Kat Eichler, of Killington, Vt., watches people sing on stage during a rehearsal for the Pentangle Arts' production of 'Hair' at Woodstock Town Hall Theatre in Woodstock, Vt., on April 17, 2018. Eichler works at a bank in Woodstock but hopes to find success with acting. (Valley News - Carly Geraci) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
Kat Eichler, of Killington, Vt., watches people sing on stage during a rehearsal for the Pentangle Arts' production of 'Hair' at Woodstock Town Hall Theatre in Woodstock, Vt., on April 17, 2018. Eichler works at a bank in Woodstock but hopes to find success with acting. (Valley News - Carly Geraci) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Credit: Valley News — Carly Geraci

Rachel Giambruno-Griggs and Kat Eichler and are living their theatrical dreams on separate Upper Valley stages this month.

While each aspiring actor is keeping her day job for now, both are making the most of the area’s wealth of theater companies to stretch their skills — Giambruno-Griggs in the Parish Players’ ongoing production of The Last Flapper and Eichler in Pentangle Arts’ upcoming revival of the 1960s counterculture musical Hair.

Giambruno-Griggs, a 2005 graduate of Lebanon High, is tackling the ghost of Zelda Fitzgerald in a play based on the letters and stories the frustrated author wrote while living out her life in an insane asylum.

“I never thought I would do a one-woman show like this,” Giambruno-Griggs, who works as a clinical secretary at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, said this week. “It’s certainly a roller-coaster.

“I and the audience are listening to the voices inside her head.”

Coming off performances in the Parish Players’ annual 10-Minute Plays Festival this winter and the company’s production of Nora Ephron’s Love, Loss and What I Wore in 2016, Giambruno-Griggs is encountering more than she bargained for when director Linda Neubelt offered her the role of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s troubled wife.

“I assumed it was a comedy,” said Giambruno-Griggs, who attended the New York Conservatory for the Dramatic Arts expecting to go into a career in improvisational comedy. “It takes some real hard left turns into darker areas. It is funny in places. She liked poking at people, getting a rise, a real joy out of it.

“Unfortunately, she was born in the wrong time.”

Eichler, a 28-year-old Killington, Vt. resident who works at a bank in Woodstock, will face a bit less complexity while singing and dancing as one of the “tribe” members in Hair starting tonight. She’s previously sung in the chorus of Pentangle’s production of Fiddler on the Roof, and played Jennyanydots in Cats and one of the Kit-Kat girls in Cabaret there.

“To be able to be in theater, this is something I’ve really wanted to do since I was about 6 years old,” Eichler said this week. “You get to be taken out of your life for a while. It’s so nice to be able to leave your life and enter into somebody else’s world.”

Pentangle Arts previews its production of Hair tonight at 7:30 at the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre. The show officially opens on Friday and runs through April 29. For tickets ($10 to $20 for preview, $25 to $40 otherwise), visit pentanglearts.org or call 802-457-3981.

The Parish Players perform The Last Flapper at the Eclipse Grange Theater on Thetford Hill tonight through Sunday afternoon. For tickets ($10 to $15), visit parishplayers.org or call 802-785-4344.