Saturday, April 15: April is here, which means that it’s time for him to teach his intensive classes for the spring semester. It’s also time for one of his semiannual “Neil Gaiman in Conversation with…” events at Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
Tuesday, April 18: Deep in the sun-blistered Sonora Desert, in the so-called Corridor of Death, Arizona border police discover a decomposing male body. Lifting a tattered tee-shirt, they expose a tattoo that reads “Dayani Cristal.” Who is this person? What brought him here? How did he die
Thursday, April 20: Like your Shakespeare on the “lite” side? The Bard’s early comedies, with their roots in classical Roman farce and medieval Italian commedia dell’arte, are surefire crowd-pleasers that bear endless revisitation.
Friday, April 7: Has the daily onslaught of revelations about Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. election got you thinking about what life might be like under a totalitarian government? You might want to check out the new documentary, Karl Marx City, which has its mid-Hudson premiere at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck.
On April 4 – honoring the date on which Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith begins rebelling against his government by keeping a forbidden diary – dozens of movie theaters, libraries, museums and bookstores across the country will participate in a national screening event, presenting Michael Radford’s film adaptation of 1984.
The Center’s 2017 Spring Shakespeare Festival kicks off with a production of Tom Stoppard’s Beckettian black-comedy spin on Hamlet.
Tuesday, 3/28: In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted, “The Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy.” By November 2016, after that same body had handed him the presidency, he was tweeting a different tune: “The Electoral College is actually genius.” If you are befuddled by how our electoral system actually works, check out this free documentary screening, sponsored by the League of Women Voters.
Saturday, 3/18: By all accounts, Kingston-based Outsider artist Mark Hogancamp is a shy guy. But Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg’s critically acclaimed documentary about the World War II-era backyard fantasy world that Hogancamp built and photographed to help himself recover from a traumatic brain injury, has been seen around the world.
Friday and Saturday, March 24-25: Castaway Players Theatre Company’s production of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars at the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck will bring David Bowie’s classic 1972 album to the stage. The cast includes a six-piece band with appearances by nearly 30 performers.
Opens Saturday, March 25: If you know someone who could use a reminder of what can happen to innocents in real life when ordinary people lack the courage to question authority, you might want to suggest an outing to see Half Moon Theatre’s newest production, “Yours, Anne.”