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William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is one of the most fanciful comedies ever written. It takes place in a forest and has been restaged against the backdrop of the American Dust Bowl during the depression of the 1930's. The play will be performed this weekend at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center. We'll talk with director Anne Bogart of the SITI Company in New York about her unconventional adaptation, and with Dartmouth Shakespeare Professor Lynda Boose about the proliferation of Shakespeare's works in non-traditional settings.

Groups from around the state will compete this weekend at the 35th Annual New Hampshire Festival of Community Theater. The guidelines are strict: each troupe has 10 minutes to set up, 60 minutes to perform, and 10 minutes to strike. The winners will move on to a regional competition and the opportunity to compete in the nationals. Tonight on the Front Porch, we'll talk with some of the groups about their upcoming performances and how community theater differs throughout the state.

We'll talk with:

Mariah Herlihy -- Chair of Actor's Circle Theater in Peterborough. She's directing "Sure Thing" by David Ives

John Sefel -- Artistic Director of Ghostlight Theater Company in Salem, NH. He's directing "One Flea Spare" by Naomi Walllace.

Amy Friedman -- Member of ActorsSingers in Nashua. She's directing "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" by Celeste Raspanti.

This episode of the Front Porch is not available on CD or Cassette

Love him or hate him, Jimmy Breslin has always been a force in the world of print journalism. On November 2, 2004 after calling the election for Kerry, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author announced he was leaving his thrice-weekly post as, arguably, New York’s most famous columnist and champion of “the little guy.” He hasn't stopped writing -- he’s working on at least three new books and is involved in a movie project -- and he contributes columns for Newsday “from time to time.” But that voice of moral outrage, from one the hardest working muckrakers in the newspaper business, no longer appears regularly in newsprint. Tonight we explore Breslin's legacy through a radio documentary produced by Jon Kalish.

This Piece comes to us through the Public Radio Exchange.

We are not able to offer the audio for this show on our website, but you can hear the entire documentary here.

There isn't a psychologist alive who'd deny that a person's experiences and view of the world are usually shaped by their parents' influence. But is it fair to say a person's life is shaped by the experiences of his or her parents? That's part of the premise in Katherine Min's debut novel "Second Hand World". We'll talk with the Plymouth-based author about her work and how it relates to her own experiences growing up in the midwest.

We talk with Newspaper Columnist Joyce Marcel from Brattleboro, Vermont about what it's like to be an outspoken critic in a very small town. Her book is A Thousand Words or Less: Favorite Columns 1996 - 2005.

We'll also hear about an unsual oral history project undertaken by the Krempels Brain Injury Foundation. Members of the organization are recording the stories of people who've suffered from brain injury, and they're posting the audio interviews to the internet. We'll hear some of the stories of these folks in their own words, and Program Director Marquis Walsh will join us to talk about the project.

You can click here to go to the Krempels oral history page and listen to more stories.

***These pieces originally aired on June 19, 2006 and February 16, 2006. ***