March 12: Readings of New Works by Regional Playwrights

Offered by Fenimore Art Museum
Three performances will take place on select Sundays: March 12, 26, and April 16 • 3-5pm

Admission: Free by donation 

Dirt by Christopher Carter Sanderson

Directed by Omonike Akinyemi
Sunday, March 12 • 3:00-5:00pm

Cooperstown, New York —Returning for a seventh season, the NEXT! play-reading series produced by Fenimore Art Museum and the Glimmer Globe Theatre continues its mission to celebrate and inspire Central New York playwrights, as well as to introduce their work to a larger audience. 

Each year, playwrights across the region are invited to submit plays for consideration; of these, three are selected as the most exceptional and promising works based on their literary and artistic merit. This workshopping program is designed to be a constructive part of the playwriting process that allows the playwright to hear and see their play, receive audience feedback, and strengthen the piece to make it full-production stage-ready. 

Play readings take place in Fenimore Art Museum’s auditorium on select Sundays at 3:00 p.m. (March 12, 26, and April 16). There is no charge for these programs, but please consider a donation of $10.00 or more to help us continue to provide more content in the future.  For more information, please visit FenimoreArt.org. 

Synopsis: In a farmhouse on what’s left of a once-great farm estate in Northern Virginia, USA, a family has just lost their mother, who succumbed to dementia and old age. She was white. Her natural son from another marriage, who is also white, is has been the caretaker for her and her husband, who is Black, for years. Their other son, his from a previous marriage long ago, is Black. The forces pulling on the unraveling family’s members defy stereotype and cliché as they alternately battle and plead with each other to shape the future of the family – or are they repeating an entire country’s doomed past? By turns funny, tragic, poetic, unhinged, disarming, and armed – not entirely unlike the South of today – Dirt leaves the audience with many new questions, and plenty to consider about brotherhood… maybe even in a whole new way.

The NEXT! play-reading series continues its mission to celebrate and inspire Central New York playwrights, as well as to introduce their work to a larger audience. Giving playwrights the ability to collaborate with local directors and performers, this series also welcomes the valuable feedback from the public which is critical to the development of any new work. Three plays  are selected each year on the basis of their literary and artistic merit, and are presented free to the public.

Presented in the Fenimore Auditorium. Admission is free by donation. For more information, please call Mike Tamburrino at (607) 547-1453.

About Fenimore Art Museum
Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings; more than 125,000 historic photographs representing the technical developments made in photography and providing extensive visual documentation of the region’s unique history; and the renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art comprised of nearly 900 art objects representative of a broad geographic range of North American Indian cultures, from the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Great Lakes, and Prairie regions. Visit FenimoreArt.org.