Woodstock Mountain High

by Claudia Ansorge , Robin Kramer and photographs by David Cunningham, May 27, 2011

At the turn of the 20th century, Woodstock was a sleepy mountain town where life was quiet and farm families tried hard to make a living. When Ralph Whitehead and his partners, Bolton Brown and Hervey White, came along in 1902, discovering Overlook Mountain like it was a new world, they brought with them an arts and crafts movement that would change the course of art and local history. Painters, poets, crafters, writers, dancers, musicians, and artists of every ilk flowed in, lifting the town higher and higher with creative energy. Flash forward to 1969. The famous festival had the wrong place name but a spot-on moniker for the spirit that brings people from all over the world to Woodstock to feel it for themselves.

Start with the Art
The first thing you see when you enter town from Route 375 is the venerable and newly renovated Woodstock Playhouse. “A Chorus Line” opens this month, the Playhouse’s first official summer stock season in 25 years, followed by “Anything Goes” and “Hair” in July and August.

The Byrdcliffe Guild and its 250-acre Byrdcliffe Art Colony campus, which grew up out of Ralph Whitehead’s original vision of Woodstock, have spawned an arts and performance center with an artist-in-residence program, the Byrdcliffe Theater, and the Kleinert/James Art Center, hosting local and national performing, visual, and literary artists. “The Hudson Valley Furniture Makers Summer Exhibit” at the Kleinert/James, runs June 3-12. “Quick, Down, and Dirty” (July 16-November 6) is an installation of outdoor pieces by furniture makers, craftspeople, and artists “in response to our current times” exhibited throughout the Byrdcliffe Colony campus. The Woodstock Players present Carey Harrison’s “Midget in a Catsuit Reciting Spinoza” at the Byrdcliffe Theater, Upper Byrdcliffe Road, on June 17-26 ... and it goes on like that all summer.