In 2020, amid much fanfare and after nearly illustrious 35 years at its prior location at the Boscobel estate, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival relocated to its present permanent property in Philipstown. Recently, the organization unveiled the design for its new theater building.
Designed by architectural firm Studio Gang, the 13,850-square-foot structure on the HVSF’s 98-acre campus will be the first purpose-built LEED Platinum theater in the United States. The sustainable project will provide the company with greater versatility for its actors, audiences, and back-of-house operations and will extend the viable performance season into the fall. Bringing nature and art closer together, the theater’s curved, timber-framed grid shell and timber columns emerge from the landscape to create a dialogue with the Hudson Highlands. The stage’s proscenium arch is carefully oriented to frame picturesque views of the Wey-Gat (or “Wind Gate”) of Storm King Mountain, the Hudson River, and Breakneck Ridge, and allows the actors to utilize the existing topography to emerge from the landscape.
“HVSF was given the extraordinary opportunity—and challenge—to establish a permanent home that considered not only the future of our theater and the American theater at large, but also the urgent need to reexamine our relationship with nature,” says HVSF Artistic Director Davis McCallum. “Studio Gang and the team have met the moment with a design that is not only visually stunning, but also supremely functional and sustainable in every sense. Their inspired work will reconnect us with the roots of open-air theater, emphasizing the interplay between the actors, the audience, the play, and the place.”
The groundbreaking for the new theater will take place later this year.
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