How To Spend $100: Ace Hardware

It really isthe place— for fall essentials.

By Robyn Perry Coe

It’s the season to indulge in local pleasures. Apples! Pumpkins! Cider! Donuts! Also, this fall—nature’s grace period before winter— explore the original meaning of hardware: practical tools to make your life better. Between your local hardware store and your neighborhood library, you can make and fix practically anything, plus create a battery of tools to serve you for years, for a fraction of the cost at a curated shop.

Conserve raspberries or make salsa with the last tomatoes and chiles. (Save for February.) Handy to-go cups for your next tailgate. $14.99

Cook everything, indoors and out. Pass down to grandkids. $29.99

No.3: SISAL ROPE Becomes a swing, clothesline or a garland when the season changes (again). $5.90

No.4: WOODEN CLOTHESPINS Clip clothes or chip bags; ends in the burn pile, not the landfill. $4.99

No.5: UTILITY KNIFE

Reliable pumpkin carving (and gift opening later). $9.59

No.6: MAGLITE Get the good one, for Halloween and beyond. $19.99

No.7: THANKSGIVING CANDLE This emergency candle smells like a feast. Zero actual turkey. $14.99

Prost! Happy Oktoberfest!

Reported by Sandy MacDonald

September 9 –October 1

Kaatsbaan Cultural Park Fall Festival

Tivoli, NY Clear your dance-appreciation card for a three-weekend extravaganza spanning Kenneth MacMillan’s 1972 ballet Ballade (in which four dancers play “choreographic poker”); the world premiere of Roderick George’s The Missing Fruit , a performance piece addressing BIPOC struggles; New York Theatre Ballet’s family-friendly The Firebird and Scramble; a participatory Ruckus Early Music line dance; and Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera featuring pipa master Wu Man. Kaatsbaan.org september

Hudson Hall, Hudson Immerse yourself in the creations of a cinematic master, whose oeuvre spans decades, from Shakespeare Wallah to Call Me ByYour Name. The event-packed weekend promises special guests and schmoozing opps. HudsonHall.org/events

Farm to Table Fundraiser for Small Farm Resiliency

White Feather Farm, Saugerties, NY

A Celebration Of James Ivory

Small farms are having a tough time, and the Hudson Valley’s no exception. Donations collected at a reception in the 1740s Broken Wing Barn—following the film

An Immigrant’s Story

PS21, Chatham, NY

In this spoken/danced piece, performed on a bare stage but for 35 black chairs, radiant Kenya-born performer Wanjiru Kamuyu (an alumna of The Lion King and FELA!) , examines her experience of being “different.”

PS21Chatham.org

September 15 –October 22

Lunar Eclipse

Shakespeare & Co., Lenox, MA

Charming Disaster

The Foundry, West Stockbridge, MA

Of James Ivory 16 & 17 23

Film star Karen Allen, a local, co-stars with Reed Birney in Shakespeare & Company’s world premiere of Donald Margulies’s latest play, about a midwestern couple contemplating their place in the cosmos. Shakespeare.org

Feeding Tomorrow— will help fund a microgrant emergency fund. WhiteFeatherFarm.org

Fond of macabre fare— Edward Gorey, Tim Burton and their ilk? Expect to resonate with this duo’s dark and playful repertoire centered on death, crime and the occult. TheFoundryWS.com

The Incredible Naumkeag

September 29 –October 29

Pumpkin Show Stockbridge, MA

A 48-acre estate is decked out with 1,500 jack-o-lanterns, hundreds of chrysanthemums and plenty of gaudy gourds. TheTrustees.org

September 27 –Oct ober 15

English Barrington Stage Co., Pittsfield, MA

Filling Station

Dia Beacon, Beacon, NY

Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, set in 2008 Iran, features four disparate students dead-set on learning English—some desperately so. Bonus: In this production, the author, assaying her first role in English, plays the empathetic teacher. BarringtonStageCo.org

An intriguing throwback/ remix: Artist Matthew LutzKinoy reinterprets and contemporizes—with new collaborators—a one-act 1938 ballet originally composed by Virgil Thomson and costumed by Paul Cadmus. DiaArt.org

30

Dance on the Pond New Paltz, NY

Strictly speaking, Habit Formed will be performed by the Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre near a pond at a private home; the piece will premiere in full spring 2024 at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. AmandaSelwynDance.org

L’Étang (The Pond)

PS21, Chatham, NY

The 2021 Swiss production of Gisèle Vienne’s dance-theatre piece garnered a rave in TheNew York Times. Two actors—César winner Adèle Haenel and Pina Bausch dancer Julie Shanahan—shoulder ten roles in this fraught tale of a troubled family. PS21Chatham.org

10 Wine Walk at NaumkeagStockbridge, MA

This horticulturist-led sunset tour of the grounds, culminating in a libation, has a theme: “Trees and Fall Colors.” TheTrustees.org

Never Twenty One

PS21, Chatham, NY

The title of this trio dance piece alludes to the countless Black men—victims of gun violence— who never made it to that age. The choreography by Parisian designer Smaïl Kanouté, references krump, popping, baile funk and passinho. PS21Chatham.org

20-29

FilmColumbia

Rodelinda Hudson Hall, Hudson

Crandell Theatre, Chatham, NY

Cineastes can sample exciting new work without the usual schlep to NYC. MovieMaker has heralded the event, held in a 1926 movie palace, as one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World.” CrandellTheatre.org

The Hudson Opera House (est. 1885) launches a multi-year celebration of Handel scores performed with period instruments. First up: this fallen-outof-favor “crime thriller” (according to director R.B. Schlather) suitable for the opera-curious. HudsonHall.org/events

3-4 Intensity 20.15 and This Is Mary Brown

PS21, Chatham, NY

MacArthur genius flautist Grace Chase has set her own poems to music by her mother, the late electronic experimentalist Pauline Oliveros; actor/director Winsome Brown creates a complex portrait of her own mother, an eccentric Irishwoman. PS21chatham.org

November 18 –ma y 27, 2024

6-8

2023

Field + Supply Fall MRKT

Hutton Brickyards, Kingston, NY Field + Supply MRKTs are modern interpretations of traditional arts and crafts fairs, featuring more than 200 vendors, live music, local eats and family-friendly activities. FieldAndSupply.com october

13-29 november

Peace, Love & Pumpkins

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel, NY The woods flanking the site of the historic Woodstock Festival go all Halloweeny. Enjoy theme nights such as “Friday Night Frights” (too intense for children) and “Sensory-Friendly Monday.” BethelWoodsCenter.org

Mat Kearney

Between Worlds: The Art And Design Of Leo Lionni

Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA

Following up on the success of its Tony Sarg exhibit (ongoing to November 5, just shy of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade he helped to launch), the Norman Rockwell Museum celebrates the work of Leo Lionni, who revolutionized the world of children’s books with sophisticated graphics. NRM.org

Bethel Woods Center the Arts, Bethel, NY not seen this multi-platinum songwriter in person yet, you’ve heard his work—spanning and folk-pop—on dozens television show soundtracks and his late-night guest spots. BethelWoodsCenter.org

Nation Beat

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel, NY

Treat the kids to a family concert featuring percussionist/ composer Scott Kettner, who’ll trace a direct line from Brazil through the South to the streets of New York.

BethelWoodsCenter.org

A Celebration Of Nick Flynn’s New Poetry Collection, Low Hudson Valley Writers Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY

Expect a chic-er than usual crowd when Flynn—spouse of actor Lili Taylor and author of the memoir Another Bullshit Night In Suck City —reads from his freshoff-the-press book. WritersCenter.org