Bard SummerScape is under way, and the performing arts festival will feature the world premiere of a play opening this weekend. WAMC’s Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Allison Dunne spoke with the play’s curator and lead actress.
SummerScape, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, will present Love in the Wars, a play based on a Heinrich von Kleist drama adapted by John Banville. The play is part of an exploration of “Schubert and His World.” Gideon Lester is curator of the dance and theatre productions for the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson. Lester explains the connection between Kleist’s play and the works of Composer Franz Schubert.
Lester explains why he and his colleagues selected the play.
Lester, who also is director of theater programs at Bard College, calls Kleist the Shakespeare of Germany.
Obie Award-winner Birgit Huppoch is tackling the challenge. She stars as the Amazon queen Penthesilea. And here’s her reaction to Lester’s pretty young actors comment.
She says she turned to myriad sources to prepare for her role as a mythological heroine.
Huppoch says the role is physically challenging.
It is Huppoch’s first time performing at the Fisher Center in Dutchess County, though she grew up not terribly far down the Hudson River, in Ossining, in Westchester County.
Huppuch stars alongside One Life to Live’s Chris Stack in the world premiere of John Banville’s play. Obie Award winner Ken Schmoll directs.
Bard SummerScape 2014 consists of seven weeks of opera, music, theater, dance, film, and cabaret at the Fischer Center for Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
