Mohonk Mountain Stage Company, Inc.
Mohonk Mountain Stage Company, Inc.
June 2008
Greetings!
 
Please join us as we close out our 14th season with a two week-end festival at Unison Arts Center. Up first is Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning Crimes of the Heart. But before we get to that...
 
 
An Extraordinary Moment
June 18, 1983
 
MillerWedding83
On Wednesday, June 18, 2008, Christine and I will have been married for 25 years!   All I can say is "What the hell happened?"  I have a vague recollection of the preacher saying, "Do you promise to  . . .blah blah blah," to which I'm sure I responded  "You betcha."  Next thing I knew I was up to my elbows in runny diapers, projectile vomit, trips to the emergency room, car pools, notes from teachers, graduations, college bills, second mortgages, second jobs, commencements and now, grandchildren.

Somewhere in between rushing to the hospital and writing tuition checks, we made a decision that has enriched 15 of those 25 years - we started Mohonk Mountain Stage Company.  Sharing so much of our marriage with our extended family of actors, writers and MMSC audience members has been truly extraordinary.  The plays, stories and poetry we have presented often reflected our own experiences, concerns and questions.  So, appropriately, we have chosen to close out this season with plays about family and marriage.

Crimes of the Heart is comedy about a trio of sisters whose family bonds survive a variety of unspeakable but hilarious catastrophes. The short comic plays of Anton Chekhov take the contrarian view of marriage,  as expressed best by Mae West:  Marriage is an institution, and I'm not ready to be institutionalized yet.

These plays, about ordinary people attempting to survive life's vicissitudes with humor and dignity,  are insightful and inspirational.

Here are a few other thoughts on marriage that seem to fit this moment:

Love is what you've been through with somebody. James Thurber

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong admit it;
Whenever you're right shut up.
Ogden Nash

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Thomas Edison

Marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. Samuel Johnson

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye-to-eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
Homer

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her, than inside it without her.  Adam, in Adam's Diary, Mark Twain


I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them - it was that promise. The Skin of Our Teeth,
Thornton Wilder


So, thanks to all of you for being part of our lives. Let's break out the champagne and celebrate - but not too much.  I have to be at the Social Security office first thing in the morning.

Bob Robert Miller

Robert Miller, Producing Director
Mohonk Mountain Stage Company, Inc.

Wedding Photo - Christ Episcopal Church, Bradenton, Florida. June 18, 1983. Christine, Bob, Noah, Liz and Josh (hiding underneath the flowers). Photo Credit: Anthony Heald.
 
 
A Chekhovian Festival of Ideas

A two week-end event celebrating the themes & masterworks of Anton Chekhov.

Crimes of the Heart
by Beth Henley
 
Crimes of the Heart logo

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

Granddaddy is in the hospital. Babe has shot her husband. Meg is having anxiety attacks and Lenny, on her birthday, tries desperately to hold the troubled family together. Set in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, five years after hurricane Camille, Beth Henley's touching and infectious dark comedy is passionate, witty and intelligent.

The reunion of the McGrath sisters in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, is joyful but troubling. Beth Henley blends comedy and pathos in this Chekhovian story of the sometimes frayed edges of sisterly bonds.

Directed by Christine Crawfis and featuring Janet Nurre, Zsuzsa Manna, Elizabeth Barrows, Julie Eads Woolley, Jack Kroll and Michael Frohnhoefer.

 
June 20 & 21, 2008
8 PM
Unison Arts Center, Mt. Rest Road, New Paltz
Save A Seat!
 
By Chekhov
3 Short one-acts or vaudevilles, all unmistakable comedies.
 
chekhovseated
In the first, A Reluctant Tragic Hero, our hero spends the summer in the country, but is driven to the brink of distraction by various demands to run errands in the city and bring back lots of odd items to the country with him.

The second, The Bear, pits an irritable creditor against an eternally-mourning young widow, culminating in pistols and romance.

The final piece, On The Harmfulness of Tobacco, is a lecture on the harmful effect of smoking given by Ivan Nyukhin, teacher of math, physics, chemistry, music, dance geography, history and literature at the Mutt Street Academy of Music and Boarding School.

Directed by Robert Miller and Christine Crawfis, the evening's antics feature Laurence Carr, Doug Woolley, Jack Kroll, Elizabeth Barrows, and Michael Frohnhoefer.


 
June 27 & 28
8 PM
Unison Arts Center, Mt. Rest Road, New Paltz
Save A Seat!
 
One Traveler, An Homage to Robert Frost
A Special 25h Anniversary Addition to MMSC's Summer Season
 
Don Wildy
And speaking of 25th Anniversary Celebrations...

Back by special demand, One Traveler, An Homage to Robert Frost, was first performed twenty-five years ago in Buffalo, NY.

It is a tribute to one of our most accomplished and appreciated American poets performed by one of MMSC's most beloved readers.

 


One Traveler
An Homage to Robert Frost
with
Don Wildy

Saturday, July 12, 2008
8 PM
St. Andrew's Church, Main Street, New Paltz
Reservations - 845-255-3102
 
About Us
MMSC celebrates ideas, imagination and ingenuity through its award-winning Readers Theatre Group and Theatre For Young Audiences, a literary journal, audio recordings and an annual theatre scholarship award.

Learn more.