Joshua Dykens, 23, was taking a semester off from Cape Cod Community College (CCCC), working in a West Chatham gas station, when he had an epiphany. “By the summer I realized I didn’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life, the next 40 years,” Dykens said during a recent interview in the West Chatham Dunkin’ Donuts. Up until then Dykens, a personable young man with infectious enthusiasm and drive, ha...

Chatham resident Elizabeth Rudnick Hessler recently published a new novel, “Pete's Dragon: The Lost Years,” a kind of prequel to Disney's 2016 remake of “Pete's Dragon,” which will be released in theaters, including the Chatham Orpheum Theater, this Friday. On Saturday, Aug. 13, Hessler will be at the Orpheum at 6 p.m. to sign copies of the new novel. We recently spoke with the author at the Lazy Lobster, whic...

In “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,” the musical based on the 18th century French fairy tale now playing at the Chatham Drama Guild, Belle, a sweet young woman who loves to read, is admired as a “Beauty” but considered  different from the peasants in her provincial village. Through the woods lies a castle in which a callous young nobleman lives. When he insults a magical being, she casts a spell over him, turning ...

Artistic Director Alan Rust re-introduces to Monomoy Theater audiences to the world famous quixotic musical "The Fantasticks" set in a beautiful beguiling Chekhovian forest of tall, cylindrical white birch trees. Nicole Bianco's forest and scrim with mini stage are top notch and becomes your first impression of what is to come. Alex Allison's finely detailed costumes are trimmed even to the male actors uniq...

We all grew up with fascinating fairy tales to entertain us: “Cinderella,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and so much more. In local playwright Steph DeFerie’s “Nick Tickle, Fairy Tale Detective,” Old Granny Possum (Sage Barnes) can’t tell us her favorite stories because their most important objects have gone missing, including Cinderella’s glass slipper, the Three Bears’ porridge, and much more. ...

There’s nothing like watching a dysfunctional family in crisis to put one’s own problems into perspective. The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater lures the audience into a world of family secrets in their new musical “Unexpected Joy.” This world-premiere musical brings together some acclaimed talents, and the net result is impressive. The book and lyrics are by Tony Award-nominated playwright Bill Russell...

The aptly named song “Greased Lightnin’” captures the spirit of the Academy of Performing Arts’ production of “Grease,” with its enticing energy emanating from the stage and the natural chemistry apparent between cast members. From the start, “Grease” revved up its engine to break records. It was the longest-running Broadway show of its time, opening in 1971 and running for nine years. It was eve...

Children find magical worlds all the time in literature. Dorothy found hers over the rainbow, Alice fell down a rabbit hole and the Darling children literally flew there. In C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (and in the adapted play by Joseph Robinette), four siblings stumble upon the fantasy world of Narnia through the back of a wardrobe. Just as in Oz and Wonderland, there’s an evil queen, ani...

"Tomorrow we'll be going to work.  We got a future." Or so it seems for George Milton and Lennie Small while camping out in their field of dreams.  It's 1937, Salinas, Calif. during the Great Depression.  The sound of fresh water running downstream has led this unlikely pair of migratory workers to another ranch in a once prosperous farming community.  George is the thinker, planner, protector.  Lennie is t...

Andrew “Bob” Black spent one year as a student in Chatham in the eighth grade. And back in that 1958/1959 school year, when he studied at the Eldredge Public Library, it would no doubt have been impossible for Black to conceive that about 50 years later he would return to the same library to work on his book “ John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman and Ardent Nationalist.” “While we...

The classic story of “Puss in Boots” is filled with the adventures of a miller’s son and his cunning, talking cat. Having an affinity for the sword-wielding feline, local playwright Stephen Russell decided his creatively named “Puss” – or “Ocelot Ugg” – hadn’t hung up his sword for good. The amusing result is a new sequel — “Ocelot Unchained!, or the Further Adventures of Puss in Boots.” After a fas...

Readers often wonder how novelists find ideas for their tales—for one author, her plot came to her in nature. “I was on a walk on Wellfleet's Great Island, on a path out to where the Smith Tavern once stood,” Judith Manchester of Eastham, author of “Sisters of the Stone,” recalled in an email interview. “I started thinking, ‘imagine the history this path has seen. Imagine the people who have walked it. Imagine...