ANCRAM, NY [October 21, 2022] – On Saturday, October 29 at 7 pm, Ancram Opera House presents the next installment of their Crystal Radio Sessions series when actors familiar to Ancram audiences read works by local authors live on the Opera House stage. Following the readings, the audience is invited to join the artists around the firepit for refreshments and a post-performance toast.
Curated by Millerton resident Ashley Mayne, Crystal Radio Sessions is a reading series showcasing the poetry, fiction, personal essays and creative non-fiction of established and emerging writers from the Hudson Valley. This autumn installment features the work of Mayne and three local authors. Ancram alum Cheyenne See (The Snow Queen) and Abuzar Farrukh (INVASION!) will read from works by Rachel Aydt, Jacklyn Gilbert, and Jasmine Dreame Wagner, and Mayne.
Farrukh will be reading Mayne’s stories Scarsdale which asks the question “How well do you know him, really?”; and The Coat, in which the narrator is bequeathed an old coat about which they ruminate, “I didn’t know what animal the coat was made of. It was the color of my own hair.”
He will also read Daniel Gentle by Jasmine Dreame Wagner in which a timeless violence surges through the ground of Texas hill country into the life of a young man and the girl he loves.
See will be reading Puppet Kite Window by Rachel Aydt, in which a reclusive neighborhood fixture works out her obsession with a neighbor; and Trespassing by Jacklyn Gilbert, wherein the boundary between the pregnant body and nature blur through a writer’s search for a place of residency in the Hudson Valley.
Tickets are $25 each, available at www.ancramoperahouse.org or by calling (518) 329-0114
Crystal Radio Sessions is generously sponsored by Copake Wine Works and Oblong Books.
AT-A-GLANCE
Puppet Kite Window by Rachel Aydt
Trespassing by Jaclyn Gilbert
Read by Cheyenne See
Daniel Gentle by Jasmine Dreame Wagner
Scarsdale and The Coat by Ashley Mayne
Read by Abuzar Farrukh
Saturday, October 29 at 7 pm
Ancram Opera House
1330 County Route 7, Ancram, NY 125o2
Tickets are $25 available at ancramoperahouse.org
About Crystal Radio Sessions
Curated by Millerton resident Ashley Mayne, Crystal Radio Sessions is a reading series showcasing the poetry, fiction, personal essays and creative non-fiction of established and emerging writers from the Hudson Valley.
About Ashley Mayne
Ashley Mayne’s work has appeared in Fence, Post Road, Juked, Peripheries, Blight Podcast, Metambesen, and elsewhere. She edits fiction for Fence and is one of the creators of Crystal Radio. She lives in Millerton. https://www.ashleymayne.com/
About Abuzar Farrukh
Abuzar Farrukh is an actor, born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. Abuzar is honored and super thrilled to be back at Ancram Opera House. Select credits: INVASION! (Ancram Opera House), Disgraced(Chester Theatre Company), Refugee (Joakim Interfest, Serbia), Mitigating Damages (Castillo Theatre), Much Ado About Nothing (Brown Box Theatre Project). He holds a BA in Theatre from UMass Amherst, where he was the recipient of the Ed Golden Acting Award. A special thank you to Jeffrey Mousseau & Paul Ricciardi for this opportunity.
About Cheyenne See
Cheyenne See is a graduate of the Dutchess Community College Performing Arts program, on staff at The Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck where she is currently directing a children’s production of A Christmas Carol, and lead female vocalist of the Hudson Valley’s most sought after Top 40 Country cover band (hillbillyparadeband.com). Awards: 2015 Richard Maltby Jr. Award for Musical Theatre Excellence, 2016 Maltby nominee, two-time Irene Ryan [acting] nominee. Recent credits: Bella Manningham in Gaslight, Woman 1 in Songs for a New World, and Snow Queen in The Snow Queen at Ancram Opera House.
About Rachel Aydt
Rachel Aydt is a writer based in New York City. She teaches at the New School University, and the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The White Review, Post Road, Green Mountains Review, Fictive Dream, and others. Twitter: @Rachelrooo Insta: @RachelNYCroo.
About Jaclyn Gilbert
Jaclyn Gilbert is the author of Late Air, published by Little A in 2018. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, was a 2019 artist in residence at the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock, and her short fiction, essays, and book reviews have appeared in Post Road Magazine, Tin House, Lit Hub, Paper Brigade, and elsewhere. Most recently, she founded Drift(less) Literary as an agenting collective to support writers of genre-defying work in partnership with independent presses based locally and abroad.
About Jasmine Dreame Wagner
Jasmine Dreame Wagner is an American writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of On a Clear Day, a collection of poems and lyric essays deemed “a capacious book of traveler’s observations, cultural criticism, and quarter-life-crisis notes” by Stephanie Burt at The New Yorker and “a radical cultural anthropology of the wild time we’re living in” by Iris Cushing at Hyperallergic. Wagner’s prose has recently appeared in BOMB Magazine, Catapult, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Joyland, and the 2022 Short Story Advent Calendar (Hingston & Olsen Publishing). Her third poetry collection is forthcoming from Omnidawn Publishing. She is currently at work on a novel.
2022 SPONSORS
The 2022 season at the Ancram Opera House is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The Ancram Center for the Arts restoration project is supported in part by a grant from New York State Homes and Community Renewal’s New York Main Street program, Ancram Preservation Group, NY State Council on the Arts, and private donations.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Ancram Center is located on unceded, ancestral lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok, the Peoples of the Waters That Are Never Still, and overlooks the Roeliff Jansen Kill, which was once called the Sonkippog (cooling water). We pay tribute to and honor the history of those who precede us here.
ABOUT THE ANCRAM OPERA HOUSE
Located in southern Columbia County, the Ancram Opera House presents a mix of contemporary theatre, alternative cabaret, and community programs. The Opera House was erected in 1927 as Grange #955, a chapter of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, a movement founded shortly after the Civil War to advance methods of agriculture and address the needs of farmers. In 1972, the grange was repurposed as a performance hall presenting operatic fare. AOH offers audiences a unique opportunity to directly engage, up close, with visionary theatre artists at the top of their field who are rarely seen in our region. For more information visit www.ancramoperahouse.org.