Highland Lights returns, as we build on this new local tradition, creating new lanterns and exploring new pathways through our hillside home. This year’s procession completes a trilogy of environmental themes that began with earth (“A Reawakened Landscape”), looked up to the sky, with last year’s  “Ad Astra”,  and now explores the waters with “Full Fathom Five”.  Drawing inspiration from the streams, wetlands, lakes, and rivers of the Hudson River Estuary, “Full Fathom Five” brings a host of local fish and native aquatic wonders to life as articulated lantern puppets.

Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles, of Processional Arts Workshop, return to lead a month of free, drop-in sessions in which participants can collaborate to design, build, and animate an underwater world in motion. Flanked by poetic fragments evoking aquatic themes, a host of glowing sturgeon, oysters, shad, blue crabs, and other creatures will converge on April 20 in a winding procession that rediscovers and reflects (literally) on the waterways of the Festival’s rolling hillside home.  As the Festival embarks on a visionary ecological restoration of the former Garrison golf course, “Full Fathom Five” reminds us of transformational power of water – to shape land, to nurture new life, and to return us to our most basic elements – even as we recognize the unprecedented fragility of our rivers, streams, and oceans in a changing climate.

RSVP

✨ For the performance on April 20 we will need help carrying these beautiful creations. To sign up to carry please email Smcnall@hvshakespeare.org.