GARRISON- The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) (Davis McCallum, Artistic Director; Kendra Ekelund, Managing Director) and Processional Arts Workshop will host the third annual Highland Lights, a community celebration of art and nature, at HVSF’s home in Garrison (2015 US Route 9, Garrison, NY 10524) on Saturday, April 20, 2024. Doors open at 8pm and the procession will begin at dark.
Highland Lights invites neighbors to create collaborative works during free public lantern-making workshops and culminates in a spectacular outdoor procession of lights and lanterns on Earth Day. This year’s procession completes a trilogy of environmental themes that began with earth (“A Reawakened Landscape”), looked up to the sky with last year’s “Ad Astra,” and now explores the waters with “Full Fathom Five.” Drawing inspiration from the streams, wetlands, lakes, and rivers of the Hudson River Estuary, “Full Fathom Five” brings a host of local fish and native aquatic wonders to life as articulated lantern puppets.
Highland Lights is presented in partnership with local not-for-profits Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, Hudson Highlands Land Trust, Garrison Arts Center, Haldane Arts Alliance, Garrison Union Free School PTA, Cold Spring Farmer’s Market and Highlands Choral Society. With special thanks to Riverkeeper and Climate Smart Philipstown.
Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles, of Processional Arts Workshop, returned this year to lead a month of free, drop-in sessions in which participants collaborated to design, build, and animate an underwater world in motion. Flanked by poetic fragments evoking aquatic themes, a host of glowing sturgeon, oysters, shad, blue crabs, and other creatures will converge on April 20 in a winding procession that rediscovers and reflects (literally) on the waterways of the Festival’s rolling hillside home. As the Festival embarks on a visionary ecological restoration of the former Garrison golf course, “Full Fathom Five” reminds us of transformational power of water – to shape land, to nurture new life, and to return us to our most basic elements – even as we recognize the unprecedented fragility of our rivers, streams, and oceans in a changing climate.
The final free workshops will be held this weekend, Saturday, April 13 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, April 14 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
To learn more and register for workshops and the procession, please visit highlandlights.org.
If necessary, the rain date will be the following Saturday, April 27.
