Patrick Grego / The New Pine Plains Herald
A busy 11th season is underway at Ancram Center for the Arts, with a lineup that offers Hudson Valley theatergoers a wide range of forms, voices, and ambitions.
At a May 9 preview event, several artists participating in the season discussed their upcoming work over wine and light bites. The lineup included playwright Darrah Cloud and Ancram artistic directors Jeffrey Mousseau and Paul Ricciardi, who will each direct a play this season, along with designers and an actor.
Next, on May 22 at 10 a.m., the center will hold a ribbon-cutting celebration for the official opening of the Annex, which will provide housing for visiting artists and space for free community workshops.
The opening performance of the season, “Clarence in a Pause,” is free of charge but already “sold out” — at capacity, though the waitlist remains open. With a libretto and score by Taylor Mac and Heather Christian, both MacArthur and Guggenheim recipients who have previously worked with Ancram Center, anticipation is high.
“They’re both maximalist artists, in different ways, with different aesthetics, so it will be interesting to see what they do together,” Mousseau says.
He explains that the May 30 and 31 performances are being offered for free thanks to support from the MacArthur Foundation.
“We received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation in support of the project, through their program, Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45. Its intention is to bring together two MacArthur Fellows engaged in investigating a question, and engaging the public with them.”
In “Clarence in a Pause” — Clarence being Clarence Thomas — four characters explore polarization and attempt to understand one another. “Heather and Taylor are reaching for radical empathy,” Mousseau explained. A discussion with the audience will follow both showings of the work-in-progress, which is part of Ancram’s Play Labs programming.
The season’s first full production, running July 17-26, will be distinguished playwright Sarah Ruhl’s “Letters from Max,” directed by Ricciardi. The two-person play, which premiered at Signature Theatre in New York City, is based on correspondence and poems exchanged between Ruhl and her former student, poet Max Ritvo, while he was living with terminal cancer. Deeply moving and lyrical, the play is about friendship, grief and the search for words to express profound feeling.
From Aug. 7-16, writer and performer Todd Almond, accompanied by a cellist and bass player, brings his storytelling and singing to “I’m Almost There,” a piece about finding, and perhaps achieving, love. Almond performs the piece at BAM in June.
Mousseau will direct master playwright Caryl Churchill’s “A Number” from Sept. 25-Oct. 11. The play features a father in conversation with his three sons, two of whom are clones.
“Now felt like the time for it,” Mousseau says.
Actor Drew Ledbetter, who previously appeared in “Constellations” at Ancram, will play all three sons.
Following the Churchill production will be a reading with music of playwright Darrah Cloud’s new musical with composer Stephanie Salzman. The play, “Be Safe, I Love You,” is adapted from a novel about an Iraq War veteran with PTSD returning home, where she attempts to protect her family from enemies only she sees. The event is also part of the Play Labs series.
Rounding out the season are two installments of “Real People, Real Stories,” the series featuring stories by people from the region. One will take place in June and the other in November.
For theater lovers in the Hudson Valley, Ancram Center’s 11th season offers the kind of programming that has become its signature: intimate, ambitious and rooted in both the art of performance and the life of the community.