This year, PS21 expanded into a theater for all seasons in the Hudson Valley. Designed for performances in all seasons, our flexible theater’s Black Box configuration is conceived as a home for intimate-scaled productions. Its flexible floor-plan, state-of-the-art LED lighting, and sophisticated sound system make it an ideal environment for innovative work in all genres. In addition, the green room, dressing rooms, kitchen, and nearby artists’ housing have established PS21 as a sought-after venue for residencies by theater and dance companies.

In early December, acclaimed playwright/director Pascal Rambert arrives from France for a weeklong residency with actors Jim Fletcher and Ismail Ibn Conner and writer and translator Nicholas Elliott.  Fletcher, who has acted in Rambert’s two-character Love’s End (Clôture de l’Amour), will develop the role of the protagonist in The Art of Theater. Conner, who has performed widely in Centre Dramatique National Orléans’ production of Jean Genet’s Splendid’s, will rehearse the searing monologueWith My Own Hands. The two plays will be presented as works in progress on December 10, before moving to the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival and returning to PS21 in January, 2022. 

The Art of Theater is Pascal Rambert’s 40 minute manifesto on the nature of his craft, but instead of monologuing to the audience, he is joined on stage by a dog, who acts as the patient recipient of the actor’s [Jim Fletcher] ruminations. 

Pascal Rambert is a French writer and director for the stage and screen. Rambert’s theater plays have been staged in Europe, North America, Asia, Russia, South America, the Middle East. He has directed several operas in France and in the United States. Since January 2017 he has been the partner artist at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.

Katiana Rangel and Lori Goldston will join Jim Fletcher for a second residency (December 11–17), rehearsing Sarah Kane’s apocalyptic Blasted. Rangel will direct; cellist/composer Lori Goldston (of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged), who improvised the score to Rangel and Fletcher’s Ama (The Woman Diver) in 2018, will create the music. After work-in-progress performances of Blasted on December 15–16, the play will return to PS21 for a full staging in February, 2022.