RUMFORD — Starting Friday, Sept. 7, 49 Franklin‘s Mystic Theater will offer a new performing arts program known as Kaleidoscope. 

Designed as a monthly celebration of the arts in Western Maine, the program will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. on the first Friday of every month.

“Kaleidoscope is created as a place to bring the community of performing arts and variety together for an extraordinary experience in co-created art, music and play,” Scot Grassette stated Tuesday morning in a news release.

Grassette is a local magician and entertainer. He and his wife Cindy Grassette own and operate the 49 Franklin Reception Hall and Mystic Theater of the same address on Franklin Street in Rumford.

Every month at Kaleidoscope, artists, magicians, variety performers, dancers, painters, musicians, multi-media artists and poets will come together to celebrate and create an experience, he said.

Grassette will host the entire program.

“Kaleidoscope is special, unique and an opportunity to expand a skill or task that you’ve been working on, try something new, and work on pieces you’ve been meaning to try,” he said on the program’s website.

“It’s not for beginners, but (rather) experienced artists who want to grow and expand in their art.“

Essentially, it’s a once-a-month party for all styles of artists, he said. It’s based on Las Vegas magician Jeff McBride‘s “Wonderground” of Las Vegas.

The Kaleidoscope evening begins with a stage show featuring magicians, comedians, and other variety acts, local and special guests from all around, Grassette said.

Following this, a close-up show begins where a group of people can experience sleight-of-hand magic in an intimate setting.

Throughout the night, the lounge is surrounded with live painters, sculptors and ambient performers.

“Everywhere you look, art abounds,” Grassette said.

For example, he said visual artists start with a fresh canvas and finish the evening with a finished piece. Off to the side, a palm reader reads the past, present and future from the lines on a patron’s hands.

The stage is full of action as performers provide two shows. Additionally, at various times through out the evening, dancers grace the stage, Grassette said.

At 9 p.m., the late stage show begins featuring magicians, jugglers, dancers and poets, with different performers each month.

After a final bow from the entire Kaleidoscope players, patrons can mingle with the performers and artists, he said.

Grassette has also issued a Call for Artists for the 2012-13 season. He said he is seeking singers, dancers, jugglers, poets, magicians, musicians, variety, escape, mind readers, painters, drawers, sketchers, tattooists, Henna, palmistry, tarot and others.

“Artists work on a FEE system — Fair Energy Exchange,” he said.

“It is a place of meeting new friends, and networking; a place to mix and mingle with the fellow artists.”

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