On the evening of Tuesday, December 13, the South Danbury Church and At Eagle Pond, Inc. will present Pontine Theatre of Portsmouth in their adaptation of poet Donald Hall’s short story, “Christmas Snow.” 

The story is an imagined Christmas at Eagle Pond Farm in 1938, the year that Don was ten.

All the time that he was growing up in Connecticut, Don came to New Hampshire to spend summers at the Wilmot farm with his grandparents, but he was never actually there at Christmas. This story, appearing originally in The New Yorker in 1964, allowed him to invent what he had so long wanted. In later years, Don conjured a second Christmas trip north, in 1940, when he was twelve. That story was published in hardcover in 2012 as Christmas at Eagle Pond.

After Don and poet Jane Kenyon, early in their marriage, arrived in 1975 to live at the farm until Jane’s death in 1995 and Don’s in 2018, they came to know snow at Christmas intimately — as well as the annual Christmas pageant and tree at the South Danbury church, which they frequently wrote about with affection in poems and prose.

Staged for a small audience, Pontine’s dramatized reading of “Christmas Snow” features hand-drawn props and storytelling but has no conventional actors. It is performed in one act, in one hour, with music by fiddler Ellen Carlson.

Pontine Theater (pontine.org) was founded in 1977 by Marguerite Matthews, after she studied with the French actor Etienne Decroux at his L’École du Mime Corporeal in Paris. In 1982, Greg Gathers, with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, began designing and constructing Pontine’s sets, puppets, masks, and costumes, and in 1984 he joined Marguerite as co-director of the company. In addition to other productions through the year, every Yuletide they celebrate the season with a holiday work drawn from New England literature and stories — which, this year, is Christmas Snow.

The performance, for adults and older children, is at 7 PM at the South Danbury Church. There is no charge to attend, but reservations are recommended because seating is limited.
Email at.eagle.pond@nullgmail.com to register.

For more information about Eagle Pond Farm, and the nonprofit At Eagle Pond, Inc. and its activities, visit AtEaglePond.org.