News and Events
Noted actress Frances Sternhagen, recipient of AAVC 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award, gives public reading on February 26, 2009.
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY-Noted stage, screen, and television actress Frances Sternhagen, a member of the Vassar class of 1951, will give a public presentation at Vassar College on Thursday, February 26, at 5:30 pm in the Martel Theater of the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film. Please note that reservations are filled, however we have established a waiting list for the free reading. Please email boxoffice@vassar.edu or call the box office at 845-437-5584 or 5599 to be added to this list. We will release any unclaimed seats to members of the waiting list beginning at 5:20pm on Thursday, February 26.
Sternhagen, a familiar presence on stage, television, and film, is most familiar to some audiences for her television roles as Bunny MacDougal (Trey's mother) in HBO's Sex and the City or Kyra Sedgwick's mother Willie Rae Johnson on The Closer (appearing with fellow Vassar alumnus Jon Tenney '84). However Sternhagen is also a familiar presence on stage, and has received two Tony Awards (nominated for five), two Obies, and two Drama Desks, and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame, and honored in 2007 with the Helen Hayes Tribute.
At Vassar Sternhagen will perform selections from Marta Góes's play A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop, bringing to life the great modern American poet and Vassar alumna Elizabeth Bishop (class of 1934) during her years in Brazil. A question-and-answer session with Sternhagen will follow the reading. Vassar and New York Stage & Film's Powerhouse Theater, which will be celebrating its 25th season this summer, first presented A Safe Harbor in 2004.
"We are delighted that alumna Frances Sternhagen, our 2009 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award, will be with us for a few days this semester to work and meet with students and faculty and present this reading," noted Patricia Duane Lichtenberg, executive director of the Alumnae and Alumni of Vassar College (AAVC) and Vassar class of 1990. "Through great symbiosis she has chosen to perform an original play first presented by Vassar and New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater, that is based upon another noted Vassar alumna, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop."
In addition to this reading, Sternhagen will meet with drama and film students and lead a master class.
ABOUT FRANCES STERNHAGEN
Noted stage, screen, and television actress Frances Sternhagen, a member of the Vassar class of 1951, made her Broadway debut in 1955 as Miss T. Muse in The Skin of Our Teeth, and has appeared in more than 400 plays including on Broadway: The Good Doctor (Tony), The Heiress (Tony), Equus, On Golden Pond (Drama League Medal), Seascape, Steel Magnolias, Morning's at Seven, The Foreigner, Grownups, Angel; Off-Broadway: Driving Miss Daisy, The Admirable Bashville (Obie and Clarence Derwent Award), The Pinter Plays (Obie), The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, Talking Heads, The Exact Center of the Universe, and Long Day's Journey Into Night.
In 1967 Sternhagen made her film debut in Up the Down Staircase, and was featured in The Mist, Raising Cain, Doc Hollywood, Misery, Outland, Starting Over, and Hospital. In addition to her recurring television roles on Sex and the City and The Closer, Sternhagen has also appeared as Cliff's mom on Cheers, Millicent Carter on ER, as well as Law & Order, Tales from the Crypt, among others.
Sternhagen, who with her late husband John Carlin raised a family of six, has visited and performed readings at Vassar many times. Sternhagen was also the recipient of the President's Distinguished Visitor Award, presented by Vassar in November 2000.
ABOUT THE PLAY: A SAFE HARBOR FOR ELIZABETH BISHOP
A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop recounts Bishop's 20-year South American sojourn in Brazil, where Bishop bears witness to the enormous upheaval and reform in the country, while at the same time personally experiencing passion, idealism, love and loss. Safe Harbor made its debut performance during the 20th anniversary season of Vassar and New York Stage & Film's Powerhouse Theater in 2004. This summer Powerhouse Theater will be celebrating its 25th anniversary season, a silver celebration, June 26 - August 2.
ABOUT PLAYWRIGTH MARTA GÓES
Góes has written plays including Prepare Your Feet for Summer, The Girl Who Said That, and an adaptation of an Open Theatre’s group play, Tourists and Refugees. Her books include Um Porto para Elizabeth Bishop (Ed. Terceiro Nome ) and The Girl Who Fell in Love (Ed. Companhia das Letrinhas). She has translated The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Donald Margulies’s Dinner With Friends, and the book, Terrorism in the Name of God by Jessica Stern.
ABOUT THE AAVC AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT
The Distinguished Achievement Award is presented annually to an alumna or alumnus who has reached the highest level in her or his field, including the professions, science, the arts, and public affairs. While demonstrating exceptional talent, application, creativity, and skill within a certain career, this individual must at the same time exemplify the ideals of a liberal arts education and have used her or his position of visibility, power, or leadership to better the human community and serve the wider goals of society.
The AAVC Awards Program was started in 2001 to recognize alumnae/i who have contributed much to the vitality and success of Vassar and AAVC over many years and have inspired generations of Vassar alumnae/i. Past recipients include: Laurie Schwab Zabin '46 (2008), Vera Rubin '48 (2007), Katharine Lee Reid '63 (2006), Jamshed J. Bharucha '78 (2005), Ellen May Galinsky '64 (2004), Dr. June Jackson Christmas '45-4 (2003), Judge Pauline Newman '47 (2002).
RESERVATION INFORMATION
*WAITING LIST ONLY*
Please note that reservations are filled, however we have established a waiting list for the free reading. Please email boxoffice@vassar.edu or call the box office at 845-437-5584 or 5599 to be added to this list. We will release any unclaimed seats to members of the waiting list beginning at 5:20pm on Thursday, February 26.
Reservations for general seating are required for this event, however admission is free. Please check in at the box office 20 minutes prior to show time. If you have special needs, requests should be made in advance and at the time of your reservation or your request may not be able to accommodated. For additional information, group seating, and reservations, call the box office at 845-437-5584 or 5599.
People with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact the Office of Campus Activities at (845) 437-5370. Directions to the Vassar campus are available at www.vassar.edu/directions.
Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.
Posted by College Relations Wednesday, December 31, 1969
About the Arts
Powerhouse Theater
The Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College. It is dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. During an intense eight-week summer residency on the Vassar campus, up to twenty different projects are publicly presented, typically engaging more than 200 professional artists and theater students. Plays, musicals, and screenplays are presented in a variety of forms: readings, workshops, and fully staged productions. Since the first Powerhouse Theater season in 1985, New York Stage and Film and Vassar have served more than 2,000 artists and over 175,000 audience members through the development and production of artistically exceptional and affordably priced performances.
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Located just inside Vassar's Main Gate, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center houses the college's permanent collection, over 18,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and glass and ceramic wares, charting the history of art from antiquity to the present. The Permanent Collection Galleries feature 350 works, ranging from the sculpted Head of Viceroy Merymose from His Outer Sarcophagus (Egyptian, c 1375 BCE) in the Antiquities Gallery to Marsden Hartley's oil on canvas Indian Composition (1914-15) in the Twentieth Century Gallery. For information on current and upcoming special exhibitions, self-guided and curriculum-based tours, and group visits, please visit the website. The art center is open to the public, and admission is free.
James W. Palmer Gallery
Located in the College Center in Main Building, the James W. Palmer III '90 Gallery presents eight shows annually, including exhibitions by renowned artists and photographers, studio art faculty and students, and local arts organizations. Recent highlights included Andrea Baldeck’s black-and-white photo exhibit, Touching the Mekong: A Southeast Asian Sojourn, organized by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; the Vassar Haiti Project’s annual exhibition and auction of imported arts and handcrafts; and Design Inside, showcasing the work of Vassar’s College Relations design team. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. For information on upcoming exhibitions, visit the website or call (845) 437-5370.
Music Department
Located in the Belle Skinner Hall of Music, the Martel Recital Hall is wonderfully suited, both acoustically and aesthetically, to music performance. With seating for 500, the Martel is home to the Vassar College Orchestra, Choir, Women's Chorus, Madrigal Singers, and numerous chamber groups and ensembles. The Martel concert schedule routinely includes distinguished guest artists, faculty recitals, senior recitals, and special musical events, such as last year's series of organ recitals celebrating the installation and dedication of the college's superb pipe organ, designed by masterbuilder Paul Fritts. For information on upcoming concerts and events (which are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted), please visit the website.
Dance Department
The Department of Dance sponsors several public performances each year. Among those, the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre (VRDT) has a series of Works in Progress showings in the fall, a winter Modfest performance in conjunction with the The Department of Music, winter galas at the 1869 Bardavon Opera House, and two All Parents Weekend performances in the spring. The department's Master Class program annually invites at least one ballet and one modern expert to campus in addition to two people in other areas of dance. Public performances and lectures are often associated with these renowned visitors. Guest artists in the past have included: Irina Kolpokova, Arthur Mitchell, Helene Alexopoulos, Gregory Hines, Anna Kisselgoff, Donald Byrd, Edward Villella, Ronald K. Brown, Irene Dowd, Allegra Kent, Gelsey Kirkland, Pilobolus w/Adam Battlestein, Suzanne Farrell, Mummenschantz, Eldar Aliev, Deborah Jowitt, Bill T. Jones, Pascal Rioult, Clinton Luckett of ABT, Bill Irwin, and Donald McKayle. Many of the department's dance performances are in the Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater, located in Kenyon Hall.