moon,” was the winner of the 2006 F. Gary Newton Playwriting Competition of Players Ring, and is being published by Big Dog/ Norman Maine Publishing this year.
This second season of Page to Stage continues on April 11 with a double bill including Concord playwright Dale Harrington with “A Measure of Success” and Linda Mundel returning from Virginia with “Paradise Lodge”. Both works are one-act dramas of entangled family situations. In addition, on March 24 the Walker Lecture Series will present Rebecca Rule’s one-woman multi-media “Crosscut,” a dramatization of North Country stories which she introduced at a Page to Stage workshop last season.
The New Hampshire Page to Stage project is sponsored by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. Its 08-09 premiere season presented six performances of new works, with four going on to festival honors and staged production. The project welcomes submissions of new works for the stage which will be considered for presentations ranging from workshop readings to full productions.