Premiere of "The Stone Girl" at Harvard General Store

Premiere of “The Stone Girl” at Harvard General Store; Local Playwright’s Play Features Harvard Students, Native American Themes

HARVARD, MA: Coming to Harvard is the premiere of an original play, The Stone Girl, written and executive produced by Harvard playwright Bob Eiland, directed by former Huntington Theatre Company Education Director, Pamela Kathleen Hill; and featuring Harvard students Gwyneth Smedley Colleen Makosky, Kira Houston, Madeline Gamelin and Thea Eiland. Sponsored by regional youth Arts organization ArtsNashoba, performances run Saturday, July 18 at 7PM and Sunday, July 19 at 2PM, Upstairs at the Harvard General Store, 1 Still River Road. The July 19 performance will be with a talk-back afterwards. Tickets are $10 for all performances. The goal for the production is to break even; any profits will be donated back to the Harvard Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The Stone Girl tells the story of a group of girls living near Native American lands in Arizona who discover a mysterious, possibly magical, Hopi artifact. Each of the girls wrestles with serious personal challenges, and they must try to rise above adversity to make an important group decision about this artifact that could affect them the rest of their lives. The play is set in an ancient Hopi kiva, a chamber used by Hopis and Pueblos for religious rituals.

“The Stone Girl is exciting in a number of ways,” says Eiland. “It’s a unique, community-based, grass-roots effort brought into being by the energy, creativity and partnership of kids, parents, friends, neighbors, and local arts organizations and businesses. I find it inspiring that this once-amorphous idea has been realized through the support of this diverse community group. I think it says a lot about how community-based arts can work.”

Eiland is a member of the Merrimack Valley Playwrights group, and founder of Shakespeare in the Park theater group, the Gazebo Players in Medfield, MA. Among his published plays, Philosophical Differences won Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest script competition, and was also selected as part of Stageloft Repertory Theater’s New Plays Festival. His other published plays include Super Cooper and Star Bright, both published by JAC Publishing and available on amazon.com. He has worked regionally as an actor and director, and is known to many in Harvard for the Old Time Radio staged readings he produces and performs in annually at the library.

Pamela Kathleen Hill, recently retired Dean of Education and professor at Fitchburg State University, has over 30 years of experience as a director, actor and teacher. In addition to her previous work running Huntington Theatre Company’s Education program, she has worked with groups including Pocket Theatre, Cornucopia Theatre, Theater at the Mount, Masque Rep Company, Central Mass Rep Company, Guild Players, and AmeriCulture. She recently received rave notices for her tour de force performance as Violet in Fitchburg State University’s production of August: Osage County. She and Bob Eiland have performed A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters several times to benefit local charities, and she has served as dramaturge for staged readings of three of his previous plays.

Stone Girl production Sponsor ArtsNashoba was established in the summer 2013 to provide opportunities for youth to learn and grow using artistic endeavors as development tools. It is their goal to expose young people in the Nashoba Valley Region to a diverse range of performing and visual arts, and to nurture a love for the Arts they will pay forward to future generations. For information about upcoming ArtsNashoba opportunities for ages 8-18 , visit www.artsnashoba.org.

For more information about Stone Girl, call 781-956-3784.