Community FULL CIRCLE Workshops Announced

RIP VAN WINKLE; OR, CUT THE OLD MOON INTO STARS
Written and Directed by Seth Bockley
Freely Adapted from the Story by Washington Irving
On-Site Performances at Boscobel House and Gardens August 31, September 2, 3
Off-Site Performance September 1 (location to be announced)

It’s a familiar story: an indolent dreamer falls asleep high in the Catskills, wakes after twenty year, and returns to a world he doesn’t recognize. But in Seth Bockley’s new take on this old tale, Rip isn’t the only one rambling. In the New Dutch village of Falling Waters, we meet Rip’s adventurous daughter and her hard-working mother, tinkers, butchers, innkeepers, tall-tale-telling wives, a few seafaring ghosts, the bespectacled author behind the original story, and the beating heart of a community poised somewhere between the distant past and the not-so-distant future. This world premiere adaptation is the first-ever mainstage commission by Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.

Free tickets for all performances of RIP VAN WINKLE will be made available online beginning August 1, and via HVSF’s traveling box office in select locations on select dates in August. With just four performances scheduled, ticket availability will be highly limited. Visit hvshakespeare.org to learn more and subscribe to HVSF’s email newsletter for updates.

Celebrating its 32nd summer season in 2018, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) is a critically ac-claimed (The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal), professional, non-profit theater company based in Garrison, NY, one-hour north of Manhattan. The Festival has established a reputation for lucid, engaging, and highly inventive productions staged under an iconic, open-air Theater Tent overlooking the Hudson River at historic Boscobel House and Gardens. In recent years, the Festival has also ventured beyond the Tent, touring its work to other venues throughout the Hudson Valley as part of its HVSF On the Road series, transferring productions to other theaters, engaging its community through radically participatory art-making, and reaching over 60,000 students and educators annually through its year-round Education programs.

HVSF’s mission is to engage the widest possible audience in a fresh conversation about what is essential in Shakespeare’s plays. The company’s theater lives in the here and now, at the intersection of the virtuosity of the actor, the imagination of the audience, and the inspiration of the text.

ELIZABETH AUDLEY, Director of Community Engagement/Associate Producer: A recent transplant to the Hudson Valley, Elizabeth has worked in professional theater for over 20 years, as an actor, director, producer, and writer. Concurrently, she’s worked as a resource consultant with dozens of arts organizations across the country – from flagship cultural institutions to grassroots community centers – through Arts Action Research, a non-profit arts management consulting group. In her early career, Elizabeth was a resident company member at Hedgerow Theatre (America’s first resident repertory company) and a member of the Development department at Pennsylvania Ballet. In the last ten years, she began working as a community organizer, on a national level as an organizer for the 2008 Obama Campaign, and in her local community as a Certified Urban Gardener – supporting and facilitating community greening efforts in diverse Brooklyn neighborhoods. She’s been a teaching artist for theaters in Milwaukee, Los Angeles, New York, and beyond, and has directed and taught acting at community colleges and other public universities, where her focus was ensemble-based, devised, and original student-written work. She has a BA from Brown University, and an MFA from Ohio University, with additional training from SITI Company, Pig Iron Theater, The Actor’s Studio, Fiasco Theater, The Alvin Ailey Center, LaMama, and The American Globe. She lives in Beacon with her husband, Martin Anderson, and their dog, Hazel.

SETH BOCKLEY (pronounced “BOAK-ley”), Writer/Director of RIP VAN WINKLE: Over the past decade, Seth has established himself as an original voice in the American theater. He is equally confident as an adapter — translating to the stage fiction such as George Saunders’ story Jon and Roberto Bolaño’s megalithic novel 2666, as well as writing original plays — deeply felt dramatic and multimedia work such as Wilderness, the musical February House (a collaboration with composer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane), and the puppet opera Laika’s Coffin. As a director, he has acquired a reputation for visually compelling and imaginative interpretations of contemporary plays, and for guiding new play development and world premiere productions with rigor and care. He is equally confident with the texts of German neo-expressionists like Marius von Mayenburg (The Ugly One) and Ewald Palmetshofer (hamlet is dead. no gravity) as with new American plays like Lauren Yee’s Samsara, Philip Dawkins’ Failure: A Love Story, Jason Grote’s 1001 and Civilization (all you can eat) and (with Devon de Mayo) The Twins Would Like To Say. Beyond theater, his creative work includes interdisciplinary projects such as “The Picture Book”, a community based visual arts and storytelling spectacle in rural Donegal, Ireland; as well as video direction, event design, and onstage emceeing. Winner of two ‘Jeff’ awards for Best Adaptation (Jon and 2666), and a graduate of Brown University, Seth teaches at the University of Chicago, and is an artist in residence at the Goodman. sethbockley.com

SANDRA GOLDMARK, 2018 Scenic Consultant / Set Design for RIP VAN WINKLE: Sandra Goldmark is a designer, teacher, and entrepreneur whose work focusses on material culture and sustainability. Recent designs include the premiere of The Book of Will at the Denver Center and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Sandra is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Barnard College, where she also serves as Director of Sustainability and Environment for the campus. Sandra is the Founder of Fixup, a social enterprise that re-imagines repair to create local jobs and build a sustainable model of household consumption.