playwright & theatre artist
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Written & Directed by Robert Lyons
Composed & Musical Direction by Rhys Tivey
Featuring Rhys Tivey & Folami Williams
The first annual Downtown Upstate Festival brings the best of NYC downtown theater to the Hudson Valley from Sept. 7 - 22, 2024, featuring three different shows at two different venues over three consecutive weekends. The festival is produced by Soho Think Tank and presented by Ancram Center for the Arts and The Stissing Center for Arts & Culture .
Downtown Upstate marks a new chapter for 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.
La Musica Deuxième
Written by Marguerite Duras
Directed by Jessica Burr
Featuring Heather Benton & Taylor Valentine
Two lovers reunite after a separation. Their sexually charged encounter reveals the passions, betrayals and savagery of their previous relationship.
Radical feminist Marguerite Duras wrote 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.
Sept. 7 at 7pm. / Sept. 8 at 2pm
Ancram Arts Center
Produced by Blessed Unrest
Puzzling Evidence
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 mini-musical with live music.
Robert Lyons is Artistic Director of Soho Think Tank and a NYC playwright who writes dark, satirical comedies, literary adaptations, and experimental performance texts. He has more than twenty New York City premieres to his credit, most recently My Onliness (“A welcome gust of weird” New York Times). His newest play classdismissed.edu will premiere at La Mama (NYC) in Spring 2025.
Sept. 14 at 7pm. / Sept. 15 at 2pm
Ancram Arts Center
Produced by Soho Think Tank Developed in residency at NACL
Plays
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Written by Gertude 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.
Only the playful intellect and charismatic stage presence of six-time OBIE Award-winner David Greenspan could capture the delicious humor of Stein’s relentlessly curious mind.
“Greenspan turns this logorrheic meditation on life, literature, and the stage into an endearing bedtime story.” - Charles Isherwood - The New York Times
Sept. 21 at 7pm. / Sept. 22 at 3pm
Stissing Center
Solo Performance Workshop
Performing the Real:
Solo and Alternative Performance
Taught by Lenora Champagne
A FREE two-part Solo Performance Workshop for local residents
led by renowned performance artist Lenora Champagne
Location:
The Stissing Center
Workshop Dates:
Wed. 9/11: 4 - 6pm
Wed. 9/18: 4 - 6pm
Participants must register for both sessions.
To register contact rlyons@sohothinktank.org.
Participants will create a short solo performance and learn strategies for structuring larger pieces with exercises that engage the body, imagination and memory. Contemporary experiences, classic characters, and social concerns are integrated in a way that foregrounds each actor’s individual voice, rhythm, and dynamics. The process involves improvisation (movement and text) and re-working material.
Lenora Champagne is an American playwright, director, and solo performer with years of NYC premieres (since 1981). Her solos have been presented at The Public Theatre, Here Arts Center, Vineyard Theatre, New Georges, Dance Theatre Workshop, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Primary Stages, PS122, Franklin Furnace, Ohio Theatre, Soho Rep, and La Mama, among others. Solo texts have been published in the journals PAJ, Performance Research, and The Iowa Review. She has taught solo performance at SUNY/Purchase, NYU, Trinity College, and Movement Research. She performed her most recent solo text at Dixon Place in May 2024.