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Acting Out: Words that Connect-2


Donna Barkman | Hand-Me-Downs: Scenes from a Life, with a Little Help from Antigone and Mother Goose | Directed by Mara Mills

Donna Barkman’s play, Hand-Me-Downs: Scenes from a Life, with a Little Help from Antigone and Mother Goose, evolves from the complex environment created by five of the works in HVCCA’s exhibition Art at the Core. The works (Yigal Ozeri’s Priscilla in Vines, Jon Pylypchuk’s I Thought They Were My Children, Ben Schumacher’s The Intern as Phantom, Robert Fekete’s We Have the Same Feelings, and Phil Wagner’s Untitled (with Suitcase)) produce a setting that radiates phantoms of memory, of yearning, and of waiting for an unknown future. In response to this, Barkman’s play portrays a natural-born rebel who recalls her playful beginnings and proceeds to dramatize the constrictive gender roles and motherhood prescriptions that caused her – like Sophocles’ Antigone – to search for a happiness that may always elude her.

As a writer/actor, Donna Barkman has had her solo play Hand-Me-Downs produced in NYC and Westchester. Most recently, she wrote and performed two pieces in The Ides of March at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. Her poetry has appeared in The Westchester Review, ragazine.cc, Bray Arts Journal, Chautauqua, Boston Literary Review, and others. She’s enjoyed two writers residencies at Brush Creek and Jentel, both in Wyoming.

Tony Howarth | A Pile of Rags | Directed by Mara Mills

Tony Howarth’s play, A Pile of Rags, considers the incomprehensibility of the world around us. Inspired by the perplexity of Jonas Burgert’s painting, Hell Schlaqt (Hell Speaks), Howarth’s play imagines a world in the midst of total chaos. The dissonance between Burgert’s bright and gay canvas and it’s deeply troubling content is echoed in Howarth’s presentation of a world in which characters struggle to understand themselves and their surroundings. Stimulated by the idea that we never really comprehend the world around us, even when we think we have full control over it, Howarth’s play reflects the very environment that we find ourselves living in at this moment.

Tony Howarth is a playwright, director, teacher, and poet. Credits include a dozen one-act plays and multiple full lengths, including Thornwood, which was made into an award-winning indie film, Slings and Arrows; Sundown; Dream City Twosome; and Billy Bubblehead. In addition to the musical, Troll-Loll-La!, Howarth has written book and lyrics for two other musicals, Dream, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Shirley Girl. For many summers he directed with the College Light Opera Company in Falmouth, Mass. His poetry has appeared in Chronogram, Chantrelle’s Notebook, Drown in My Own Fears, Tiger’s Eye, The Naugatuck River Review, and a magazine in England, Obsessed with Pipework. His chapbook, As the Glider Glides, was published in 2013 by The Last Automat Press.

Event Location and Ticket Information

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HVCCA
1701 Main Street
Peekskill, NY 10556
Handicap Accessible? Yes

Date: Saturday, April 26, 2014
Times: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Ticket pricing:

Get tickets now
- $22 members, $25 non-members

Presenter: HVCCA
Presenter Phone: 914-788-0100
Presenter Website: www.hvcca.org

Sponsor Message

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.