Finished your Netflix queue and unsure what to watch next? Uninspired by the offerings at the local movie theater? Here’s an antidote to the summer screen blahs: live readings of electrifying fiction over two days at Ancram Center for the Arts.
On Saturday, July 13 at 7:30pm, Crystal Radio Sessions, the curated fiction reading series back for its sixth season at the Center, will feature these notable writers: Jo Ann Beard (Maybe It Happened and The Longest Night); Jackelyn Hoy (Breaking); and Kyra Simone (The Smallest of Hearths). Actors Thomas Rothacker and Erin Lindsey Krom will conjure a Paris apartment fire, a childhood afternoon, a woman’s goodbye to her best friend, and an encounter with a mysterious babysitter.
On Sunday, July 14, at 3:00pm, Ancram Center will host a 150th birthday celebration for Willa Cather (1873-1947), one of the most singular and treasured American writers of the 20th century. A peer of Edith Wharton who was admired by Henry James, Hemingway and Faulkner, Cather was an author who wrote against the grain of her own cultural moment, when Modernist experimentation was in vogue. Sticking to her own style, Cather wrote in steadfast, even plain language about the lives of settlers on the prairies during the homesteading era of the late 19th century. In recent years scholars have rediscovered Cather’s groundbreaking fiction (O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, One of Ours, The Professor’s House, Death Comes for the Archbishop) and consider her to be a canonical American writer. This performance, created in partnership with the Willa Cather Foundation and directed by Darrah Cloud, features readings from Cather’s fiction and letters performed by actors Dean Temple and Anne Undeland. The performance follows readings at Symphony Space (hosted by Ken Burns, a huge advocate for her work), Boston Athenaeum, New York Society Library, Kaatsbaan Arts Center, and UCLA.
Tickets for both events are available at www.ancramcenter.org.
Ancram Center for the Arts is an award-winning theater located in New York’s Hudson Valley. Housed in an historic Grange Hall, Ancram Center has since 2016 presented groundbreaking theater and musical performances by nationally recognized theater artists. Ancram Center for the Arts receives significant annual support from the New York State Council on the Arts and in 2023 was awarded a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. For tickets and information visit www.ancramcenter.org.