September 7th - 22th
Saturdays at 7p, Sundays at 2p
at Ancram Center for the Arts
and The Stissing Center for the Arts & Culture
The first annual Downtown Upstate festival brings the best of NYC downtown theatre artists to the Hudson Valley, featuring three different shows at two different venues over three consecutive weekends. Downtown Upstate will also include playwriting, acting, and solo performance workshops for local residents. Presented by Ancram Center for the Arts & The Stissing Center (Pine Plains). Produced by Soho Think Tank with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Downtown Upstate is the brainchild of 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.
FEstival Line-UP
LA MUSICA DEUXIÈME
September 7 at 7pm, September 8 at 2pm
at Ancram Center for the Arts
Written by Marguerite Duras
Directed by Jessica Burr
Featuring Heather Benton & Taylor Valentine
Click HERE for the show’s playbill.
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 “physically intense and highly theatrical.”
PUZZLING EVIDENCE
September 14 at 7pm, September 15 at 2pm
at Ancram Center for the Arts
Click HERE for the show’s playbill.
Written & Directed by Robert Lyons
Composed & Musical Direction by Rhys Tivey
Featuring Rhys Tivey & Folami Williams
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.
PLAYS
September 21 at 7pm, September 22 at 3pm
at The Stissing Center, Pine Plains
Written by Gertrude Stein
Featuring David Greenspan
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.”
Producer and Curator
Robert Lyons was Artistic Director of the legendary Ohio/New Ohio Theatre for more than 30 years, actively expanding the boundaries of what theatre is, how it’s made, and who makes it. Projects developed, presented, and produced by Ohio/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, Ohio/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 (the Ohio’s underlying not-for-profit these many years).
DOWNTOWN UPSTATE is made possible with funding by the New York State Council on the Arts.