Credit: Stissing Center for Arts & Culture
Stissing Center is set to launch the fourth season of its play-reading series, Local Produce, on Oct. 20, offering residents the chance to experience theater without having to travel.
“Local Produce was begun at the Stissing Center in order to nurture local voices and other Hudson Valley playwrights in Pine Plains, and to find ways for local people to be in those readings,” said Darrah Cloud, a contributor to the Herald who created the series.
“Pine Plains has always been a theater town — theater is an art form that people here love,” Cloud said. The town, historically supportive of the arts, has long backed productions by the Stissing Theatre Guild, which has staged high school plays and musicals since its founding in 1989. Though the town saw the relocation of the Tri-Arts Theater to Sharon Playhouse in 2000, fans of theater in Pine Plains continue to embrace the notion that Pine Plains is a “theater town.”
“I am a playwright by profession and I wanted a way to meet other playwrights in the area whose work might need a first, or second or thirtieth read to ‘get right,’” Cloud said.
This season’s Local Produce will offer pre-show talks at 2:30 p.m. about the inspiration for each of the featured plays. The schedule will feature monthly play readings on the third Sunday of every month through June, starting with The Last Supper, a zombie-apocalypse satire on modern politics. Upcoming productions include Our Suburb in November, a take on Our Town set in Skokie, Illinois, and a December evening of ten-minute holiday-themed plays, accompanied by live music and community singing.
The series will continue into 2024 with January’s reading of The Drunkard and the Elephant, written by Hudson Valley horror author Sam Rebelein, and The Academy in February, a play by Grace Angela Henry about an elite girls’ school for young Black women. March will see the staging of Tough Love, by photographer Louisa Vilardi, which centers on an Italian-American family’s struggle to stay united amid external pressures. April’s program will include Nan Gatewood Satter’s Cantata for Three Women, tackling the aftermath of sexual abuse, followed by a new play by Ed Napier in May, featuring live opera. The season will conclude in June with a production celebrating Pride Month, yet to be announced.
“This is our most ambitious year to date,” said Brett Bernardini, Executive Director of Stissing Center. While the Center is not equipped for full-scale productions, Bernardini noted that the play readings, performed by regional actors, provide a platform for audiences to engage with new narratives and perspectives.
Local Produce play readings will be held on the third Sunday of each month at 2:30/ 3 p.m. starting on Oct. 20. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased through Stissing Center’s website at www.stissingcenter.org.