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Above is a slide show for our 2012 production of American Buffalo by David Mamet.
Click on the image above for a full-screen slideshow
Scroll down for details and synopses of our productions to date - run your mouse over the images for alternates. See our Gallery page for more photographs and slides from our productions. With the exception of Scenes from a Misunderstanding and Oedipus after Colonus, The Woodstock Players productions, including artwork and graphic design, were designed and, mostly, created by resident designer Claire Lambe.
The production premièred at the Center for Performing arts at Rhinebeck, NY, in a black box theater, then moved to the Kleinert/James Art Center in Woodstock which is an all white space - this created quite different effects for the staging of the piece.
Photography for this production was by Phaedra Fowler (Rhinebeck) and Claire Lambe (Woodstock).
Written and directed by Carey Harrison.
Produced by The Woodstock Players in June 2011
Video interview with director Carey Harrison
[One of the actors, Violet Snow, wrote a very entertaining diary for The Woodstock Times on her experience rehearsing the play, click HERE for the article.]
Synopsis: The 17th century Jewish philosopher
Baruch Spinoza, too radical for his time, has been cursed by the Elders of his
native Amsterdam to live forever - and, as the Eternal Jew, experience to the
full his heretical belief that life and death are fundamentally the same thing.
Now it's 1937, and Spinoza is 305 years old and sick of living. But, as
decreed by the curse, while there are Jews, he has to live. When he hears
about Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews, Spinoza delivers
himself to the Gestapo in the hope that he can vanish with his race. But will
he? Can he? The painter Salvador Dali, a friend of Spinoza's, tells the story of
his own attempt to persuade Hermann Goering to rescue Spinoza from the death
camps. Midget In A Catsuit Reciting Spinoza is a tale of triumph, of a
race that genocide could not eliminate, and a thinker whose liberal philosophy
still inspires us today.
Midget In A Catsuit Reciting Spinoza is a play within a play, filled with characters who are simultaneously other characters: Nazis who are also pantomime rats, a pantomime cat who might also be God, a Nazi puppet-master who is also a pantomime dame, and a pretty girl from Ohio who is also the principal boy and who thinks that she can save the world from imminent disaster by sheer force of her personality.
Click here for a slide show of Midget in a Catsuit...
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MAGUS, written and directed by Carey Harrison, was our inaugural production as The Woodstock Players in 2010, it premièred at the Byrdcliffe Theater and also played at the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck in 2011.
Synopsis: Magus an historical fantasia that brings Franz Kafka, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes to 16th century Prague, where Kafka's mentally deranged sister believes she is married to Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Hoping to dispel her delusions and return her to the present, Kafka enters his sister's world, where he gets caught up in the intrigues of its 16th century inhabitants and begins to fear for his own sanity. In MAGUS - an ancient word for magician - Carey Harrison played the title role of Sir John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I's tutor, personal astrologer, and, in this play, guest of the court of the Emperor in Prague.
Click here for slide-show of Magus
Synopsis: Magus an historical fantasia that brings Franz Kafka, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes to 16th century Prague, where Kafka's mentally deranged sister believes she is married to Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Hoping to dispel her delusions and return her to the present, Kafka enters his sister's world, where he gets caught up in the intrigues of its 16th century inhabitants and begins to fear for his own sanity. In MAGUS - an ancient word for magician - Carey Harrison played the title role of Sir John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I's tutor, personal astrologer, and, in this play, guest of the court of the Emperor in Prague.
Click here for slide-show of Magus
In addition to Mr. Harrison: at Byrdcliffe were Peter Rae, Brittany Sokolowski, Kris Lundburg, Deborah Tiberio, Trey Kay, Mark Kanter, Philip X Levine, and Wiley Gorn.
At CPA Rhinebeck were George Conrad, Brittany Sokolowski, Naomi Hard, Deborah Tiberio, Richard Bennett, Mark Kanter, Philip Levine, and Rudi Azank.
At CPA Rhinebeck were George Conrad, Brittany Sokolowski, Naomi Hard, Deborah Tiberio, Richard Bennett, Mark Kanter, Philip Levine, and Rudi Azank.
Stage Manager: Tracy Carney
Photography: Chris Carney, Chiara Harrison Lambe, Claire Lambe
Scenes From a Misunderstanding was written by Carey Harrison, directed by Henry Akona, and produced by Edward Einhorn for Untitled Theater Company #61, and premiered at the Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas in New York City, May 2009.
Synopsis: the simmering differences between two professors come to a head: has one of them delayed replying to a letter on the subject of religion, or did the original letter-writer delay posting it? What would such delays signify? From humble beginnings, titanic quarrels are born—especially when the aggravated parties are Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
With Eric Olson, Mick O'Brien, and Kris Lundberg.
While Scenes From A Misunderstanding predates The Woodstock Players, its success both in NYC and Woodstock created the impetus for the founding of our theater company, so we are very grateful to Edward Einhorn of UTC #61 for commissioning this play. The play was brought to Woodstock and staged with a companion piece: Bad Boy, also by Carey Harrison, in June 2009.
Designs and photography were by UTC #61.
Click to return to the TOP of the page
Produced in September 2012 at the Byrdcliffe Theater, Endgame featured Carey Harrison
as Hamm, the blind tyrant, and Mikhail
Horowitz as his slave Clov, with David Smilow and Sarah Chodoff as
Hamm's parents Nagg and Nell. The play was directed by Andrea Cunliffe and stage-managed by Athena Baer.
Endgame photographs by Claire Lambe - mouse-over for another image - see Gallery for more images
Synopsis: Endgame belongs to the theatre of the Absurd with its emphasis on the idea of circularity and non-meaning Endgame highlights the theme of absurdism. The play is both tragic and comic at the same time. Endgame is set after some sort of apocalyptic disaster (though we never learn the details). Hamm, his servant Clov, his father Nagg, and his mother Nell are trapped together in Hamm's home, probably the basement. The essence of the play is the terrible dependence of people on each other in an end-of-the-world and end-of-life situation and what that can do to the soul.
*click here for slide show of Endgame
*click here for a terrific article about the play and this production*
by Carey Harrison
premièred in June 2012 at the Byrdcliffe Theater.
premièred in June 2012 at the Byrdcliffe Theater.
The play was directed by the author with stellar cast comprising: Violet Snow, Ric Bennett, Holly Graff and Joseph
Bongiorno. Stage managing was by Chiara Harrison Lambe and Phaedra Fowler
Synopsis: Hedgerow Specimen is the story of a woman who, one evening, kisses
her children goodnight and goes out for a walk, and keeps on walking
for 27 years. She travels on foot
across America, accompanied only by her pet snail. Her idyllic
journey comes to a halt when she witnesses a murder and is drawn into a
relationship with the murderer - and a new mission.
Click here for slide-show of Hedgerow Specimen
*See our UP Next page for audience responses to the premiere of the play in June*
Oedipus After Colonus
by Robert Kelly
by Robert Kelly
With Zoe Morris, Joane Tucker, Ricard Saudek, and Colista Turner as the Female Chorus of Athens, the play premièred in NYC at HERE Theater. For the Woodstock Production Joane Tucker, who was otherwise engaged, was replaced by Crichton Atkinson as Antigone.
Mouse-over image for author Robert Kelly.
Synopsis: the play picks up where Sophocles's play Oedipus at Colonus ends. In Sophocles's play, Oedipus, old and blind, arrives on the arm of his daughter Antigone at Colonus, the place where Apollo had predicted that he would die. Oedipus after Colonus explodes the moment of death into an anarchic, sexual, and violent psychological space where the daughters and sisters of the infamous man who poked out his eyes enact weird fantasies and confront their grief.
Oedipus after Colonus from Dangerous Ground Productions was produced at the Byrdcliffe Theater by The Woodstock Players in September 2010. It was written by renowned poet - the bard of Bard - Robert Kelly and directed by Crichton Atkinson, with Carey Harrison as Oedipus, live sound design by Brenda Hutchinson and video design by Andrew Lush and Richard Gartrell. Set and Costumes were by Dangerous Ground productions.
[Click here for Links to Robert Kelly, Crichton Atkinson, Dangerous Ground Theater Company, and UTC # 61 - bottom of Guestbook page]
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CONTACT US:
Carey Harrison: Artistic Director - 845 417 8251
Claire Lambe: Company Manager - 845 901 2893
E-mail us HERE
For more info about us, check our our personal websites and journals:
Carey Harrison: www.midgetinacatsuit.com
Claire Lambe: http://Clairehl.livejournal.com
Carey Harrison: Artistic Director - 845 417 8251
Claire Lambe: Company Manager - 845 901 2893
E-mail us HERE
For more info about us, check our our personal websites and journals:
Carey Harrison: www.midgetinacatsuit.com
Claire Lambe: http://Clairehl.livejournal.com
