This year, the New Paltz High School Drama Club is doing an original play that some of the students helped write. It is called, The Journey to Home. Act I tells the story of the Orphan Train, Act II tells the story of Georgia Tann and it ends with the immigration crisis and the separation of children and their parents at the border. It goes up October 24-26.
A sketch in the premiere episode of this season’s Saturday Night Live took aim at our region’s most well-known autumnal activity for day-trippers: pick-your-own apples. The format is a television commercial hosted by two sisters (Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon), the owners of “Chickham’s Apple Farm,” which is “located in the part of New York State that has confederate flags” where “for just $45, you can bring home $10 worth of apples.”
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.
Michael Lang tossed in the towel on his Woodstock 50 dream on July 31 after a tumultuous week in which he was turned down for permits at Vernon Downs Racetrack & Casino in central New York, announced a move to the 52-year old Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, halfway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C, then said the festival would be free, and finally saw most of the engaged artists pull out.
Unison Arts Center has mounted a year-long exhibition designed to disappear on its own. “Composed to Decompose,” the 21st annual show to be featured in the art center sculpture garden, opened Sunday, July 21 and will remain on view through July 2020.
There isn’t much more detail in which a reviewer of White Rabbit Red Rabbit can indulge without spoiling its content. It is structured to be performed as a “cold reading” by a different actor every night – an actor who has neither read the script nor ever seen a performance of the play. Thousands of actors have risen to the challenge over the past decade, some of them quite famous, and not every one has relished such a raw experience of “winging it.” There’s some room for improv built into the script, but mostly it requires a close and exact reading. Following the author’s instructions to the letter is essential to the message he’s trying to convey.
A true celebration of the local by the locals, the long-running Rosendale Street Festival returns July 20-21.
The Rosendale Street Festival returns July 20-21. For more on the festival: See 80 bands in two days at the
New Paltz resident Jennifer Deering knows all about the dangers of undiagnosed Lyme disease; in 2011, it left her effectively crippled for about six months with extreme joint pain and a raft of neurological symptoms triggered by her autoimmune response. Deering has written and self-published a book about her experiences, Stronger than Lyme: My Battle and Blueprint for Overcoming This Strange Disease, and will be giving a presentation about it from 4 to 6 p.m. this Saturday, July 13 at Roost Studios.
Works by Cami Fischer, Lana Privitera, Maureen Rogers and Agnes Devereaux took top honors in the fifth annual exhibit, which calls for submissions of “artwork that focuses on and is inspired by local and area historic landmarks, landscapes and architectural details, and explores the theme of preservation, and life within a historic context.” Works will be on display in the Elting Memorial Library’s Ron Steinberg Reading & Meeting Room until May 4.