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Community Corner

Acting Out: Words That Connect

ACTING OUT: WORDS THAT CONNECT


A series of performances of original
works written or composed with the art in mind. The second set of performances
is on April 26th and 27th with plays by Donna Barkman and Tony Howarth.


SATURDAY APRIL 26TH, 7 – 9PM &
SUNDAY APRIL 27TH, 5 – 7PM

Donna Barkman | Hand-Me-Downs: Scenes from a Life,

with a Little Help from Antigone and Mother Goose | Directed by Mara Mills

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Donna Barkman’s play, evolves from the
complex environment created by five of the works in HVCCA’s exhibition Art at
the Core. They 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.

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


Tony Howarth’s play considers the
incomprehensibility of the world around us. It 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.

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