Laurel Park Arts

12/09/2025

On the darkest night of the year, come join us for a magical winter solstice concert, made bright with the music of the fabulous Claire Dacey!

At Normal Hall in Laurel Park, 682 N.King St. Open to the public and free; donations welcomed.

10/15/2025

One of our poets for this Saturday's event, Rich Michelson, invited me (Liz Duffy Adams) onto this radio show at the literal last minute – I was a bit flustered but did my best to represent our neighborhood and our event! Here's the 6-minute segment if you're interested.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

10/13/2025

This Saturday (following Wednesday evening's history event, scroll down the page for details) will be the grand finale of the season! Come hear Laurel Park's own resident poet Barbara Friend, two-time Northampton Poet Laureate Richard Michelson, and Nathan McClain, poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review read from their work, followed by a brief one-act play by Arthur Miller performed by Barbara Friend and Paul Powell.

Free and open to the public; donations welcomed. Reception to follow.

09/27/2025

Coming up next in a couple of weeks, another ever-popular history event! A lovely way to learn more about this unique historical neighborhood.

08/17/2025

UPDATE: Sadly, Joanna has had to cancel this event. We will look forward to enjoying her work here in the Park sometime in the future! Meanwhile the LPA season will conclude with two October events: LAUREL PARK: A VISUAL HISTORY on Sunday October 5th at 2pm, in the Chapel; and THREE POETS AND A PLAY on Saturday October 18th at 7pm in Normal Hall.

August can be intense in the Park, with heat and mosquitoes and thunderstorms, so LPA has paced out this summer's events. So here's our next event to put on your calendar, on Saturday, September 20th, at 7pm, in Normal Hall:

IT HAPPENED HERE
A one-woman comedy by Joanna Rush

Joanna is at it again with her take on life’s seismic moments—literal earthquakes and metaphorical ones and the ones inside the jumbled brain of the Mango Mussolini. Catch it while comedy is still legal.

Joanna Rush started out as a Rockette, and a choreographer on Gangster Chronicles, NBC/Universal. She has acted on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and in film and TV. Her writing/acting projects include: KICK (formerly ASKING FOR IT), an Off-Broadway Alliance Award nominee; S*X AND POWER at Marsh Theater and LPA; HOME SWEET HOMELAND at Amas Musical Theater; and ACCIDENTAL MUMMIES at Stocker Arts Center. She is co-author of the screenplay IRISH WHISKEY, and a proud member of Actors Equity, SAG/AFTRA, and Dramatists Guild.

07/10/2025

Tonight!! Normal Hall, 7pm. Refreshments to follow.

Laurel Park residents Pam Victor and Scott Braidman, who run Happier Valley Comedy, have been playing together as the theatrical improv duo “We Made a Thing” for almost 10 years now. Watch as Pam and Scott step into the lives of a few characters and see what they're up to. Everything is made up on the spot beginning with a single suggestion from the audience.

Happier Valley Comedy is nonprofit improv comedy theater and training center in Hadley that brings laughter, joy, and ease to Western Massachusetts (and the world) through the principles of improvisation. Learn more at HappierValley.com.

06/26/2025

Announcement! This Saturday's LPA event: Pieces, Patterns, and Processes: Exploring Our Plant and Animal Neighbors, a nature tour led by Claire Dacey, is cancelled. It will happen sometime in the future, to be announced.

For now, the next event will be Thursday, July 10, 7pm, in Normal Hall: We Made a Thing.

Laurel Park residents Pam Victor and Scott Braidman, who run Happier Valley Comedy, have been playing together as the theatrical improv duo We Made a Thing for almost 10 years now. Watch as Pam and Scott step into the lives of a few characters and see what they’re up to. Everything is made up on the spot beginning with a single suggestion from the audience.

Happier Valley Comedy is nonprofit improv comedy theater and training center in Hadley that brings laughter, joy, and ease to Western Massachusetts (and the world) through the principles of improvisation. Learn more at HappierValley.com. Refreshments!

06/13/2025

A week from tomorrow, the second event of the 2025 season: our own beloved Claire Dacey. Her concerts are always magical (last year a thunderstorm yielded to rays of sunshine as she sang); don't miss it! At the Tabernacle, rain or shine.

05/20/2025

UPDATE: THIS EVENT IS NOW MOVED TO THE RAIN DATE, THIS SUNDAY! Hope to see you there, in nicer weather. 🌞

A reminder: the first event of the season is going to be fun and fabulously informative! It's free and open to the public; feel free to spread the word.

05/13/2025

The 2025 season! (Poster by Laurel Park's own great Kandy Littrell)

04/20/2025

The first event of the 2025 LPA season will be Saturday, May 24th, 10am–noon, starting from Normal Hall: BENEATH THE SURFACE: THE GEOLOGICAL ROOTS OF OUR COMMUNITY

Join Laurel Park Naturalist/Artist Claire Dacey for a talk and field walk exploring the dramatic geological history of the Park and its surroundings. Claire will weave an engaging narrative of millions of years of landscape change in our local environs and illuminate the connections between that ancient history and the current character of Laurel Park and its vicinity. Claire’s presentations have been called “poetic,” “magical,” and “eye-opening.”

This is part one of a two-part series on the nature of Laurel Park. It will begin with a presentation in Normal Hall followed by a gentle field walk. Rain date: Sunday the 25th.

Art by Claire Dacey

10/01/2024

This Friday, October 4th, at 7pm in Normal Hall, in the final event of LPA's 2024 season, award-winning playwright Liz Duffy Adams will read from her work.

Adams' plays has been produced in New York, around the country, and internationally; she has been called by the San Francisco Bay Guardian “an artist of playful and highly literate imagination, radical instincts, and sardonic but generous humor.”

The event is free and open to the public; donations welcomed. Refreshments will be served. More about the playwright at www.lizduffyadams.com