WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Every Revenge of Movie Night film screening at the Main Street Museum ends with a contest among audience members.
My drawing of a ferocious yeti, for example, once earned me a secondhand copy of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” a self-help book I (regrettably) still haven’t cracked open.
The movie nights’ longtime organizers Matt Mazur and Drew Peberdy are raising the stakes at Tuesday’s viewing. Instead of the usual off-the-cuff post-screening competition, they’re hosting Clash of Casseroles, in which viewers are invited to bring a hot dish for judging as part of September’s theme: region-specific casserole movies.
Casseroles aren’t a literal part of the month’s movie lineup so much as a symbol of the type of films Mazur and Peberdy were looking for: homemade, questionable in quality and gloopy in their earnestness.
“The flavors might be kind of strange, but it was made for you,” Peberdy, 39, of Norwich, said in a Monday interview.
“Pathogen,” a 2006 zombie-horror film directed by a 12-year-old from Austin, Texas, was one of the picks, as was an Ohio State University student’s action-adventure movie “Treasure of the Ninja,” from 1987.
The choice for Tuesday’s film, meanwhile, is top secret, Peberdy said.
Esoteric and scrappy, “Pathogen” and “Treasure of the Ninja” are hardly big departures from Peberdy and Mazur’s usual movie night picks. The friends share an appetite for the zany and confounding. Peberdy, for his part, is no stranger to scouring eBay at 3 a.m. or rifling through old film books to satisfy his craving.
“It’s kind of like trolling for fish. You have to cast a really wide net and get all these gruesome sea creatures,” he said.
In 2017, he and Mazur inherited the responsibility of hosting the weekly movie nights from White River Junction resident Chico Eastridge and Peberdy’s brother, Ben Peberdy. The founders began the first iteration of movie nights, originally dubbed Knights of the Mystic Movie Club, about seven years earlier.
Since those fledgling viewings, the club has been a free and reliable place to see films most wonky and absurd — an antidote to the big-budget blockbusters that “have their edges worn off,” Peberdy said.
A screening of “The Tower,” a 1993 thriller about a man who begins working at a hyper-modern corporate office only to find that the building has a taste for blood, sticks out in my mind.
Almost a decade into running Revenge of Movie Night, Mazur and Peberdy’s quest for the next wonky feature hasn’t gotten old.
“We keep thinking that we’re going to run out of movies … and everything’s going to feel same-y but that hasn’t happened,” Peberdy said.
These days Revenge of Movie Night draws about a dozen viewers to the Main Street Museum each Tuesday. They grab seltzers and chips from a table of free snacks and slide into the creaking wooden chairs arranged in front of the projector.
A group portrait of those in attendance, taken with a precariously balanced iPhone on self-timer, commemorates each screening.
Clash of Casseroles serves a similar purpose: marking the occasion and bringing people together, albeit for a cutthroat competition.
Peberdy’s only regret, he said, is that he didn’t call the contest “Clasherole.”
Revenge of Movie Night’s next screening and casserole competition is slated for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction and over Zoom. For more information, visit the museum’s Instagram page @themainstreetmuseum.
Coffee show
A handful of musicians will perform Saturday at Anonymous Coffeehouse, inside the First Congregational Church in Lebanon. Folk singer-songwriter Cosy Sheridan will open at 7:30 p.m. followed by New England trio The Bottom Dollars at 8 p.m. and bluegrass and folk duo Andrew and Noah Vannorstrand at 9 p.m. Learn more about the free show at anoncoffee.org.
Shakespeare reimagined
A powerful and unusual interpretation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is up on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts. Developed at the Teatro La Plaza in Lima, Peru, this version of the Bard’s tragedy will be performed by eight actors with Down syndrome who use the story as a springboard to discuss experiences from their own lives. Tickets are $25 to $45. For more information, go to hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-2422.
Musicians-in-residence
Insun Park and Generals, a South Korean music collective that fuses rock with traditional Korean and mask dance rhythms, is performing at Lebanon Opera House at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30. The show, featuring young musicians from Tuck’s Rock Dojo in Etna, is the culmination of a three-day residency at the opera house. The performance is free with a $20 suggested donation. Learn more at lebanonoperahouse.org.
Villain play
Previews for “John Proctor Is the Villain,” Kimberly Belflower’s drama about a high school English class’s reckoning with Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, opened for previews Wednesday at Northern Stage in White River Junction. The show runs at the Barrette Center for the Arts through Oct. 11. For tickets ($35 to $81; $29 for students and youth under 25) and more information, visit northernstage.org or call 802-296-7000.