A matter of
authenticity

There’s a true story behind playwright Stephen Sachs’ 2012 play, “Bakersfield Mist.”

In the early ‘90s, Teri Horton, a 73-year-old grandmother and retired truck driver living on Social Security in San Bernardino, paid $5 for a large abstract painting at a thrift shop. An art teacher saw it and told her that it might the work of Jackson Pollock — if so, it could fetch millions. While Horton had never heard of Pollock she launched herself on decade-long quest to get the work authenticated. Her case has hinged on a fingerprint match on the painting and in Pollock’s studio, but the jury, it seems, is still out. (A Saudi Arabian buyer offered her $9 million for the painting but Horton turned him down flat.)

Much of the interest in the story arose from the spectacle of the clash between an undereducated but determined woman and the overeducated nabobs of the art world. Sachs’ play pivots on that conflict, throwing together Maude Gutman, an unemployed bartender who lives in a trailer decorated with bric-a-brac, and the renowned and haughty critic Lionel Percy, who has arrived (by limo) at Maude’s trailer to determine whether her thrift-store purchase is actually an undiscovered Pollock. While Percy categorically pronounces the painting a fake and advises Gutman to grab the $2 million a pair of investors from India have offered her, she refuses to be intimated or belittled; and, in a debate that raises questions of art, self-worth, class and the nature of criticism, it becomes apparent that she may care more about the truth than the money.

Final performances of New Century Theatre’s second production of the season are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Smith College’s Theatre 14. $32 general; $30 seniors; $15 student rush tickets. 585-3220, newcenturytheatre.org

Voice of the people

When Pete Seeger died in 2014 at the age of 94, he left a historical legacy not many entertainers could equal. Tagged by Rolling Stone as “unquestionably the foremost folk archivist and popularizer of American folk music,” Seeger toured the country as a hobo to absorb rural music in the ‘30s; formed the enormously popular folk quartet The Weavers in the ‘40s; was blacklisted by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee for his humanitarian socialism in the ‘50s; became a de facto leader in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the ‘60s; and continued as a musical voice for social justice right up until his demise. His classic anthems include “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “We Shall Overcome” (which he didn’t write, but popularized).

In “Celebrate Pete Seeger,” musician and actor Randy Noojin assumes the role of the legendary folk singer as he plays a benefit for U.S.-Cuban normalization in 1982. As Seeger himself did, Noojin intersperses his sing-along performance with stories of troubled times in a program that, Noojin says, “is based on Seeger’s own words and testimony.”

Presented as part of the North Hall Arts Festival, Noojin’s performance takes place Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Huntington’s North Hall, located at 40 Searle Road, directly off Route 66 west from Northampton. Admission is $15 at the door; students free.

— Dan DeNicola