Theatrical productions | Summer Arts Preview | Hudson Valley

“Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival

(July 17)

Presented under the outdoor marquee of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival Garrison location, “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” is about a not-so-distant future where the grid has failed, society has collapsed, and memories can no longer be stored on hard drives, a group of survivors come together to recreate their vanished world through the vital act of storytelling under the stars. August 22).

Powerhouse Theater Summer Season

(June 26-July 30)

Powerhouse Theater, on the campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, the famous incubator of “Hamilton”, “Bright Star” and “The Humans” of Broadway, organized another scintillating summer season. Beginning with a reading of “aNNA,” based on Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (June 26), the schedule continues with a reading of “Final Boarding Call” (July 2) and productions of “Luna and the Star Bodies” (8 -July 9), “Things to do when no one can see you” (July 7, 14, 21, 28), “The Tempest” (July 15-17), “The Trojan Women” (July 22-24), “NYC: 1975” (July 24-25) and “Shakespeare: Unplugged” (July 29-31) and ends with the New Works Play Festival (July 30). A New York Stage and Film Company residency includes “The World is Not Silent” (July 15-17), “Sweet Chariot” (July 22-24) and “Tell Them I’m Still Young” (July 28-30 ).

“Grounded” at the Denizen Theater

(June 9-July 10)

New Paltz’s black box theater at Water Street Market has a new creative team at the helm. International theater veterans Andy and Kirsty Gaukel kick off the 2022 season with George Brandt’s “Grounded,” a tale based on how the U.S. military works today. An unexpected pregnancy ends the career of an ace fighter pilot in the sky. Reassigned to operate military drones from a windowless trailer outside Las Vegas, she hunts terrorists by day and returns home each night. As the pressure to track a high-level target increases, the lines begin to blur between the desert she lives in and the one she patrols on the other side of the world. Inhabitants the staging of the one-man show features Emmy-winning poet, writer, actress and activist Suzen Baraka. As a Black and Korean actress, Baraka says she took on the role in part because “ideas around surveillance and surveillance are huge in my community, so I thought it would be interesting to explore it”.

Stage and Film Workshops in New York at Marist College

(July 9-August 7)

Vital theatrical development company New York Stage and Film has expanded its program this year to Marist College in Poughkeepsie, where it is set to host a trio of musical workshops as well as two weekends of open readings. Workshops include “A Young Boy Returns” (July 23-24), “The Potluck” (July 29-30) and “Sun Songs” (August 5-7). The number one reading weekend has “My Brother Is Better At Love Than Me” (July 9), “Nuestro Planeta: Colombia Project” (July 9) and an untitled work by Josh Radnor (July 9). The second reading weekend includes “Modern Gentleman” (August 6), “Demons” (August 6) and “Love All” (August 7). newyorkstageandfilm.org

“Public Speaking 101” at the Great Barrington Public Theater

(June 14-24)

The Great Barrington Public Theater Company presents productions at Bard College’s Daniels Art Center at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. At the downtown McConnell Theater this month, local playwright Mark St. Germain’s (“Eleanor,” “DAD”) new comedy “Public Speaking 101,” which follows “a neurotic amateur actress [who] leads his community theater class of terrified adults to compete in their county’s first annual public speaking competition. Also playing: “Grief, the Musical…a Comedy” (June 3-12), “The Bard That Beat the Blues” (June 8-26), “The Shot” (June 16-19) , “Leave Your Fears Here” with James Morrison (June 30-July 10) and “Things I Know to Be True” (August 4-14).

greatbarringtonpublictheater.org

“Dom Juan” by Molière at the Bard SummerScape

(June 23-July 16)

One of Bard College’s many intriguing SummerScape events in its 19th season is director Ashley Tata’s (“Mad Forest”) adaptation of Molière’s classic “Dom Juan.” Presenting at Fisher Center’s LUMA Theater, Tata’s version subverts this already subversive comedy by casting actresses in the roles of Dom Juan (Amelia Workman) and, in this case, his sidekick, Sganarelle (Zuzanna Szadowski) and “place l story set in a fantasy world where 17th century France meets late 1970s America.” Another SummerScape 2022 pick is Richard Strauss’ comic opera “The Silent Woman (Die Schweigsame Frau)” with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein (July 22-31).

Fishercenter.bard.edu

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Catskill Mountain Shakespeare

(July 16-31)

One of the Bard’s best-loved comedies gets an outdoor staging worthy of its woodland setting with this tent production from the Catskill Mountain Shakespeare troupe at the Emerson Resort and Spa in Phoenicia. Directed by Peter Andersen, the show’s tumultuous run will premiere with a special pay-per-view performance on July 15 and includes matinee and evening performances; for new parents, the schedule even includes several “casual” mornings with childcare provided.

catskillmountainshakespeare.com

“Invasion!” at Ancram Opera House

(August 5-21)

Built in 1927 as the Barn Room for the farming town of Ancram in Columbia County, the Ancram Opera House provides a beautiful setting for a performance hall. Among its proposals this summer is the satirical comedy by Swedish novelist and playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri “Invasion!”, whose main character, Abulkasem, is either “an uncle visiting from Lebanon, a renowned theater director, a picker of asylum seeker apples, [or] the most dangerous terrorist in the world. Grab your tickets to this tumultuous history and find out.

Ancramoperahouse.org

“Shelley’s Shadow” at the Bridge Street Theater

(8-18 September)

Brad Fraser’s “Shelley Shadow” is the very first new game order for Catskill’s Bridge Street Theater. “Without a job, no money and out of ideas, David, a writer in his 60s, abandons his condo and moves into a run-down building in downtown Toronto,” reads the synopsis. “There, her life becomes inexorably entangled with that of her upstairs neighbor Shelley – a gregarious octogenarian lesbian with dementia related to Alzheimer’s disease – and her longtime canine companion, Shadow.” This month is the East Coast premiere of Eric Pfeffinger’s “Fourteen Funerals” (June 2-12).