Stage & Screen

Fairytale Theater coming to Woodstock

Fairytale Theater coming to Woodstock

Woodstock area children and teens will get a chance to put on a musical play this summer, as Edie’s Fairytale Theater come to the Byrdcliffe Barn from June 24 to 28 to mount a production of their original adaptation of Peter Pan, for kids aged five to 16. The St. Louis-based company will be brought to town by Kerry Henderson and Bex Roper-Caldbeck, organizers of the Woodstock Festival of Song, which will hold two concerts at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church on Mother’s Day weekend, May 11 and 12.

Avengers: Endgame shot scenes in Ulster, Dutchess

Avengers: Endgame shot scenes in Ulster, Dutchess

Let’s say you’re not already burning to know if and how the surviving Avengers will manage to reverse some of the harm (killing half of the universe’s sentient beings with a snap of his magic-gauntleted fingers) wrought by big baddie Thanos at the end of last year’s Avengers: Infinity War. Would it motivate you at all to know that some of the epic footage (all shot in IMAX, by the way) was gleaned right here in the Hudson Valley?

Bread & Puppet to perform at TSL in Hudson

Bread & Puppet to perform at TSL in Hudson

Friday, April 26: Since its inception in the early 1960s, the giant puppetry, costumed players, music and social commentary made by Bread and Puppet have shaped original works that aim at prevailing tendencies in human folly. The new show is Diagonal Life: Theory and Praxis, based on a premise that, according to founder and director Peter Schumann, investigates “the leaning power of hurt verticals.” What is a “hurt vertical”? It is the perfect, upright citizen whose aspiration is to reflect the agreed-upon worthiness, but who perhaps falls short of that goal.

An Evening of Poetry and Song with Garrison Keillor benefits Performing Arts of Woodstock

An Evening of Poetry and Song with Garrison Keillor benefits Performing Arts of Woodstock

Saturday, Apr. 27: At age 76, with nine volumes of Lake Wobegon stories in print, a pile of awards including a Peabody, a Steinbeck, a Grammy and medals from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Humanities, not to mention having undergone heart surgery in 2001 and suffered a stroke in 2009, one would think that Keillor would be ready to settle into a comfortable retirement.

Aretha Franklin on screen in Amazing Grace in Woodstock

Aretha Franklin on screen in Amazing Grace in Woodstock

Sunday, Apr. 28: Over two nights in January 1972, the late Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, recorded a live album of music reflecting her gospel roots at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Joining her on the program were Rev. James Cleveland, Cornell Dupree, Rev. C. L. Franklin, Ken Lupper, Pancho Morales, Bernard Purdie, Chuck Rainey and the Southern California Community Choir. The two-record set, Amazing Grace, went double-platinum and became the biggest-selling live gospel music album of all time.