6 minute read
CATSKILL KIDS: Wild Catskill Artists
By E. Merwin
Bob cats and beavers and bears, oh my! The Catskill Mountains have been home to them all along with rhinos, kangaroos and camels. Oh, really? Yes, rhinos, kangaroos and camels along with 150 species from faraway places once roamed the acres of the Catskill Game Farm. For over 70 years they delighted tens of thousands of visitors—while in fact the *exotic animals, who were posing for their Polaroid pictures, might have been missing their homelands.
Continuing to explore wildlife in Catskill Kids, we went back in time and landed somewhere between 500 and 700 million years ago when our region was simmering under a warm tropical sea and sponges were among the first form of life to appear on earth. We fast forwarded to the *Cambrian explosion—and the arrival about 480 million years ago of Eurypterid, the fierce underwater predator. While many of these creatures swam in those ancient seas, its fossil remains are rare; however, “It became our State Fossil in 1983 and was selected because these rare fossils occur in great numbers in rocks found near Buffalo.” (Eurypterid | the New York State Museum, n.d.)
*Cambrian explosion = over 500 million years ago when the origins of future animals first burst onto the scene as strange and wonderful undersea life forms
So, what wild thing next?
Riddle: Think of an animal who is as fiercely independent yet as loyal to its pack as a wolf—which by the way is making its way from Canada back to upstate New York (yeah!)— yet sometimes as solitary as a bob cat or a bear in its den, hibernating—and dreaming!
Who is this independent, social yet solitary dreamer?
The artist. And upstate New York is crawling with them. So, the same way we can observe the behavior and origin of each of those other wild creatures, we can wonder about the origin of the artist. When, why, and how do homo Sapiens evolve into artists?
Starting this month, I will be interviewing artists to explore their earliest memories of making art. Why? Perhaps, you too are one of this wild breed and wonder how you can grow into a *full-fledged artist!
*full-fledged = a bird that has developed all its feathers and is ready to fly
Wild Catskill Artist: Sarah Reny, actor, producer and founder of Catskill Mountain Shakespeare
Strangely, as a child Sarah’s imagination was waking up about the same time she was going to bed. Every night before she and her little sister fell asleep in the purple bedroom where fairies flitted along the edge of the ceiling, her parents would read them a chapter of a book. And the story that stands out in Sarah’s mind is the one they brought home when she was five. It was the first of a new series that would go on to sell over 6,000,000 books worldwide, making its hero and his friends the most well read, and perhaps most well-loved of all time. You guessed it, the story that first *enthralled Sarah flashed from the magical pages of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone *Enthralled = filled with wonder and delight
years old, she told her parents that “This is what I want to do!” Today a professional actor and theater *producer, Sarah feels very lucky that her mom and dad were always “incredibly thrilled and supportive and happy” for her to keep acting. So back when she was in first grade, growing up in Montreal, Canada, they enrolled her in a theater program for kids where Sarah began learning her craft, rehearsing and performing on stage with the Pegasus acting troupe.
*producer=the person behind the scenes who does many things to make the play happen, “like raise the money, apply for the grants, help hire the designers, book the van, buy the lumber, build the set—and all that stuff.”
Her wild talent as a young actor, took many years of creative work to cultivate into Sarah’s current career. After majoring in theater in college, Sarah traveled to England to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art where she did *conservatory training. “Then I said, I’m going to move to New York to be an actor, and that’s what I did!” As Sarah describes it, her experience in New York City was “very hard and very fun and a very winding road.” But in a way, Sarah knew what to expect. When she was twelve in her friend’s basement during a sleepover, she was mesmerized by Rent, a televised play about a group of young artists struggling to make it in New York City. It was exciting and perhaps prepared her for her own New York City adventure.
*conservatory training=a program for actors (or musicians or any other artist) that trains them in to successful in their artform
In 2020, with her wild imagination driving her northward, Sarah migrated upstate where she founded Catskill Mountain Shakespeare, a theater group devoted both to the plays of William Shakespeare and to the exuberance and diversity of her community—a community which has no boundaries and includes audiences from every background, age and orientation.
What’s next for Sarah and her wild, loyal, fiercely independent troupe?
In 2024 Catskill Mountain Shakespeare will be touring another Shakespeare play, The Tempest, which Sarah describes as “a magical sea story.” They will be performing at middle and high schools throughout the region and offering workshops in theater, acting and improv to allow kids and teens to tap into their own inner artists.
am reminded of the wise and delightful picture book, The Artist by Ed Vere, which begins with a question: What is an artist?
And speaking to Sarah Reny, one of many wild artists in our region, I thought of Ed Vere’s words:
“Here is an artist. She sees the wonder, the joy and the beauty. She sees it all and makes it into her ART. The artist’s head is full.
Full of colors, full of feelings, full of moods, full of dreams. Things imagined and things she has seen. All fizzing, buzzing, bumping together, Around and around, turning into ideas. And sometimes… into art.” (The Artist - Ed Vere, 2023)
References
Catskill Mountain Shakespeare | New York Non-Profit Theatre. (n.d.). catskillmountainshakespeare.com
Eurypterid | The New York State Museum. (n.d.). nysm.nysed.gov/exhibitions/windows/eurypterid Vere, E. (2023). The Artist
Doubleday Books for Young Readers.
E. Merwin is an award-winning author of fantasy, fables and verifiable ghost stories—with Northman’s Daughter winning the Next Generation Book Award, 1st prize for regional fiction.
As of 2023, Nightmarish New York is her most recent of ten spooky titles written for Bearport Publishing and its popular series for young readers. To preview her most recent wild literary adventure visit: www.doginbrooklyn.com
