Just got word that Anthony McGill, the Metropolitan Opera clarinetist who’ll play with the Westchester Philharmonic next weekend, will visit the Rye schools on Nov. 19.

He’ll spend the morning at Rye High School and Middle School giving
lecture-demonstrations to clarinet students. In the afternoon, he will visit the Osborn, Milton and Midland Middle Schools talking to nearly 500 third- through fifth-graders about his career.

Here’s my Q&A with Anthony McGill, which ran in Sunday’s editions of The Journal News:

If you know Anthony McGill, the 30-year-old principal clarinetist with the Metropolitan Opera, it’s likely from his performance on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on a bitterly cold Inauguration Day last January, a few feet from the new president.

It isn’t easy to stage William Gibson’s play, “The Miracle Worker,” about Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan.

For one thing, much of it is told without words, in page after page of stage directions.

For another, the topic — a deaf-and-blind girl learning to communicate — requires a great deal of sensitivity.

But Blind Brook and Briarcliff high schools are accepting the challenge this week, and each is going to great lengths to make sure audiences will see something they won’t soon forget.

Read more of this entry »

This pre-Thanksgiving week offers a cornucopia of new stage treats. There’s another “Insights & Revelations” show at the Emelin, Gurney in Armonk, a Penguin Rep show far from Crickettown Road and it’s already Christmas in Bedford Hills.

Add to that the long list of high schools across the Lower Hudson Valley that are bringing their long-simmering productions to the table and there’s no reason a theater lover should feel undernourished by the time next Monday rolls around.

New, on a stage near you, this weekend

• Blueberry Pond Theatre Ensemble presents founder Jean-Paul DeVellard’s long-awaited “The Conversation at Choctaw Junction” on Friday through Dec. 13. At 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Directed by Anthony Valbiro. $35, $30 for seniors, students, members of unions and the military, $25 for members. Those under age 16 must be accompanied by an adult. Performances at Laylon Theater, 235 Cedar Lane, Ossining. 914-923-3530. www.blueberrypond.org.

• Spotlight Theatre Productions presents “Nunsense the Megamusical,” directed by Patrick Concilio, with an expanded cast to include more nuns. At 8 p.m. Friday; Saturday; Nov. 20; Nov. 21; at 2 p.m. Sunday; Nov. 21; Nov. 22. At the Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls. $16, $12 for students and seniors. 845-526-3461 or www.stpny.com.

• Elmwood Playhouse presents the Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens musical “A Man of No Importance,” about a bus conductor’s theatrical endeavors. Friday through Dec. 12; Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and some Thursdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. $23, $21 for students and seniors. No discounts on Saturdays. 10 Park St., Nyack. 845-353-1313.www.elmwoodplayhouse.com.

• “The Wizard of Oz” brings the yellow brick road to Yorktown Stage this weekend through Nov. 29. Performances will be at 7 p.m. Saturday; Nov. 21; Nov. 28; at 2 p.m. Sunday; Nov. 22; Nov. 27; Nov. 28 and Nov. 29. $25, $23 for Yorktown residents, $21 for seniors and students 12-22, $19 for children under 12. Yorktown Stage is at 1974 Commerce St., Yorktown Heights. 914-962-0606. www.yorktownstage.org.

• Bronxville High presents Georges Feydeau’s farce “A Flea in Her Ear” at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday. (Senior citizens are invited to a free dress rehearsal at 5 p.m. Thursday.) $10 at the door on Friday and Saturday. At 177 Pondfield Road, Bronxville. 914-787-0317.

• Clarkstown High School North’s Cue & Curtain presents the adaptation of Norton Juster’s “The Phantom Tollbooth” Nov. 12, 13 and 20 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 14 and 21 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. It’s the story of Milo and a dog named Tock. With puppets, shadows, lighting effects and scenery. $10. At 151 Congers Road, New City. 845-639-5676.

• Hastings High School presents Neil Simon’s “Rumors” at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday. At 1 Mount Hope Blvd., Hastings-on-Hudson. $8, $5 for students, seniors free.

• Pearl River High School’s Class of 2010 presents the senior musical “Grease!” Nov. 13 and 14 at 7 p.m. 845-620-3801.

• Tappan Zee Players present Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labor’s Lost” Nov. 13 and 14 at 8 p.m. $5, $3 for students. Seniors citizens free. At Tappan Zee High School auditorium, 15 Dutch Hill Road, Orangeburg

• White Plains High School presents Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” Nov. 12 at 3:30pm (a free preview performance), Nov. 13 at 7 p.m., Nov. 14 at 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets to the Friday and Saturday shows are $10 for adults and $5 for students and senior citizens. In the WPHS Little Theater, 550 North St., White Plains. 914-422-2234.

• Yorktown High School presents “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” with more than 100 Yorktown elementary-schoolers enlisted in the armies of the White Witch and Aslan. $10. At 7:30 p.m. Friday and Sunday; 2 p.m. Sunday. At 2727 Crompond Road, Yorktown Heights.

When Suzanne Ochs of Dobbs Ferry trekked north to audition for Brewster Theater Company’s “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” she didn’t know a lot about the show.

“I had the 6,000-foot view of what it was about: a group of women getting together, anniversary of James Dean, and they talk about stuff in the past,” she says.

What that “stuff” was, she wasn’t entirely sure.

Now she has an up-close view. This weekend and next, Ochs will play Mona, a West Texas woman whose life was forever changed when James Dean came to town to film “Giant.” (Sandy Dennis played Mona on Broadway and in the 1982 film.)

Oscar Wilde wrote “Lady Windermere’s Fan” — a skewering of Victorian morals in general and marriage in particular — in 1892, but that doesn’t mean it has to stay there.

Purchase Repertory Theatre presents “Lady Windermere” this week, with performances Tuesday through Sunday. Produced by the senior Acting Company, director David Bassuk has moved the action ahead a bit, to 1910-11, a decade after the playwright’s death.

One might consider this a small adjustment, but only if one isn’t a student at Purchase, where the shape of skirt, the taper of a coat and the color of a cravat occupy a great deal of time and research: 1910 is not 1908, nor is it 1912.

Are you a huge fan of La LuPone? Is Pinchas Zuckerman all over your iPod? Can’t get enough Bill T. Jones?

Wiley Hausam hopes so, and he hopes you’ll want the chance to not only see these stars on stage, but mingle with them and others after they perform at Purchase College’s Performing Arts Center.

For a while there, Patti LuPone was having a nervous breakdown nightly, twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

In a performance that earned her Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards, LuPone was Mama Rose in “Gypsy” on Broadway.

After I wrote about “Gotta Dance,” Bedford filmmaker Dori Berinstein’s charming documentary about a senior hip-hop dance team, I got a lot of emails.

Here’s a link to the story.

When and where, people wondered, would “Gotta Dance” be screened nearby again?

The answer is Monday (Sept. 21) in Pleasantville at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

The Hollywood Reporter called “Gotta Dance” “a feel-good movie if ever there was one,” adding: “Dori Berinstein’s Gotta Dance … leaves you with that oh-so-rare but genuine warm and fuzzy feeling.” 

And this movie comes with a live performance. After Monday’s 7:30 p.m. screening, I’ll join Berinstein and six members of the NETSational Senior Dance team for a Q&A after the screening.

Bring a friend or several.

Here’s a link to the trailer.

Tickets are $9 for JBFC members, $13 for non-members.

Patrick Lennon’s Aery Theatre Company presents its third annual 20/20 Play Festival this weekend and next at Philipstown Depot Theater’s cozy space at Garrison Landing in Garrison.

Lennon wants Aery to be an incubator for dramas written, directed and performed by local artists. The 20/20 Play Festival, with funding from the? Putnam Arts Council and co-produced by Philipstown Depot Theater, presents 10 short plays of 20 minutes or less. (Submitted plays were winnowed down to 20 and 10 were chosen for performance.) Read more of this entry »

One of my happiest what-took-me-so-long discoveries last season was the excellent work being done on Anderson Hill Road in Purchase, by aspiring actors and actresses at Purchase College.

Sometimes, reading a play requires getting up and giving it a try.

Members of Brewster Theater Company’s play-reading group — The Armchair Actors — will be doing just that at their next meeting, Aug. 26, as they read and sing “Kiss Me, Kate,” Cole Porter’s musical take on “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Got an email today about a production of the Shades Repertory Theater, a group I’d never heard of, that operates out of the Central Presbyterian Church on New Main Street in Haverstraw.

The Emelin Film Club’s screening of “Gotta Dance” — about the first-ever New Jersey Nets senior citizen hip-hop team — was something special, made more so by the emergence, after the lights came up, of director Dori Berinstein and a half-dozen of the dancers, who performed on the stage.

The film was even sweeter the second time around and Marshall Fine, my former JN colleague, did a fine job of framing the post-show conversation.

I got a chance to chat with Betsy Walkup, a Bronxville woman who figures prominently in the story. By day, she teaches kindergarten on Long Island. But this dance team gave another side of her personality a chance to emerge: a woman named Betty who shakes it like there’s no tomorrow and who can’t get enough hip-hop.