Saturday-Sunday, April 28-29: This weekend, 126 New York-based craft breweries will be on hand, pouring more than 400 varieties of local beer. We’re not talking about big-corporation beer that comes out of huge vats. We’re talking about handmade beer with personality and genuine taste, made with pride by people who truly enjoy a quality, flavorful beer.
Wednesday, May 2: Benjamin’s new overtly self-effacing first book, Failure Is an Option: An Attempted Memoir is a detailed litany of failure and, ultimately, a defense of it: an “apology” in the old sense of the word.
Sunday, April 29: Known in certain quarters as “the Bitter Buddha,” Eddie Pepitone blends social rage and self-flagellation to brilliant comedic effect.
Saturday, April 28: All the historic houses on the tour started as one- or two-room houses. Most of them were constructed of stone, while others had stone foundations and were built of clapboard. Over the centuries, the houses were expanded. The houses on this tour reflect a range of the decisions owners had to make: how much of the original house should be preserved, what features should be kept, what features could be added.
Saturday-Sunday, April 28-29: The top level of the American Ballet Theatre training ladder, the ABT Studio Company is a classical ensemble made up of 12 dancers of outstanding potential. All performances take place in the Kaatsbaan black-box theater, which has 160 seats, with a performance floor the size of the stage at the Metropolitan Opera.
Opening Saturday, April 28: An extraordinarily gifted painter and printmaker from an early age, Wigfall was also famously accessible, humble, engaged and engaging, tirelessly challenging and boosting younger artists. He ran the influential Watermark/Cargo Gallery in Kingston’s Rondout; and turned his print studio in Ponckhockie into a community center and contemporary art showcase called Communications Village, where up-and-coming stars of the Black Arts Movement would meet and mingle with Wigfall’s academic colleagues, students and protégés and regular people from the neighborhood.
Friday-Sunday, April 27-29: Ever wonder how Donald Trump might end up if his more ambitious offspring turned against him in his old age? Consider this adaptation of William Shakespeare’s epic tragedy King Lear that’s currently being presented at the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck.
Saturday, May 5: It’s a creative (and slightly competitive) birding challenge, in which participants are required to stay within a 17-foot circle and identify as many species of birds as possible within a 24-hour period.
Saturday, April 28-Sunday, April 29: Novel, experimental, international, hip and entirely Hudson, the overnight Drone festival takes over the world-famous repurposed industrial venue for its fourth collaboration with the Netherlands’ Le Guess Who?
Three-time cancer survivor and Saugerties resident Zach Swart took action against childhood cancer by traveling to Washington, D.C. to advocate for kids like him at the eighth annual Childhood Cancer Action Days on April 23-24. His visit was coordinated by the Alliance for Childhood Cancer.