Community

Full Circle Community Engagement

What is Full Circle?

Inspired by the success of 2016’s citizen-driven production of OUR TOWN, HVS established Full Circle: a full-time, year-round programming initiative to build and sustain community through radically participatory art-making. We know that what makes the Hudson Valley so special is the people who live here, and Full Circle reflects and celebrates our diverse, vibrant, and creative community, across every county in this region and on both sides of this river. So, we’ve launched this new program to make theater with and by the people who live here.

Community Bake-Off 2024
Created by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, the Bake-Off is a community playwriting event in which participants are given a list of “ingredients” surrounding a theme to incorporate into their play to inspire creativity. Learn more about the Bake Off and to Register for writing workshops taking place throughout September.

Why are we doing this?

We believe that making art together makes our community stronger, more connected, and more resilient. By making art together, we’re solving problems collectively, practicing collaboration, taking risks, building ensemble, and exercising our civic engagement muscles as one community. Also, it’s a lot of fun.

What’s happening next?

What's already happened?

Highland Lights (annual)
Highland Lights is a local tradition where we create theme-based lanterns and, in a winding procession, explore new pathways that rediscovers and reflects (literally) on the waterways of the Festival’s rolling hillside home. In partnership with Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles, of Processional Arts Workshop, lead a month of free workshops in which participants can collaborate to design, build, and animate lanterns.

The RIP VAN WINKLE Project (2018)
Holding a unique place in local Hudson Valley/Catskills lore, Washington Irving’s rambling Rip Van Winkle was reimagined by writer/director Seth Bockley and a cast of 40+ citizen actors and musicians. In the months leading up to the show’s opening, Hudson Valley residents joined HVS for a series of free storytelling and design workshops in six river communities, contributed household materials for and assisted in building the found-object world of RIP VAN WINKLE, volunteered their time behind the scenes, and celebrated their neighbors onstage in four free performances.

Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN (2016)
This large-scale community-centered production, featured 36 citizen actors and 3 professionals. Our Town by Thornton Wilder is a play set in the small fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, focusing on the everyday lives of its residents. The story spans from the early 1900s through three key acts that explore daily life, love and marriage, and death. Wilder uses a minimalist stage and the character of the Stage Manager to guide the audience through time, highlighting the beauty and transience of ordinary moments. The play emphasizes themes of human connection, the passage of time, and the importance of appreciating life’s fleeting experiences.