News and Events
WAMC'S "The Roundtable" was broadcast live from Vassar & New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater on Tuesday, July 21, 2009
WAMC'S "The Roundtable" was broadcast live from Vassar & New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater on Tuesday, July 21, with host Joe Donahue, producer Sarah LaDuke, and WAMC President Alan Chartock.
See photos of the broadcast © Vassar College/ Buck Lewis
Powerhouse - Mark Linn-Baker and Johanna Pfaelzer
New York Stage and Film's co-founder and Producing Director, Mark Linn-Baker; and Artistic Director, Johanna Pfaelzer join Joe, Alan and Sarah to talk about the mission and accomplishments of Powerhouse.
Ed Cheetham is the Producing Director of the Powerhouse Theatre at Vassar College - and talks with Joe, Alan, and Sarah about what that entails.
Powerhouse - The Burnt Part Boys
Joe, Alan, and Sarah are joined by director Erica Schmidt and actors Al Calderon and Noah Galvin from Powerhouse's production of The Burnt Part Boys (book by Mariana Elder, music by Chris Miller, and lyrics by Nathan Tysen).
Sarah speaks with playwright, Ben Snyder and director, Thomas Kail about their production of Shoe Story.
Joe speaks with acclaimed Broadway (etc.) director, Michael Mayer, about "American Idiot" - a new musical based on Green Day's album of the same name which is rehearsing at Powerhouse.
Powerhouse - Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center - Patricia Phagan
The Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Patricia Phagan, joins The Tablers to discuss their current and upcoming exhibitions.
Powerhouse - Apprentice Company
Ed Cheetham and Apprentice Company Education Director, Tom Pacio join the show to - among other things - try to explain soundpainting to Joe, Alan, and Sarah.
Powerhouse - President Hill and Dean Roellke
Vassar President Catharine Hill and Dean Christopher Roellke speak candidly about some of the ins and outs of the college.
Playwright Keith Bunin and actor Jeffrey DeMunn delight the Tablers with their articulate and clever conversation
To close out this fantastic broadcast, Joe, Alan, and Sarah speak with Mark Linn-Baker.
© Copyright 2009, WAMC
Posted by College Relations Tuesday, July 21, 2009
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.
Drama Department Experimental Theater
Presenting several public performances each semester in the Martel Theater of the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film and the Hallie Flanagan Davis Powerhouse Theater, the Experimental Theater is a place to explore theories learned in the classroom and to experiment with theatrical forms. In the tradition of pioneering stage director Hallie Flanagan, students are encouraged to experience and experiment with all aspects of the theater. Flanagan, who accepted a position to teach drama at Vassar in 1925, founded the Experimental Theater following her visit to the theaters of Europe in 1926 on a Guggenheim Fellowship. (http://drama.vassar.edu).