Meet the President, Susan Saradoff!

After a five-year hiatus in the community, the former Lightwing Institute in the Berkshires and the Summer Stage are back, having been revived and reinvented by Susan Saradoff as the Cheshire Cultural Center and the Cheshire Summer Stage, respectively.

Susan, the president of the Cheshire Cultural Center, has spent the last 40 years working with nonprofits. She has also received a master’s degree in Social Work from Hunter College as well as a certificate in Non-Profit Management from Columbia University Business School.

“Nonprofits are unique in that they’re set up to serve the social good,” Susan said. “I have worked with educational nonprofits and I believe that they fill the gap in what the government doesn’t provide.”

Susan’s work with nonprofits began in 1979 after visiting a senior center in Bronx, New York, with all the residents wanting to share their stories.

“Everyone wanted to share their stories, so I wanted to collect them and transform them into theater with a program called History Alive,” Susan said. “This program led me to create the organization Elders Share the Arts.”

Working with elder citizens became Susan’s main focus in the years to come as she worked to change the societal stigma around them.

“I wanted to work towards reframing how society sees older people as a problem and change that so society would see the potential of what they could offer us,” Susan said. “I want to acknowledge the lifetime of experiences that older people have.”

In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts asked Elders Share the Arts to become national. Susan, however, wanted to create a similar organization for the purpose of going national, so she founded the National Center for Creative Aging, whose purpose was to bring programs, research, and policy together around older people and the arts.

“Nonprofits can create models for how to work with whatever issue they’re taking on,” Susan said. “For me, I’ve always loved working with older people because I believe they’re the keepers of our culture.”

In 2016, Susan chose to revive and reinvent the Lightwing Institute in the Berkshires and the Summer Stage into the Cheshire Cultural Center and the Cheshire Summer Stage, respectively.

“I saw it [the Summer Stage] as a unique opportunity for the community to get to know the voices of the musicians and storytellers in this area,” Susan said. “I’m getting to know that there are so many and just tapping into the culture of this community.”

The Cheshire Cultural Center is a nonprofit arts education organization focused on the living history of the area, giving community members a way to engage with oral histories in a unique way through storytelling, music, and theatre, combining arts performance and education. It’s working to bring audiences and artists together in a cultural community that celebrates the rich history of local people and the area while enhancing arts offerings in Cheshire and the Northern Berkshires.

Because she comes from organizations that honor the voices of older people, Susan is looking forward to finding the storytellers of the area’s history, like the time when Farnam’s Quarry was around or GE Electric.

“I hope we will bring the community together through the arts and we will learn more of the stories of people who live here in North County Berkshires,” Susan said. “I’ll be fun and we’ll learn and understand each other better through the arts!”

The Cheshire Summer Stage hosted its first summer program last year in August of 2018, featuring musical performances by the Minerva Art Center’s Cassandra Vaillieres and Craig Caserto, as well as the Tawdry band member Bruce Knowlton with Laurie Brenner.

“We just put up posters and people came,” Susan said.

The success from the summer of 2018 has motivated Susan to continue this event, expanding the program to include four performances this summer, all of which are free and open to the public.

“I look forward to seeing how the Cheshire Cultural Center grows and develops and if anyone has any ideas they’d like to contribute, please get in touch!” Susan continued. “Now it’s time to not only give voice to the stories of the community, but also to the artists, writers, musicians, and performers.”

For more information of the Cheshire Cultural Center, the Cheshire Summer Stage, and events for this summer, visit www.cheshireculturalcenter.org.

Cheshire Summer Stage Performers: Meet Minerva Arts Center!

On July 14, the Cheshire Summer Stage will host the Minerva Arts Center, a nonprofit organization based out of Williamstown that performs mostly educational theater.

The Minerva Arts Center, operating under the artistic direction of Minerva Stage, strives to promote the importance of an arts-based education by providing high-quality arts programming, to inspire creativity in our community, and to offer opportunities for students and adults of all ages to realize their true artistic potential.

“Since I’ve been coming to the Berkshires, all industries have grown but certainly there’s been a lot of revitalizations in the art with things like MASS MoCA and Common Folk,” said Jennifer Howard, Minerva Arts Center Teaching Artist and Executive Director.

Founded by Kathleen O’Mara in 1996, Minerva Stage has been providing residents of Berkshire County with arts education, including theatre, music, dance, video, creative writing, and the visual arts. The Minerva Arts Center provides classes, workshops, community theatre productions, concerts, staged readings, and performances.

Since then, the Minerva Arts Center has come to fruition under the guidance of Jennifer, who has a student of Minerva Stage in the 90s and began working for Minerva Stage Summer workshops in 2000. Part of her extensive background in theatre work, according to her biography on the Minerva Arts Center website, includes producing the Original Playwright, Choreography and Artists Festival (OPCAF) and the Student Independent Film Festival (SIFF), directing the McCann Musicals, and assisting with the Mt. Greylock Middle School productions for several years for Minerva.

Last Summer, along with their annually scheduled summer workshops, the Minerva Arts Center performed at the Cheshire Summer Stage and enjoyed their participation.

“Last summer, we had the teaching artists perform, and it was a lot of fun,” Jennifer said. “We saw everything from little kids running in the field to grandparents being there; just all walks of life. It was cool to see the different performers all performing together at the end where it turned into one big jam session.”

“For this summer, we are planning on having some of the teaching artists and some of the students performing,” Jennifer continued.

For Minerva, according to Jennifer, the reason they perform is definitely for the love of the arts and she believes Susan and Laurie’s vision of having an outdoor performance stage on the lake is a great idea.

“I was introduced to Sue and I met with them [Susan and Laurie]. They told me what they were trying to do, and it seemed like a natural overflow for Minerva,” Jennifer said. “It [Cheshire Summer Stage] is something important for the community and we wanted to give them support and help promote the arts in the community.”

“We are performers who love to perform, so if you give us a stage we’ll be there,” Jennifer continued. “In performing, hopefully, we reach someone who doesn’t know about us.”

Currently, the Minerva Arts Center is in the planning stages of an initiative to build a performing arts center in North Berkshire County. Their vision, according to Jennifer, is to create an arts center that is accessible to the whole community, not just Minerva.

Make sure to check their performance, and other performance by other artists, at this year’s Cheshire Summer Stage.

For more information about volunteer opportunities, the organization, and workshop opportunities, visit their website: www.minervaartscenter.org.

Cheshire Summer Stage Performers: Meet Laurie and Bruce!

This summer, on August 11, the Cheshire Summer Stage will be hosting Laurie and Bruce Knowlton of the Mile High Club.

Last summer, the Cheshire Summer Stage was revived by Susan Saradoff, who asked the couple to perform at the impromptu show at Farnam’s Causeway in Cheshire, Massachusetts.

“We had a good turnout considering we did it off the cuff with not much promotion,” Bruce said.

The success of last year’s concert has led Susan to create a nonprofit organization, the Cheshire Cultural Center, a nonprofit arts education organization focused on the living history of the area, giving community members a way to engage with oral histories in a unique way through storytelling, music, and theatre, combining arts performance and education.

For Laurie, the key to the big turnout was where they put posters for the day of the event: Ashuwillticook Rail Trail.

“You have lots and lots of people using that bike trail and when people saw the signs on the trail, they stopped by,” Laurie said.

This summer, the Cheshire Summer Stage will be hosting four musical events, including another performance from Laurie and Bruce.

The two have been playing music from a young age; Laurie, a classically trained pianist, has been working with Minerva Arts Center in Williamstown for the past 15 years and Bruce has been performing since 1970, drumming for bands before he was in high school.

“When you love something like that, there’s no weight to it,” Bruce said. “You’re really in the effervescent part of it.”

Their band, the Mile High Club, will be performing covers of late 60s and early 70s pop with a few originals thrown into the mix.

“We will play something that appeals to both people that are our age and people in their 20s and 30s,” Bruce said. “It’s music that has gotten a second life to it.”

Laurie and Bruce hope that this organization will help bring people from both outside and within the community together with music.

“It’s going to offer people something entirely different than what’s been going on here, in terms of any summer entertainment,” Bruce said. “It’s also going to get people from other parts of Berkshire County to come into the area who otherwise wouldn’t normally drive through here.”

The couple hopes the Cheshire Summer Stage will become an annual event, expanding out to an even larger event with more dates and more performers.

 “[After last summer,] We absolutely saw ourselves performing again this year,” Laurie said. “We hope it will be an annual thing so that Bruce and I will have a place to showcase our music.”

“It’s about music and it’s great – the Cheshire Summer Stage has the chance to grow and become multifaceted,” Bruce said.

Come check out the Cheshire Summer Stage this coming July and August at Farnam’s Causeway in Cheshire. For more details on the summer events and the organization, visit cheshireculturalcenter.org.

Welcome to the Cheshire Cultural Center Website!

April 12, 2019

Welcome all to the grand unveiling of the Cheshire Cultural Center website!

We are so excited to embark on this journey with all of you in the Berkshire community. We hope that this organization can bring together the old and the new of the community through cultural and musical performances for everyone to enjoy.

Our summer events for this year for the Cheshire Summer Stage include:

July 14 – The Minerva Arts Center

July 28 – Folk and Jazz Music Outdoor Concert

August 11 – Rock with Laurie and Bruce Knowlton

August 25 – Pineridge Folk Festival

We hope you all come out and enjoy!

Food and drinks will be available for purchase at our snack stand, although outside items are acceptable to bring. Make sure to pack your own bug spray, sunscreen, chairs, and blankets to enjoy the summer concert series!