FESTIVAL NEWS

We'd like to welcome Walden Hill Woodworks as a first-time festival sponsor. Walden Hill, owned by festival friend Steve Gresham, creates one-of-a-kind furniture and crafts from reclaimed or salvaged hardwood. We've been especially taken with some of the recent work...

Shoreline Ballet has signed on a major sponsor of the 2021 festival. It's the second season in which the Guilford dance school has supported and partnered with the festival. In addition to making a substantial donation to help fund this year's events, Shoreline Ballet...

WMNR radio is partnering with the festival this year, helping us get the word out while we introduce you (if you're not already familiar with it) to a great, listener-supported radio station that plays classic and classical music. Hear festival acting chairman Peter...

We're pleased to welcome back The Marketplace at Guilford Food Center as a Silver festival sponsor and caterer for our Taste of the Festival benefit party. The Marketplace hit it out of the park for our 2019 sit-down dinner on the Guilford Green, and we'll be excited...

We’re grateful for what Simone Gell, owner of TrueForm Studio, has done as co-chair of our biennial benefit party on the green. If you had a good time at our 2019 dinner, you have Simone and co-chair Meg Smith to thank. We couldn’t keep festival events free without...

Thank you, Francine Farkas Sears and the folks at Francine Collections for sponsoring the festival for the first time this year. Based in Branford, Francine Collections offers a versatile, timeless and high-quality collection of women’s bags and accessories—designed...

We’re pleased to welcome Shore Publishing/Zip06.com back as a festival sponsor. They’ve been a media sponsor three festivals running now, and it’s been a terrific relationship for us—helping us get the word out along the Shoreline with coverage and advertising space...

Our partner Shoreline Arts Alliance will be using Facebook Live to livestream some of the festival this weekend. As of press time, we know that Saturday night's performance of Emily Breeze and Marialena DiFabbio's "The Homewrecker" will be livestreamed, starting at 7...

Thanks in large part to support from the Guilford Fund for Education, we were able to offer free classes to nearly 400 Guilford public school students in theater, dance and music in 2019. While the pandemic is limiting things this year, four festival artists—backed by...

Many thanks to the Rotary Club of Guilford for granting the festival $1,000 to put on this year's show. Guilford Rotary is a bedrock of community support, most visibly through its annual LobsterFest, Frosty 5K New Year's Day Road Race and Roses for Autism Rose Sale....

OK, we already knew that Peter Palumbo had one of the biggest hearts in the Guilford community, but he and his crew at Palumbo's Automotive have steered their generosity our way this year with a gold-level sponsorship of the 2021 festival. It's been a strange year all...

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, supporting the festival for the second time, has granted us $4,000 to help stage the 2021 event. The foundation's support will enable us to present a multifaceted festival that blends free live performance and...

We're pleased to announce that the Guilford Foundation has awarded us a $5,000 grant to support the 2021 festival. We couldn't have gotten off the ground without the support of the foundation, and this is the third festival cycle it has backed. We feel especially...

The Connecticut Humanities Council, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has awarded the festival a $4,999 grant. The funding will be used to support humanities programming in the 2021 festival, including after-show talkbacks led by our...

It’s late April, and things are warming up, looking up and opening up on the Shoreline—as we busily plan this fall’s Guilford Performing Arts Festival! We believe it’s essential that we finally come together again for live performance, though because of the impact of...

Dimensional Dance Skyler Hagner Iddi Saaka Thomas/Ortiz Dance Emily Breeze Marialena DiFabbio Julie Fitzpatrick We're excited to announce that we've named six Connecticut performing artists as recipients of our 2020 Artists’ Awards. Each awardee will get a $2,500...

We're tripling the number of Artists’ Awards this year to six, and the total grant money available to $15,000, in an effort to support the creation of new work by Connecticut performing artists and provide some relief for artists who have lost income during the...

Pianist Noah Baerman, recipient of the inaugural Guilford Performing Arts Festival Artists’ Award in Music, recently put the finishing touches on his extended jazz composition, Cliff Palace, after working on it for much of a year. He sent us an email on September 3,...

Playwright Susan Cinoman, our 2019 Artists’ Award winner in drama, has been busy reworking her play Guenevere for presentation at the festival in September. A staged reading is scheduled for Saturday, September 28, at the Christ Episcopal Church in Guilford, our home...