Director: Kane Parsons | Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Lukita Maxwell, Finn Bennett, Avan Jogia, Robert Bobroczkyi

1h 50m, R

The owner of a furniture store finds a secret doorway that leads him to an endless stretch of rooms. When he disappears, his therapist ventures into the unknown to rescue him.

Doors at 10:30am | Performance at 11am

Join the North Country Chamber Players for an unforgettable performance of perhaps the most ingenious blend of storytelling, instrumental color and accessibility ever created, Peter and the Wolf.  The Chamber Players will present Prokofiev’s masterful, charming and memorable work in a special version for winds, percussion and narrator that is perfect for both first-time listeners and seasoned concert-goers who may remember it fondly from their own childhood.

Free and open to the public, RSVP’s requested. 

Event Sponsored by Barbra & Eliot Weisman

The 2026 Kids! @ The Colonial Series is sponsored by the Nancy F. Vaughan Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation

Director: Boots Riley | Cast: Keke Palmer, Taylour Paige, LaKeith Stanfield, Poppy Liu, Naomi Ackie, Eiza González, Demi Moore, Will Poulter

1h 53m, R

Professional shoplifters embark on a wild adventure as they target a cutthroat fashion mogul.

Director: Charlie Chaplin, Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Hank Mann, Florence Lee

1h 45m, PG

A hapless but resilient tramp (Charlie Chaplin) falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) on the tough city streets. Upon learning that she and her grandmother are to be evicted from their home, the tramp undertakes a series of attempts to provide them with the money they need, all of which end in humiliating failure. But after a drunken millionaire (Harry Myers) lavishly rewards him for saving his life, the tramp can change the flower girl's life forever.

Buy tickets to both City Lights and Modern Times using our Chaplin Double Feature Package to get $2 off your total double-ticket price! Click here to purchase!

The 2026 Anniversary Classics series is co-sponsored by Les Apple & Debra Saunders, Teri Bordenave & Eric van Leuven, and The North Country Chamber Players.

Director: Charlie Chaplin, Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Tiny Sandford, Cecil Reynolds

1h 27m, NR

This comedic masterpiece finds the iconic Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) employed at a state-of-the-art factory where the inescapable machinery completely overwhelms him, and where various mishaps keep getting him sent to prison. In between his various jail stints, he meets and befriends an orphan girl (Paulette Goddard). Both together and apart, they try to contend with the difficulties of modern life, with the Tramp working as a waiter and eventually a performer.

Buy tickets to both City Lights and Modern Times using our Chaplin Double Feature Package to get $2 off your total double-ticket price! Click here to purchase!

The 2026 Anniversary Classics series is co-sponsored by Les Apple & Debra Saunders, Teri Bordenave & Eric van Leuven, and The North Country Chamber Players 

Director: Boots Riley | Cast: LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer, Terry Crews, Jermaine Fowler

1h 52m, R

5:30pm - Periodic tours of the Colonial Theatre featuring stories and tid-bits of the theatre’s history | 7:30pm - Screening of Sorry to Bother You featuring a pre-recorded Q&A with director Boots Riley

In an alternate reality of present-day Oakland, Calif., telemarketer Cassius Green finds himself in a macabre universe after he discovers a magical key that leads to material glory. As Green's career begins to take off, his friends and co-workers organize a protest against corporate oppression. Cassius soon falls under the spell of Steve Lift, a cocaine-snorting CEO who offers him a salary beyond his wildest dreams.

Look for a table from the Bethlehem Historical Society with more information on The Colonial and film history in Bethlehem!

Join balafon virtuoso Balla Kouyaté for a unique quartet performance on The Colonial stage!

As soon as Balla Kouyaté was old enough to sit up, his father placed a mallett in his hand. If their 800-year-old lineage of balafon players were a baobab tree, Balla would be its newest branch. The Kouyaté family are griots from the village of Niagassola on the Mali-Guinea border. In West African culture, griots are more than just eminent musicians — they are storytellers, soothsayers and peacemakers. They transmit their oral history like a long game of telephone across generations.

Kouyaté has been featured on over 45 albums, including Silkroad’s Sing Me Home, Yo-Yo Ma’s Songs of Joy and Peace, Angelique Kidjo’s Oyo, and Vusi Mahlasela’s Say Africa. His music has been recorded for the Library of Congress and heard in venues like Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, and The Kennedy Center as well as festivals throughout US and Europe. As an educator, he has offered masterclasses in universities and schools across the country including Harvard University, MIT, Berklee College of Music and CalArts. Kouyaté was chosen as a NEA National Heritage Fellow in 2019.

Event sponsored by Elise Drake

Join us Saturday, August 1 in Bethlehem, N.H. for DI:Rectangle, a day of public programming brought to you by Directangle Press and DesignInquiry. Artists, designers, and writers come together at The Colonial Theatre, The Gallery at WREN, Directangle Press, and adjacent neighborhood spaces to share readings, performances, live music, research presentations, panel discussions, and more, investigating the concept and form of the rectangle and how they shape how we see, organize, create, communicate, and publish.

Programming at The Colonial Theatre runs from 12–3PM and 6–10PM.
All programming is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome.

12–3:00PM @ Colonial Theatre
Artist Presentations & Panel discussions

3:30PM @ WREN Pocket Park
Micah Wood Performance

4–5PM @ The Gallery at WREN
RECTANGLE Exhibition Reception

7–8PM @ Colonial Theatre
Screenings:
Noviki: https://futurefragments.online/en/eclipse
Experimental short films curated by Jesse Malmed

8PM–10PM @ Colonial Theatre
Performance:
Weird Music Night curated by John O’Donnell

Directors: Dayna Goldfine, Dan Geller | Cast: Peter Asher, Steve Martin, Eric Idle, Jane Asher 

 1h 58m, NR

The extraordinary life of Peter Asher—pop star, producer, manager, and confidant to legends such as Paul McCartney, James Taylor, and Linda Ronstadt.

Director: Mark Jenkin | Cast: George MacKay, Callum Turner, Emily Daglish-Laine, Rosalind Eleazar.

1h 54m, NR

A fishing boat lost with all hands thirty years ago reappears in the old harbour. A new crew set out to sea but slip back in time to a village that thinks they never left.

Rust belt blues shouter and guitar slinger Larry McCray was born in 1960 in Magnolia, Ark., about 12 miles from the Louisiana line. He spent his early years on a farm as the second youngest of nine siblings. After trying his hand at saxophone in school, his older (and only) sister, Clara, introduced Larry to the guitar and the transformative music of the three Kings of the blues (B.B., Freddie and Albert).

By the late ’80s, Larry had attracted the attention of Virgin Records executive John Wooler, who had recently started a subsidiary label, Point Blank Records, featuring blues, soul and Americana artists. He signed Larry McCray as his first artist. Larry’s debut album, Ambition—aptly named as it fused elements of blues, rock, and soul to create a contemporary blues sound—was recorded in a friend’s Detroit basement studio and released in 1990 to critical acclaim.

Throughout the 1990s, Larry continued to help define blues rock by collaborating with artists such as labelmate and fellow guitarist, Albert Collins, and releasing the much more slickly produced Delta Hurricane in 1993 (produced by British blues maven Mike Vernon), Meet Me at the Lake in 1996 and Born to Play the Blues in 1998.

Over the past three decades of nonstop touring and recording, Larry has played and shared the stage with such blues greats as BB King, Buddy Guy, Albert King, John Mayall, Johnny Winter, Robert Cray, Keb Mo, Jimmie Vaughan, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Joe Bonamassa, as well as rock legends the Allman Brothers, Phil Lesh, Jonny Lang, Joe Walsh, Levon Helm, Chris Robinson, Dickey Betts, and countless others.

In 2021, Blues Without You, Larry’s latest, a 12-track release was recorded on famed blues rock guitarist Bonamassa’s Keeping the Blues Alive nonprofit label with producer Josh Smith, a partnership that has also spawned a video (for the upcoming single, “Arkansas”) and a documentary.



“Larry’s still a relatively young man, with a lot to say, and the world needs to know who he is. It’s the perfect time to have a rebirth of his music,” Bonamassa says. “He knows he’s a badass, he just needs to be reassured and reassure himself that he can stand up there with the greats.



Event Sponsored by Julie & Doug Weisman

Director: Sergio Leone | Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Antonio Casale, Aldo Giuffrè, Rada Rassimov

2h 58m, R

In the Southwest during the Civil War, a mysterious stranger, Joe (Clint Eastwood), and a Mexican outlaw, Tuco (Eli Wallach), form an uneasy partnership -- Joe turns in the bandit for the reward money, then rescues him just as he is being hanged. When Joe's shot at the noose goes awry during one escapade, a furious Tuco tries to have him murdered. The men re-team abruptly, however, to beat out a sadistic criminal and the Union army and find $20,000 that a soldier has buried in the desert.

The 2026 Anniversary Classics series is co-sponsored by Les Apple & Debra Saunders, Teri Bordenave & Eric van Leuven, The North Country Chamber Players.

At just 31 years old, and with six albums under his belt, Pedro Pastor represents and leads a new generation of singer-songwriters in Spain. Despite his young age, he has spent over 20 years on the stage, with 700 concerts in 17 countries.

His music straddles between Latin America and Spain, with lyrics that are a hymn to change and rebellion, to love and learning, to fusion and blending as the primary source of musical and human development. His style combines African music, cumbia, flamenco, funk, and Latin American folklore without losing the power and essence of the singer-songwriter and its message.

Event Sponsored by Badger Peabody & Smith Realty

This engagement of Pedro Pastor y Los Locos Descalzos is made possible in part through the Performing Arts Global Exchange program of Mid Atlantic Arts with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Director: Olivia Wilde | Cast: Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, Seth Rogan, Edward Norton

1h 47m, R

A dinner party spirals into unexpected places when a couple invite their enigmatic neighbours over. Have they reignited the spark in their troubled marriage -- or lit the match that burns it all down?

Director: Jonathan Demme | Cast: David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz

1h 28m, PG

A live performance of the band Talking Heads shot over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December of 1983 and featuring their most memorable songs.

The greatest concert film of all time, Stop Making Sense brings to the screen Talking Heads at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December 1983: David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison, alongside an ecstatic ensemble of supporting musicians. Renowned filmmaker Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) captures the band at their exhilarating best, in this new and complete restoration for the film's 40th anniversary.

This live show on the Colonial stage is guaranteed to be clever, politically incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny!
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​Iconic comedian Paula Poundstone is known for her smart, observational humor and a spontaneous wit that has become the stuff of legend. She regularly plays theaters across the country, hosts a weekly comedy podcast, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, and is a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me. She also voiced the character ‘Forgetter Paula’ in the feature films Inside Out and Inside Out 2.

Paula has starred in several HBO specials, including Cats, Cops and Stuff, which nabbed a cable ACE award for Best Comedy Special. She was the first female comic to host the White House Correspondents Dinner. She filed live coverage of the 1992 Democratic and Republican National Conventions and the Presidential Inaugural for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and at the 93^rd Emmy Awards. Paula has starred in two television series, both entitled The Paula Poundstone Show. Paula’s second book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, was one of eight semi-finalists for the Thurber Prize For American Humor; the audiobook was one of five finalists for the AUDIE award for Audiobook of the Year. Paula has released five albums and is featured in several documentaries and compendiums noting influential comedians of our time.

Event Sponsored by On The Fly Electric