From their web site:

Come join us for the first Gypsy Nomads live DVD filming on March 25th 2010! Scott and Samantha will be celebrating 10 years of creative collaboration and what better way than to have a concert at a mid 1800s brewery!

We need the most fun, lively, creative, rambunctious gypsy cabaret fans to come out and play with us. Costumes are a must to enter the filming area which will be in the “Bottling Works Tavern” a space that just oozes atmosphere. A vaudeville-esque stage with balcony and the entire room is wooded with original post and beam construction. A perfect location for an evening a la Moulin Rouge! Costumes galore PLEASE! Faerie/Ren/Steampunk/Gypsy/Vaudeville/Cabaret – go all the way!

We will have other guest performers whose talents will delight you throughtout the evening, the hypnotizing belly dancing of Elizabeth Muise, the myriad talents of the stiltwalking, glass ball contact juggling of the lovely Noelle Burk [of Cirque Voila fame], the entrancing fire and poi spinning of Adam Beatty and much more!

The location is amazing. A brewery that was built by German immigrant, Alois Bube, in the 1800s. The inside is like walking into Europe, you will instantly be transported. Don’t miss this magickal event! This is a 21+ event.

Tickets are $20. For more information, see their web site.

Her live transformations of sand on a back-lit table, shown on a screen projection using a camera above her, is just beautiful.

Her name is Kseniya Simonova, is just 24 years old and while she’s a trained artist, has been drawing in sand for only about a year.  She uses a very expensive volcanic sand from Italy which she found works best for this medium.

Here is her winning live drawing performance:

The story itself does not need a context to follow, but for the Ukraine it was a well known story – the Soviet battle against the Nazi’s during the last World War.  For those in that side of the world, the personal battle between the Soviets and the Nazi’s is referred to as the Great Patriotic War and is considered separate from the wider WWII theater.

She won the top prize for the show and gave the vast majority of her prize money to charity, and in fact entered the contest to help save a young girl suffering from a staphylococcus infection and, she claimed, no doctor in the Ukraine wanted to treat her.  While the young girl died on her way to a hospital in Italy, she started a charity with her mother to work with other children who need similar help.

Her performance drawing honoring the child Nika Fesenko is here:

Lakes Theatre Collective (LTC) recently presented a series of one-act plays at the Warwick Valley Community Center in Warwick, NY. Aptly entitled: “Absurdly Yours,” the short scripts provided a glimpse into the absurdities of our modern world and also supplied great comic relief from these self-same incongruities.

“You got something better to do in this cage?” one chimp asks another chimp in, Words Words, Words a one-act play by David Ives.

These chimps have been issued typewriters in the hopes that perhaps provided with enough time and, presumably, bananas, one of them might actually succeed in producing Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This proposition comes from an idea originally put forth by biologist, Julian Huxley in the 1800s, regarding his experiments with pure chance. As the talented actors performed this assumption onstage, embodying the thoughts and “words” of those self-same chimps, the Ives play produced itself a myriad of laughs.

The LTC cast also performed three other one-act plays: The Dancer That Had No Feet by J.L. Christa, Catastrophe, by S.L. Beckett and Victoria Station by H. Pinter.

In the latter play, Jonathan T. Cook as the controller in a London taxicab station and Josh Morris as the Driver were comic standouts. All of the actors involved in this production were quite up to par to the material and the scripts provided plenty of intellectual fuel for later discussion.

LTC is managed and directed by Jonathan Teague Cook and Cynthia Anderson-Cook and was formed to bring original and existing plays to the stage and to perform these works throughout Orange County. The plays are meant to be performed in theatres, health care facilities, schools, senior centers and managed health care facilities in an effort to bring entertainment and a forum for discussion to a wide audience.

“We started the collective in April this year. Our first productions were two one-act comedies; Sean O’Casey’s: A Bedtime Story and John Millington Synge’s: In The Shadow of the Glen. In 2010 we plan on presenting an original play; Donna Spector’s: Strip Talk on the Boulevard and we are planning to perform the two one-act Irish comedies again around St Patrick’s Day,” says Cook.

The not-for-profit company, LTC, is supported by Community 2000 in Warwick and inquiries about how-to-get involved in either hosting or performing in an upcoming performance can be made to jteacook@aol.com.

Bonus:  TLC started posting vidoes of their productions on Youtube.  Here is another of their plays from this series, The Dancer Who Had No Feet.  You can also subscribe the TLC’s future postings if you have a Google/Youtube account.

The editors here at Arts in Orange are happy to introduce you to Eileen Fanning Fisher.   A freelance writer and journalist who has written for the Times-Herald Record, Middletown, NY. and who was formerly employed by the Daily News in NYC, Eileen will be attending and reviewing events in Orange County and the Hudson Valley for you.

Eileen is also the author of a non-fiction book: Read for the Cure and won a 2009 NJ State Council on the Arts Prose Fellowship for a submission from her soon to be published novel: The Watercress Girl. She is also editor/publisher of The Thing Magazine; a local newsprint publication that featured area artists and writers and for which she was awarded two Puffin Grants. Her magazine was named after an Emily Dickinson poem: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”

A full production of classic Christmas stories and songs to celebrate the holiday season, a Christmas Celebration was conceived and directed by Presby Players and ART artistic director Jeffrey Stocker

Performes will be at the newly renovated Marsh Hall at the First Presbyterian Church on Sussex Street in downtown Port Jervis Friday December 18th at 7:30pm, Saturday December 19th at 3pm and 7:30pm, and Sunday December 20th at 3pm.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door .The highlight of the production will include a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” performed by members of ART and the Presby Players. For information and ticket reservations call 845-856-1231.

“650 participating theatre companies offered more than 65,000 tickets to 1,700 performances”

Why?  To energize future audiences.  TCG believes if you want to grow theater in your area, you need to show people why theater is worth going to.  And the only way to do that is to give them a test drive.  And their results?

• 77% of those attending Free Night have gone to a theatre since the program, including 33% of those who only attend the theatre infrequently (two or fewer times or less). Further, 34% say they go to the theater more now than before the program and 86% of them attribute additional attendance to the Free Night program
• According to the online survey of the 2008 Free Night patrons, required when they made their ticket reservation, the program continues to attract a significant number of people who fall into non-traditional theatre participant categories, including infrequent theatregoers, young people, less educated, non-white and those with lower household incomes.
• Of those trying a new theatre during Free Night 2008, 33% returned to that theatre and purchased tickets, including 2% who purchased a subscription, showing the benefit of the program to the participating theatres

” In past years, over 3/4 of the people who participate have never been to the host theater before. And almost half of them come back and pay full price. Teresa Eyring says a substantial number are young, ethnically diverse, and don’t have a lot of disposable income. ‘What we’ve been able to determine is we’re reaching a new audience that does not meet the traditional profile of theatre-goer.’ “  – from “Free Theater Night Brings New Audiences“, a report by Jeff Lunden on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

Convincing enough?

If you run a theater, large or small, we emplore you to join this event.  We know the actual date is months away (in October most likely, the actual date hasn’t been mentioned at the time of writing this) but if you want to be a part of this, you need to act now.  This isn’t ad hoc.  If you want to be an official part of the program and the marketing muscle it is creating, you must contact Robert Zuckerman of NYSCA who is acting as the statewide representative.

If you would like to discuss other ways to increase your audience and grow a diverse theater culture in Orange County, contact us as well.  We’d love to talk with you.

Please contact Reine Gray if you would like more information.  And we all hope her former teacher a speedy recovery -

Regine Gray
Owner / Director
Drama Kids International
Orange County, New York
Phone: 845-510-5700
Fax:     845-510-3045
Email:  dramakidsocny@yahoo.com
www.dramakids.com

Warwick Community Center
11 Hamilton Ave
Warwick, NY

For more information and to purchase tickets, cal the Lakes Theater Collective at 845.595.1172

November 13 and 14 at 8:00 PM
November 15 at 5:00 PM

Doors 1 hour before show
$18/15 for students and seniors
(845)-569-8593 for tickets

Click for Poster

The Search for the Rivermonster

Friday, November 13th. Show starts 8pm.

All-new stand-alone radio play performed live at the Royal Pavilion Theatre at the Lycian Centre in Sugar Loaf, NY by the Air Pirates Radio Theater, voted BEST Local Troupe 2007 by the Times Herald-Record Readers Poll. This special show will be recorded live for airing.