Saturday, Sept. 21: The Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical A Night with Janis Joplin celebrates the legendary ’60s powerhouse vocalist and her biggest influences, such as Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Odetta, Nina Simone and Bessie Smith.
Wednesday, Sept. 25: An Acholi woman from northern Uganda, Akello’s war-themed songs often address the suffering of the Acholi people, during and after the Lord’s Resistance Army War. She sings in six languages and has scored hits with the love ballad “Amari” and the gospel-styled “Samanya.”
Friday/Saturday, Sept. 27/28: On Friday night, the zeitgeist comedian, writer, actor and podcaster for the memoir and confessional generation will deliver a traditional standup set, or as close to it as he is likely to get. On Saturday night, he presents a live onstage episode of his popular caller-based Beautiful/Anonymous podcast.
Michael Maruti Projansky’s autobiographical memoir I Don’t Know…I Love (Epigraph Publishing, 2019) might have been restricted to the literary technique of episodic collage by the unique conditions of its writing. A genuine exit project, I Don’t Know…I Love finds the well-known New Paltz patriarch, psychologist, world traveler and spiritual seeker in his own words, “progressively disentangling from being human,” in his late 70s and five years into a struggle with a rare form of ALS that will claim his life – within half a year, by the author’s own estimation at the time of publication.
We’ll start our preview of this year’s 20th Anniversary Woodstock Film Festival, running October 2-5, with the special guests, including Matt Dillon, Rosie Perez, Parker Posey, Julie Taymor, folk music icon Janis Ian, and many others. Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Walt, will receive the Trailblazer Award for her documentaries and community activism. March for Our Lives co-founder Cameron Kasky will be on hand for the screening of Parkland Rising, about the teen-led anti-gun-violence movement generated by the high school shooting in Florida.
The New Paltz Film Festival that debuted last year as “New Paltz Shorts” during the outdoor summer movie series at Water Street Market, will present a one-night, two-hour screening event on Saturday, September 28 at 7:30 p.m., featuring short films created by Hudson Valley-based filmmakers. But don’t go to the marketplace expecting to find the action this time around: the festival is moving to the 620-seat Studley Theatre on the SUNY New Paltz campus.
Robbie Dupree & Friends, featuring special guest Cindy Cashdollar on lap steel and Dobro, will perform a show at 7 p.m. Sunday, September 22 at Levon Helm Studio, 160 Plochmann Lane, Woodstock.
Sunday, Sept. 15: Ever go to an event at the Ulster County Fairgrounds and wonder how people can focus on the activities on offer while the gorgeous, profoundly distracting panorama of the Shawangunk cliffs beckons not far off to the west? Well, this year the Taste of New Paltz celebration will capitalize on its stunning setting by offering opportunities to take a ride in a helicopter above the Ridge. This isn’t the only new feature of the 29th annual Taste.
Lytle will read from the book, a child’s-eye tour of the Little BeaverKill Creek, and display the drawings on the walls at the Golden Notebook,29 Tinker Street, Woodstock at 4:30p.m. Saturday, September 14.
Saturday, September 14: Based in Brooklyn, the Dzieci Theater Company characterizes itself as “an international experimental theater ensemble…dedicated to a search for the ‘sacred’ through the medium of theater.” Part of the troupe’s approach to theater-as-ritual is a fondness for developing site-specific staging for the plays in its repertoire. Well, how about a cave with such wonderfully eerie acoustics that Pauline Oliveros herself couldn’t resist recording there?