‘The Tent’ at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. (Photo courtesy of HVSF.)
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) has shared plans for their 2022 Summer Season, the first to occur at their new, permanent home in Garrison, NY.
The season, which will be held under the Festival’s current iconic open-air tent, will include Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare’s timeless story of star-crossed lovers, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch and starring longtime HVSF actors Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson in the title roles, in repertory with Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn, featuring music by Michael Friedman, and directed by Davis McCallum. The season will also include Where We Belong by Madeline Sayet, directed by Mei Ann Teo and produced with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library.
This will be HVSF’s first season on the grounds of its new home in Garrison, NY, using its pre-existing temporary theater tent while plans are still underway to construct a permanent open-air theater venue. Audiences will continue to experience the company’s signature open-air productions and pre-show picnicking on the grounds.
HVSF’s 2019 production of ‘Into the Woods.’ (Photo: T Charles Erickson Photography)
Davis McCallum, the Festival’s Artistic Director, said, “We are thrilled to welcome artists and audiences to a new location and a new chapter for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. In this moment of resilience and emergence, each of the pieces in our 2022 season celebrates the life-affirming power of storytelling to help us see ourselves and our current moment in new and often unexpected ways.”
HVSF will also present two developmental workshops from its Tent Pole Commissions, HVSF’s new program that commissions artists to animate the extraordinary site of their new home and provides an artistic home and creative time for artists. The workshops include Untitled Agatha Project by Heidi Armbruster and directed by Ryan Quinn, and Memnon by Will Power and directed by Carl Cofield.
HVSF will also produce a video presentation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Matthew Saldivar, available to regional middle and high schools beginning in April. Both in-person and remote teaching artist residencies will be offered to school partners.
In addition, HVSF will hold a community event entitled Highland Lights: A Reawakened Landscape on Sunday, April 17, featuring a procession of community-built illuminated lanterns to bring people together in a shared act of artistic expression and inaugurate the ecological restoration of the landscape. The event will be led by Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles of Processional Arts Workshop.
