First Annual Downtown Upstate Festival to Be Held in September
The festival will run Sept. 7 - 22, 2024.
By: Blair Ingenthron Aug. 03, 2024
The first annual Downtown Upstate Festival will bring the best of NYC downtown theater to the Hudson Valley from Sept. 7 - 22, 2024 and feature three different shows at two different venues over three consecutive weekends. The festival is presented by Ancram Center for the Arts and The Stissing Center for Arts & Culture, and produced by Soho Think Tank with funding from the New York State Council for the Arts.
Downtown Upstate marks a new chapter for Soho Think Tank's Artistic Director Robert Lyons, who recently wound down operations of the legendary New Ohio Theatre in Manhattan's West Village after more than 30 years as Artistic Director. Lyons actively expanded the boundaries of what theatre is, how it's made, and who makes it. Projects developed, presented, and produced by New Ohio have gone on to garner multiple Drama Desk awards and nominations, Obie Awards, Edinburgh Audience First Awards, national and international tours, and Off-Broadway productions. Under Robert's artistic leadership, New Ohio was honored with two Obie Awards for sustained artistic achievement and was widely recognized as an indispensable pillar of the NYC downtown theatre community. At the same time, Robert was also Creative Director at Sarah Lawrence College from 2011-2021. He continues now as Artistic Director of Soho Think Tank.
When asked about the timing of a downtown theater festival in upstate New York, Lyons said, “Post COVID has been a time of transition. So many New Yorkers have moved to the Hudson Valley and are looking for all things cultural, including theater. I see an opportunity to develop and present alternative, independent theater with small budgets, in smaller theaters, that's more experimental in terms of storytelling and more driven by idiosyncratic artistic passion rather than broader mainstream fare trying to draw the biggest possible audience. It's important that downtown theater has a presence in that mix in the Hudson Valley.”
The Festival schedule and venues are:
Ancram Center for the Arts: 9/7 - 7pm; 9/8 - 3pm
La Musica Deuxième
Written by Marguerite Duras
Directed by Jessica Burr
Tickets: ancramcenter.org
Written by the novelist, playwright, radical, and feminist Marguerite Duras, La Musica Deuxième tells the story of lovers who reunite after a separation. Their charged dialogue reveals the passions, betrayals and savagery of their previous relationship. The author of novels, stories, collections, plays and screenplays, she won France's the Prix Goncort in 1984 for her novel L'Amant, and wrote the screenplay for the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, based on her own novel. Lyons calls this piece “very physically intense and highly theatrical.”
Director Jessica Burr is the founding Artistic Director of Blessed Unrest, recipient of the 2019 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Commendation for Distinguished Leadership, First Prize for Secondo Festival (Switzerland), a LPTW Lucille Lortel Award and multiple NY Innovative Theatre Awards. Burr is an Artist in Residence at Sacred Heart University for her work on The Untitled Othello Project. With Blessed Unrest, Burr has directed and choreographed over 30 productions, including 15 world premieres.
Ancram Center for the Arts: 9/14 - 7pm; 9/15 - 3pm
Puzzling Evidence
Written & Directed by Robert Lyons
Composed & Musical Direction by Rhys Tivey
Tickets: ancramcenter.org
Two left-wing activists tour their “Post-Capitalist Realism” concert - singing, reciting beat poetry, and free associating an anti-capitalist manifesto. But mostly they struggle to work through their complicated relationship - on stage during the show! A quirky, funny, mini-musical with live music.
Robert Lyons is Artistic Director of Soho Think Tank and a NYC playwright who writes dark, satirical comedies, literary adaptations, and experimental performance texts. He has more than twenty New York City premieres to his credit, most recently My Onliness (“A welcome gust of weird” New York Times). His newest play classdismissed.edu will premiere at La Mama (NYC) in Spring 2025.
The Stissing Center for Arts & Culture: 9/21 - 7pm; 9/22 - 3pm
Plays
Written by Gertrude Stein
Performed by David Greenspan
Tickets: thestissingcenter.org
Only Gertrude Stein could have written this hidden gem of theatricality and wit, a provocative lecture on theatre, her development as a playwright, and her exploration of sight and sound in the theatre. Starring six-time OBIE Award winner David Greenspan, a legendary downtown theater performer and writer, this show is mesmerizing. The New York Times wrote “In Mr. Greenspan's lilting delivery, this dense display of Stein's curious mixture of the obvious and the abstruse makes for delicious hearing. Adding just a touch of humor by sardonic emphasis on a word here and there, he turns this long, logorrheic meditation on the differences among life, literature, and the stage into an endearing bedtime story.”
Free Workshop
Performing the Real: Solo and Alternative Performance
Downtown Upstate will offer a free two-part Solo Performance Workshop at The Stissing Center for local residents, led by renown performance artist Lenora Champagne. Participants must register for both sessions. To register contact rlyons@sohothinktank.org.
Participants will create a short solo performance and learn strategies for structuring larger pieces with exercises that engage the body, imagination and memory. Contemporary experiences, classic characters, and social concerns are integrated in a way that foregrounds each actor's individual voice, rhythm, and dynamics. The process involves improvisation (movement and text) and re-working material.
Workshop Dates:
Wed. 9/11 – 4-6pm
Wed. 9/18 --4-6pm
Lenora Champagne is an American playwright, director, and solo performer with years of NYC premieres (since 1981). Her solos have been presented at The Public Theatre, Here Arts Center, Vineyard Theatre, New Georges, Dance Theatre Workshop, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Primary Stages, PS122, Franklin Furnace, Ohio Theatre, Soho Rep, and LaMama, among others. Solo texts have been published in the journals PAJ, Performance Research, and The Iowa Review. She has taught solo performance at SUNY/Purchase, NYU, Trinity College, and Movement Research. She performed her most recent solo text at Dixon Place in May 2024.
Ancram Center for the Arts is an award-winning theater located in New York's Hudson Valley. Housed in an historic Grange Hall, Ancram Center has since 2016 presented groundbreaking theater and musical performances by nationally recognized theater artists. Ancram Center for the Arts receives significant annual support from the New York State Council on the Arts and in 2023 was awarded a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. For tickets and information visit www.ancramcenter.org.
The Stissing Center for Arts & Culture seeks to positively impact our community by partnering with artists, individuals, and organizations to create meaningful programs, events, and opportunities. As a center for diversity, culture, and civic life in a small town, The Stissing Center aims to support local economic revitalization and job creation in Pine Plains and the surrounding Hudson Valley regions. www.thestissingcenter.org.
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