Mohonk Mountain Stage Company, Inc.
MMSC
Art For The Ears
spring breakA Last-Minute Dinner Invitation, A Recycled Bob Sez and Decade-Old News From MMSC!
In This Issue
The Ideal Orator
Poets of the Lake
Chekhov Mini-Festival
Dinner With Friends
Bob Sez
Spring Break '08
spring break
Here's the rest of the itinerary...
The Ideal Orator 1904
Lecturer
May 24
@ St. Andrew's Church


An evening of elocution,
recitations profound & comical, patriotic and historical.

Read more...

Poets of the Lake
Poets of the Lake
June 7
@ St. Andrew's Church


English poets Coleridge, Southey and  Wordsworth lived in England's "Lake District" in the late 1700's and early 1800's. The best of the Poets of the Lake read by the best of MMSC readers.
 
Chekhov Mini-Festival
picasso
June 20, 21, 27 & 28 
@ Unison Arts Center


A two week-end event celebrating the masterworks of Anton Chekhov including performances of A Reluctant Tragic Hero, On The Harmful Effects of Tobacco and The Three Sisters.

picasso
 
Featured in
Dinner With Friends
Bruce Pileggi
Having played opposite each other as Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe in Alfred Stieglitz Loves O'Keeffe, Bruce Pileggi and Christine Crawfis reinvent their on-stage relationship as Gabe and Karen, the perfect couple, in Dinner With Friends.

Christine Crawfis
 
MMSC Newsletter Archive
bob's desk
Visit Our On-line Archive
Make Those Dinner Reservations Now.
Greetings!

April showers bring...another week-end of MMSC culinary delights, a retake on an old Bob Sez column, and an amusing look back at ten years ago with MMSC.

Great to see so many of your smiling faces at last Friday's ODDLY ENOUGH, the premiere of our new publication, Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley: Actors & Writers: ODD SHORTS. It's a beautiful book and it's now on sale. Order yours today.
 
And now - here's that aforementioned dinner invitation.
Post No Bills
April 11 & 12
@ Unison Arts Center


Can your marriage survive
your best friend's divorce?


Gabe and Karen. Beth and Tom. Two wonderful couples, four exceptionally close friends. They had planned on eating, drinking, and parenting their way into old age together.
 
In this funny and poignant piece, playwright Donald Margulies weighs the costs of breaking up and of staying together - with wit, compassion, and consummate skill.
 
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
 
Directed by Robert G. Miller
 
With
Elizabeth Barrows, Christine Crawfis, Michael Frohnhoefer and Bruce Pileggi
 
"This is a smart and subtle play that understand there are no easy answers as people evolve and relationships settle into routine."-David Kaufman, Daily News
 
"Donald Margulies has drawn one of the most complex and convincing portraits of a marriage in recent memory."-The Wall Street Journal
 
"Dinner with Friends is entertainment as succulent as it is sobering."-John Simon, New York Magazine

Read more...
 
Bob Sez - From The Producer (originally published in Spring 1998 and still true today!)

Audiences. Why do they do it? They'll drive you nuts. You spend weeks picking a play you know they'll just love, and they inexplicably ignore it (or, in the immortal words of producer Sam Harris, "if the public doesn't want to come, there's nothing you can do to stop them.") And then they flock to hear someone sit on a stool and read 400 year old sonnets.

But why is it important that they come? Why do we care? Should we not be happy with our work no matter the response? Obviously if no one comes, we can't pay the postage for this newsletter, but it goes way beyond that.

There is a unity between performer and audience, a unity both physical and metaphysical. An audience breathes with the actors and the actors feel and need that rhythm. That living, breathing event we call "theater" does not take place on stage, but in a "mystic gulf" (credit Richard Wagner) that exists between actor and audience. The magic hangs in the air, is shared moment by moment and then vanishes. A sit-com's laugh track will roll on no matter how many people are listening or watching. But theater without a living audience just ain't.

So, bringing this unpredictable,  but indispensable, force together with our performers is a life's work. A lot of times we fail: we build it, and they do not come. Sometimes they come, and the magic doesn't happen (and we console ourselves with talk about "art" and what a boon to society we artists are), but sometimes they come, and we are ready, and that wonderful spark is struck. And as always, I am astonished by the wonderment of people assembled, creating with us a moment apart from the ordinary, that both lifts and unites us, if only for a little while.

Come. Share the magic that is MMSC.

 
And speaking of things culinary, this is a great time of year to be a gardener. The garden is all possibilities and no  problems. It exists in the perfection of fantasy, unsullied by thoughtless bugs, inconsiderate weather, and  insensitive molds, mildews, wilts and rots. The peas, various greens, beets and turnips are in the ground. No zucchini squash this year, so hold the recipes , please.

Hope to see you this week-end at Dinner.

 
Sincerely,
 

Bob and all of the good folks at MMSC

Robert Miller, Producing Director
Mohonk Mountain Stage Company, Inc.
Sylvia Asks The Question..
Sylvia
  1. What do they use to ship Styrofoam?
  2. Why is abbreviation such a long word?
  3. What's another word for thesaurus?
  4. How do you know when it is time to tune your bagpipes?