Hudson Stage Company moves to Armonk

More good news for Armonk. The Hudson Stage Company has recently announced that they have been selected as Artists-in-Residence at Whippoorwill Hall at the North Castle Public Library. There they will continue to present their spring and fall productions of new plays and critically acclaimed revivals, as well as staged readings of new works.

Each of their fully staged productions will run for nine performances. They will share stage time with The Armonk Players who also produce two main stage productions each year, one of which is usually a musical. Armonk now has three resident theatre companies Including The Small Town Theatre Company who present six short-run theatrical plays each season at Armonk’s Hergenhan Hall and the Katonah Village Library.

HSC’s first Armonk production, The God Game by Suzanne Bradbeer, about an atheist conservative political candidate who wrestles with demands by his political team to play the “God card” to secure his re-election, will run from October 10-25.

Annual Gala in Whippoorwill Hall and Restaurant North on July 13

Whippoorwill Hall will host HSC’s annual gala on Sunday, July 13 at 4:30 pm. Dubbed the Home Show the gala will include a special musical performance by jazz headliner Ann Hampton Callaway and her Broadway star sister Liz Callaway. A cocktail reception with a silent auction at Restaurant North on Main Street in Armonk will follow the concert.

Liz Callaway

Ann Hampton Callaway is a multi-platinum singer who won a Tony Award nomination for her starring role in the Broadway musical Swing!  She has produced two critically acclaimed public television specials called “Singers Spotlight with Ann Hampton Callaway” with special guests Liza Minnelli and Christine Ebersole.

Liz Callaway  made her Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. She also appeared in the Lincoln Center production of Follies with Mandy Patinkin, Barbara Cook, George Hearn and Carol Burnett; The Spitfire Grill (Drama Desk Award nomination) and Baby for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Last summer Ann and Liz reprised their award winning nightclub show Sibling Rivalry at Manhattan’s 54 Below. They first debuted the show in 1995 at Rainbow and Stars atop Rockefeller Center.

About The Hudson Stage Company

HSC was founded in 1999 by Denise Bessette, Dan Foster and Olivia Sklar and performed staged readings of new works at the Croton Free Library. They soon moved on to stage full theatrical productions at the Clearview School in Briarcliff. For the past ten years the company was hosted by Pace University. Their residency in Armonk begins in July.

Their most recent production was a night of one-act plays that included Caryl Churchill’s Family Reunion: A Number and A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter. It marked the first time that Pinter had ever sanctioned any of his one-act plays to appear on the same bill with another playwright.

In 2013 they produced Kunstler, a new play by Jeffrey Sweet starring Jeff McCarthy as the Westchester lawyer William Kunstler who represented The Chicago Seven, inmates involved in the Attica Prison riots, and members of the American Indian Movement after the second Battle of Wounded Knee. The New York Times called Kunstler an “eye-opening history lesson” that offered new insight into his historic trials that involved the likes of Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and attorneys general Ramsey Clark and John Mitchell.

Other recent productions include Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning comedy Talley’s Folly, the Olivier Award-winning comedy Stones in His Pocket by Marie Jones, David Mamet’s Boston Marriage, and the world premiere of Salvation by James McLindon.

 HSC’s Co-Founders

HSC’s Artistic Producer, Denise Bessette who has appeared in a number of HSC productions is an adjunct acting professor at Pace University. She has worked regionally at Long Wharf Theatre, Huntington Theatre, the NJ Shakespeare Festival, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. In NY she was seen off-Broadway in many shows and with Interact Theatre Company in LA. Her TV appearances include Law and Order, Law and Order SVU and Seinfeld.

Dan Foster has directed several productions for the company. He has also produced and directed at Playwright’s Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the NY Fringe Festival. His acting credits include the Broadway production of City of Angels, the off-Broadway production of Cymbeline, and the TV productions of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Lemon Sky, and All My Children.

Olivia Sklar has co-produced all of HSC’s productions and has worked as an actress on-stage in NYC and regionally and spent many years in daytime television most recently on ABC-TV’s One Life to Live. Her film credits include roles in the Cannes festival award-winning Sidewalk Stories and Disney Touchstone’s True Identity.

The company also encourages new talent by providing a Young Playwrights Program for high school students and internships for university students. Blythe Danner, Austin Pendleton
, Bill Pullman
, Mercedes Ruehl
 and Frances Sternhagen serve on HSC’s Honorary Advisory Committee.