The Calliope Café, a platform for young Berkshire area artists/musicians, which has been presenting monthly shows in a dedicated space at the Stationery Factory in Dalton since August 2022, will come to the main stage for its season finale on Thursday, June 29, at 7 pm. The program will feature solo and duet performances by some of our most promising young vocalists, instrumentalists, dancers, and poets who have graced the Calliope stage during the past year. This will be the “opening act” for the Katie Henry Band, which returns by popular demand to The Stationery Factory following rave reviews for their appearance earlier this year with Carolyn Wonderland. We interviewed Katie after her last show – you can read the interview here.
The Calliope Café aims to provide a venue for young Berkshire artists to test their wings in a comfortable and encouraging atmosphere, cultivate effective on-stage habits, and instill a sense of mutual support and community among performers.
For two decades before his retirement from teaching at Wahconah Regional High School in 2014, Mark Franklin helped coordinate a biennial fund-raising event to support the Speech Team and the Apollonian Players. Set in the school cafeteria and featuring homemade desserts, coffee, and juice, the original “Calliope Café” (named after the muse of speech and poetry) invited as many as twenty-five students to share their talents with adoring parents, teachers, and fellow students. Many of the original Wahconah participants have since gone on to become well-established Berkshire performers. These include Jack Waldheim, Michael Duffy, Ben Kohn, Krishna Guthrie, and Justin Geyer – names you’ll find in our music calendar performing gigs all around Berkshire County and beyond. One of the unexpected rewards of this venture has been the willingness of some of these “veteran” Wahconah Calliope performers to work with the next generation in achieving their goals.
Greg Geyer, Justin’s father, who arranges mainstage performances at the Stationery Factory, approached Mark Franklin last summer about reprising the Calliope Café concept in a recently vacated space next to the mainstage and widening participation to include students from several Berkshire County schools. The response has been gratifying, mainly owing to the encouragement from school principals, performance art and music teachers, and parents. The students are especially grateful to Kyla Blocker, a theater teacher at Pittsfield High School, and to Michael Duffy, who teaches English at Taconic High School, for urging and promoting their students’ participation in this event throughout the past year.
Mark Franklin and his students are also grateful to Steve Sears at The Stationery Factory for supporting this venture, to master sound engineer, Abe Guthrie, his partner Lisa White Guthrie for her behind-the-scenes artistry in public relations, and Mark Vincent for lighting. They have made a space where young artists can soar.
The finale promises to be an extraordinary evening of entertainment from beginning to end. You won’t want to miss it.