Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival To Host HIGHLAND LIGHTS With Processional Arts Workshop

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and Processional Arts Workshop will host the third annual Highland Lights, a community celebration of art and nature, at HVSF's home in Garrison (2015 US Route 9, Garrison, NY 10524) on Saturday, April 20, 2024. Doors open at 8pm and the procession will begin at dark.

Highland Lights invites neighbors to create collaborative works during free public lantern-making workshops and culminates in a spectacular outdoor procession of lights and lanterns on Earth Day. This year's procession completes a trilogy of environmental themes that began with earth (“A Reawakened Landscape”), looked up to the sky with last year's “Ad Astra,” and now explores the waters with “Full Fathom Five.” 

Drawing inspiration from the streams, wetlands, lakes, and rivers of the Hudson River Estuary, “Full Fathom Five” brings a host of local fish and native aquatic wonders to life as articulated lantern puppets.

Highland Lights is presented in partnership with local not-for-profits Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, Hudson Highlands Land Trust, Garrison Arts Center, Haldane Arts Alliance, Garrison Union Free School PTA, Cold Spring Farmer's Market and Highlands Choral Society. With special thanks to Riverkeeper and Climate Smart Philipstown.

Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles, of Processional Arts Workshop, returned this year to lead a month of free, drop-in sessions in which participants collaborated to design, build, and animate an underwater world in motion. Flanked by poetic fragments evoking aquatic themes, a host of glowing sturgeon, oysters, shad, blue crabs, and other creatures will converge on April 20 in a winding procession that rediscovers and reflects (literally) on the waterways of the Festival's rolling hillside home.  As the Festival embarks on a visionary ecological restoration of the former Garrison golf course, “Full Fathom Five” reminds us of transformational power of water – to shape land, to nurture new life, and to return us to our most basic elements – even as we recognize the unprecedented fragility of our rivers, streams, and oceans in a changing climate.

The final free workshops will be held this weekend, Saturday, April 13 from 12pm - 3pm and 3pm - 6pm and Sunday, April 14 from 12pm - 3pm and 3pm - 6pm. To learn more and register for workshops and the procession, please visit highlandlights.org. If necessary, the rain date will be the following Saturday, April 27.

HVSF's previously announced 2024 season will begin on June 11 and include Medea: Re-Versed, by longtime HVSF company member Luis Quintero, adapted from Euripides, and co-conceived and directed by Nathan Winkelstein, in a co-production with Red Bull Theater and Bedlam; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Heidi Armbruster, adapted from Agatha Christie, and directed by Ryan Quinn; and By The Queen, by Whitney White, adapted from William Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III, and directed by Shana Cooper.

This will be HVSF's third season on the grounds of its new home in Garrison, NY, using its pre-existing seasonal theater tent during the construction of a permanent open-air theater venue, slated to open in 2026. HVSF has engaged a team of experts including Jeanne Gang + Studio Gang, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, and Fisher Dachs Associates Theater Consultants to lead the design process of the performance space and surrounding campus. Now and into the future, HVSF audiences will continue to experience the company's signature open-air productions and pre-show picnicking on the grounds.

ABOUT HUDSON VALLEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

Founded in 1987, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) is a critically acclaimed (The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal), professional, non-profit theater company based in Garrison, NY, one hour north of Manhattan. The Festival has established a reputation for lucid, engaging, and highly inventive productions staged in rotating repertory under an iconic, open-air theater tent overlooking the Hudson River. In recent years, the Festival has also ventured beyond the tent, touring its work to other venues throughout the Hudson Valley as part of its HVSF On the Road series, transferring productions to other theaters, engaging its community through radically participatory art-making, and reaching over 50,000 students and educators annually through its year-round Education programs. HVSF began performances at its first permanent home in 2022.

Rooted in the landscape of the Hudson Valley, with the plays of William Shakespeare as their touchstone, HVSF engages the widest possible audience in a theatrical celebration of our shared humanity.

ABOUT PROCESSIONAL ARTS WORKSHOP

Founded in 1998, Processional Arts Workshop (PAW) is a nonprofit arts ensemble that works with communities to design, build and perform site-specific parades, pageants and immersive theater works as a means for residents to come together, reflect upon and preserve the defining aspects of locality. For more information, visit: www.superiorconcept.org.

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