The Ancram Center for the Arts will present its third biennial installment of its “Plein Air Plays” from Aug. 7 to 10. The outdoor theater series, known for its site-specific performances in natural settings around Ancram, features three original short plays — each performed in a different location within ten minutes of the Center. The exact sites are kept secret until the day before each performance, when ticket holders receive email directions.
“Jeff [Co-Director Mousseau] and I always wanted to do some site-specific work,” said Co-Director Paul Ricciardi. “And we wanted to take advantage of Ancram’s beautiful, rural setting. After COVID moved our whole 2020 season online, we decided in 2021 to move our summer season outdoors.”
That year, performances were staged beside a pond on Doodletown Road, under a 200-year-old oak tree in a private garden off Route 7, and at the Blass Field ballfield.
In 2023, Barbara Wiechmann’s “Summer” took place in a field off Doodletown Road; Mukta Phatak’s “Made in Pakistan,” about a soccer player, was staged on the playing fields behind Town Hall; and Salty Brine’s “Giving Up the Ghosts” featured a gravedigger at the former Hoysradt Family Cemetery on Pats Road.
This year, the Center promises new sites and new works —though some familiar names return.
Kate Douglas, who created and performed in “The Lucky Few” (2023) and “Centuries” (2024), returns with “My Dog is Dead,” a folk music song cycle about a woman who begins to foresee the fate of others in her rural town. She is joined by performers Ben Ferguson and Luke Wygodny.
Danielle Skraastad, who appeared at Ancram in Still Life (2018) and Homebody (2022), stars in “Rupert’s Birthday,” a new play by Ken Jenkins. A woman working in a barn recounts her rural girlhood.
The third piece, “Same Picture, Different Poses,” was developed by performers Kyle Driggs and Logan Kerr, who Co-Directors Ricciardi and Mousseau met through Hudson’s Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. Designed to mark the Ancram Center’s tenth anniversary, the work combines contemporary circus, movement, and theater.
“As reality blurs into the imaginary,” the description reads, “the outdoor environment transforms fragments of a home into a shifting stage, where two people confront the versions of themselves they project, conceal, and become — only to discover they never truly left the space they began in.”
Just where the plays will take place remains under wraps. What’s certain is that, next weekend, Ancram itself takes center stage.
Performance Dates: August 7–10. Thursday and Friday at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., and 6 p.m. Audiences travel by car between three performance sites in Ancram. Each play runs approximately 25 minutes; total experience lasts about 100 minutes. For tickets and more information visit ancramcenter.org.