Sunday, January 8, 2023

EP 82 Genevieve Aichele: Building Community by Sharing Stories

 Genevieve Aichele

Building Community by Sharing Stories


While she surely would be modest about it, Genevieve Aichele has played a significant role in bringing the city of Portsmouth from a somewhat nondescript seaside community whose economy was largely built around nearby military bases, to a vibrant arts-facing cultural center for the entire New England region. Even before she co-founded the New Hampshire Theatre Project 35 years ago, she and other performance artists had formed Kitchen Sink Mime and ahe had traveled the state with The Little Red Wagon children's production troupe. Her talents in story-telling, acting, and performing have been a constant that has served the greater good of the community.

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Genevieve Aichele, Executive Director
New Hampshire Theatre Project
959 Islington Street, Portsmouth NH 03801gen@nhtheatreproject.org, 603-431-664*NEW HAMPSHIRE THEATRE PROJECT  2022-23 Season

LEGACY & TRANSFORMATION - What do we leave behind?Visit us on the web at www.nhtheatreproject.org'Like' us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/nhtheatreproject


Specific links to Upcoming shows:
And the Elephant-in-the-Room Series®

Genevieve's Website


founding executive director of NHTP, is a resident of Portsmouth, NH, and received her degree in Music & Theatre from the University of New Hampshire in 1975, graduating summa cum laude.  Genevieve has taught as an adjunct faculty member for Great Bay Community College, the University of New Hampshire and Plymouth State University, teaching public speaking and community leadership. She is also an affiliate with The Woodland Group, an international consulting firm, and a mentor with GoodWork. She has performed, directed and taught theatre arts from Boston to Seattle to West Palm Beach, from Dublin to Hong Kong to Frankfurt.  

Genevieve has directed professional and student performers in a variety of theatrical venues throughout New England.  Recent professional directing credits include NHTP’s productions of Men on Boats, The Time Machine, Metamorphoses, The Crucible, I Am My Own Wife, Finding the Prince, Waiting for Godot, Dreaming Again, Twelfth Night, Amadeus, Lysistrata, Celebration, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (winner of Spotlight Best Play & Ensemble Awards), Mitty!, The Elephant Man and A Woman’s Heart; Almost, Maine and Communicating Doors for Hackmatack Theatre (nominated for Spotlight Best Ensemble);  The Music Hall’s 125th Anniversary production of Caste and John Wopps (Spotlight Best Director Award);  and Clara’s Dream: A Jazz Nutcracker for MaD Theatricals which toured throughout New England and New York. Genevieve has also directed the NHTP Youth Repertory Company productions of Arsenic & Old Lace, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Antigone, As You LIke It, Hamlet, Mother Courage & Her Children, As You Like It, You Can’t Take It With You, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Birds, The Madwoman of Chaillot, Harvey, Idiot’s Delight and Stage Door.

Recent acting credits include Janine in The Niceties, Mary in It's a Wonderful Life, Olive in The Odd Couple - Female Version, Dorothea in Eleemosynary, Gracie in Faith Healer, Sister Aloysius in Doubt, and a vocalist in Jacques Brel at NHTP, Sister Esther in A Shaker Entertainment at Shaker Village in Canterbury, and her original one-woman show Resurrection for Act One Productions. She also performs multiple roles with the UNH Power Play Company. Genevieve tours with musician/composer Randy Armstrong in World Tales and their storytelling CD’s have received national and international acclaim, including Outstanding Awards from the National Parents Council, the Parent’s Guide to Children’s Media, and three Children’s Music Web Awards.

Genevieve has written hundreds of playscripts for young people, represented by Leicester Bay Theatricals as well as an original musical adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, the oral history play Neighborhoods, for which she received the 2001 Spotlight Community Arts Award, and  Dreaming Again, a docu-drama about immigration in New Hampshire commissioned by the NH Humanities Council.  Her first novel for young readers, Ocean Secrets with co-author Tracy Kane, was published in 2015.

In 2001 Genevieve received the prestigious New Hampshire Governors Award for Excellence in Arts in Education and the Portsmouth Spotlight Award for her work in Community Arts.  In 2002, she received an award for Outstanding Achievement in American Theatre from the New England Theatre Conference, and in 2008, she received the NH Theatre Award for Youth Theatre.  Contact Genevieve.



Review: 'Men on Boats' Blurs Genders in Recalling John ...

Jun 23, 2015— Based on the journals of John Wesley Powell, who led a geological expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers into the (then) great unknown ...

Another Round of Heartbreak - Gen Aichele
I can see it comin down, another round of heartbreak, to bet against the House is such a foolish thing to do.





Randy Armstrong & Genevieve Aichele: World Tales

The First Flute - A Native American Story (excerpt)
Anansi the Spider - Tale from West Africa


NH Theatre Project

Education: Laughter & Learning Guaranteed. For 31 years, NHTP has offered educational theatreprograms for youth that promote self-confidence, leadership, team. Since 1988 New Hampshire Theatre Project has been connecting communities through transformational theatre-making.

New Hampshire Theatre Project (NHTP) works in partnership with theatre-makers, schools, corporations, non-profits and community participants through four distinct areas of programming:  

  • MainStage Productions & Guest Artist presentations
  • On-site Camps, Classes & Professional Development Workshops
  • Artist-In Residence & Theatre For Life (for schools, businesses & community organizations)
  • Elephant-in-the-Room Series touring performances & community residencies.
NHTP was formed in 1988 by performing artists who connected through their dedication to collaboration, education and community-building. Since its creation, NHTP has continued to use the process of theatre to create revelatory experiences for individuals and communities across New England and beyond.

New Hampshire Theatre Project is located in the West End, the heart of Portsmouth, NH’s alternative arts district. Our versatile and intimate 50-seat black box space is a fully-accessible home to all on-site programs as well as MainStage productions.

A 501(c)3 non-profit organization, NHTP is supported in part by the NH Charitable Foundation, NH State Council for the Arts, NH Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. We also receive generous support from hundreds of individuals, local businesses and community organizations.

NHTP has called Portsmouth home for 33 years. We are located in N’dakinna, the traditional ancestral homeland of the Abenaki, Pennacook and Wabanaki Peoples past and present. We acknowledge and honor with gratitude those who have stewarded N’dakinna throughout the generations.


Thank you to the Eppes-Jefferson Foundation, Bangor Savings Bank Foundation, NH Charitable Foundation, and the NH State Council on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts, for their financial and programmatic support over the past several years, which have been both challenging and rewarding!


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