Last June, Stephan Svoboda, Executive Artistic Director of the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts, directed a site-specific rendition of Mary Zimmerman’s play Metamorphoses (an adaptation of the classic Ovid poem) in BMC’s boathouse. The actors splashed around in the water and bravely swam under the dock slips, creatively using the found space of the lake to tailor their production specifically to an Adirondack setting. Svoboda’s production of Metamorphoses was a huge success.
This Saturday, Svoboda and his lively troop of professional actors put on this year’s site-specific play in the found space of St. William’s Church at Long Point–a historic church turned non-for-profit, non-denominational, boat access only retreat and cultural center.
This year The Adirondack Lakes Summer Theater Festival presented an adaptation of The Conference of the Birds, originally written and produced by legendary stage director Peter Brook. The play, which depicts a conference of birds searching for philosophical answers and a spiritual relationship with “God,” explores various dramatic and storytelling styles from around the world.
BMC residents not only had the opportunity to attend and enjoy the production, but alsogo to ride the historic WW Durant as the sun set over Raquette Lake for a celebratory champagne cruise following the play. Blue Mountain Center staff are excited to bring the Second Session of residents to The Art Center’s next production, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which will be at Long Lake Town Hall on July 14th, at 8pm.
Resident Orin Langelle took these photographs. Langelle is working on four decades of his concerned photography here at Blue Mountain Center. To sample his latest photographic essay, please go to Chiapas, Mexico: From Living in the jungle to ‘existing’ in “little houses made of ticky-tacky…” More of his work work can be found at Climate Connections.
-SMK



