Bard College

This Thursday through Sunday, The Fisher Center at Bard presents “Masterclass,” an hour-long parody about playwriting, power, pomposity and people from Dublin-based theatre troupe Brokentalkers and feminist choreographer and performance artist Adrienne Truscott. Adrienne is one half of cabaret duo The Wau Wau Sisters who mix performance modes from circus to main-stage and with some regularity perform in the buff. She will serve as MC of the Spiegeltent at Bard this summer for the second consecutive season. Brokentalkers are an internationally renowned theatre company, based in Dublin, Ireland led by Co-Artistic Directors Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan with Creative Producer Rachel Bergin.

Bard College announced this week that Simon’s Rock will be relocated from Great Barrington, Massachusetts to Annandale, New York.

(Airs 11/03/23 @ 10 p.m.) The Legislative Gazette is a weekly program about New York State Government and politics. On this week’s Gazette: A state senate hearing lawmakers hear complaints about flaws in the legal cannabis rollout, State Assembly member Glick on the need for more legislation to protect the environment, and advocates raise the alarm over new possible anchorages in the Hudson River.

Founded in 1990, the Bard Music Festival has established its unique identity in the classical concert field by presenting programs that, through performance and discussion, place selected works in the cultural and social context of the composer’s world.This year’s festival – the 33rd – will present an exploration of the life and work of English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Saint-Saëns’s opera "Henry VIII" will run as part of the 20th Bard SummerScape, July 21–30, in the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center at Bard. This, the first fully staged production of Henry III in the United States will be sung in French with English supertitles. Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra.Internationally acclaimed stage director Jean-Romain Vesperini helms the production at Bard and he joins us.

The Fisher Center at Bard, currently celebrating its 20th Anniversary Season: Breaking Ground, will present its 16th year of Spiegeltent programming for Bard SummerScape 2023. The Spiegeltent, installed annually on the Bard grounds, serves as a platform for cutting-edge live music, performance, dancing, and more.Caleb Hammons is Fisher Center Director of Artistic Planning and Producing and he joins us with a Spiegeltent season preview.

Researchers at the Bard Center for the Study of Hate have released a new report that examines the annual economic impact of hate crimes in the United States.

Bard College in New York’s Dutchess County is using a $50 million endowment to broaden its work in Native American and Indigenous Studies. A $25 million gift from the Gochman Family Foundation and a matching $25 million commitment from the Open Society Foundations will fund scholarships for Native American and Indigenous students as well as faculty positions and programming. Bard College’s American Studies Program will also be renamed American and Indigenous Studies.

Bard SummerScape returns this year with eight weeks of live music, opera, dance, and theater. Highlights include the 32nd Bard Music Festival “Rachmaninoff and His World;” a new production of Strauss’s The Silent Woman, directed by Christian Räth; a World Premiere commission from Pam Tanowitz and David Lang; a new adaptation of Molière’s Dom Juan, directed by Ashley Tata; and more. Gideon Lester is Artistic Director of the Fisher Center at Bard and Senior Curator at the Open Society University Network’s Center for the Arts and Human Rights. A festival director, creative producer, and dramaturg, he has collaborated with and commissioned a broad range of American and international artists across disciplines.

Frederic C. Hof was the chief architect and mediator of the 2009–11 US initiative to broker peace between Israel and Syria. This mission was the culmination of Hof’s nearly three decades of public service, which began as a US Army officer in Vietnam and continued at the State Department. After a period in the private sector, he returned to the State Department, where, in 2012, he was awarded the rank of ambassador by President Obama. In 2018, after five years at the Atlantic Council, Hof was named the inaugural Diplomat-in-Residence at Bard College in upstate New York, where he resides with his wife, Brenda. Hof is the recipient of the Purple Heart and numerous other awards from the Department of Defense and the State Department.This important and eye-opening book is an insider’s account of secret negotiations to broker a Syria-Israel peace deal―negotiations that came tantalizingly close to success. Ambassador Frederic Hof, who spearheaded the US-mediated discussions in 2009-11, takes readers behind the scenes in Washington, Damascus, and Jerusalem, where President Assad and Prime Minister Netanyahu inched toward a deal to return Israeli-occupied areas of the Golan Heights in exchange for Syria severing military ties with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Hof’s candid assessments, refreshing self-criticism, compelling prose, and rich historical detail make this a masterful memoir of an unknown chapter in American diplomacy.