[Capdist-announce] Ancram Center's Summer Play Lab Series Opens June 16 with "The Last Day of Dorothy Lillian Phelps"

[Lauren Letellier]

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*



*Ancram Center’s Summer Play Lab Series Opens June 16 with*

*The Last Day of Dorothy Lillian Phelps*

*Author Patricia Van Tassel will lead free community workshop June 13 *



Ancram Center for the Arts’ Summer Play Lab, now in its fifth year, offers
theater artists space, production support, and a budget to develop and
present new works. This season’s first presentation will be a staged
reading of *The Last Day of Dorothy Lillian Phelps*, a one-woman show by
Patricia Van Tassel, on Sunday, June 16 at 4pm.



In addition, on Thursday, June 13 from 10AM-12PM, Van Tassel will lead a
free community workshop employing a variety of art forms to explore the
ultimate question posed by her play: What would you say if it was your last
day?  To register email info at ancramcenter.org.



Van Tassel, who grew up in Ancram and attended local schools, said that she
started writing the play 10 years ago, and that the character of Mrs.
Phelps is based partly on her maternal grandmother.



“We all have this universal thing that happens to us: our last day. I began
thinking, what if you knew it was your last day?” said Van Tassel.  “What
would you want to say to your loved ones? What would you want to leave with
people? The whole theater becomes Miss Phelps’s home, and the audience is
invited in. And maybe Miss Phelps isn’t as ready to depart as she thinks
she is.”



A graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Van Tassel is an independent
artist, writer and performer. Her stage credits include off-Broadway tours
of *Finnegan’s Farewell*; and performances at the Dramatist’s Guild and
Treehouse Theater in NYC, as well as numerous regional performances
including the one-woman shows *Shirley Valentine*, *The Belle of Amherst*,*
Shame the Devil! *and the world premiere of Sandra Asher’s *Walking Toward
America*, directed by Amie Brockway. Her family’s roots in America go back
to the mid-1600s, when the first Van Texel emigrated to Long Island from
the Dutch island of Texel. Her mother, Clara Van Tassel, was for many years
Ancram’s Town Historian.



Tickets may be purchased online at ancramcenter.org. General Admission:
$20; student tickets $15 with ID. Patrons can save 25% by purchasing a
bundle of all three Summer Play Lab performances. The discount is applied
automatically at checkout.



Two more Summer Play Lab performances will be staged at the Ancram Center
this summer:



*Centuries,* a concert collaboration between Matthew Dean Marsh (*You Don’t
Know the Lonely One*), Kate Douglas (*The Lucky Few*), and singer-composer
Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez. *Centuries* is a new musical storytelling
experience that follows a family over two generations and explores how
landscapes and people change with time. *Centuries* will have its SPL
showing July 7 @ 4pm.



*Conversations. *Created and performed by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby,
in collaboration with The Civilians, NYC, this music-theater piece features
songs drawn from extensive interviews with Native Americans from across the
country. *Conversations *will have its SPL showing August 4 @ 4pm.





Ancram Center for the Arts is an award-winning theater located in New
York's Hudson Valley. Housed in an historic Grange Hall, Ancram Center has
since 2016 presented groundbreaking theater and musical performances by
nationally recognized theater artists. Ancram Center for the Arts receives
significant annual support from the New York State Council on the Arts and
in 2023 was awarded a generous grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts. For tickets and information visit www.ancramcenter.org.


[image: Van Tassel 2024 Head Shot.jpg]

Photo Credit: Patricia Van Tassel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://capdisttheater.org/pipermail/capdist-announce/attachments/20240607/f0802206/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Van Tassel 2024 Head Shot.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 791299 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://capdisttheater.org/pipermail/capdist-announce/attachments/20240607/f0802206/attachment.jpg>