Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC), the resident theater company of Chautauqua Institution, announces plans for the world premiere of Tell Me You’re Dying, a CTC-commissioned work by Brooklyn-based playwright C.A. Johnson. This year marks CTC’s third consecutive year producing a world premiere, underscoring the company’s commitment to supporting fresh voices in American theater. C.A. Johnson, an emerging powerhouse known for her poignant, complex explorations of human relationships, offers audiences an unconventional tale of love and survival against an apocalyptic backdrop. The world premiere of Tell Me You’re Dying is an opportunity to experience a daring and genre-blending production — a post-apocalyptic...
Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory, the resident opera company and conservatory of Chautauqua Institution, announced today its 2025 season. Chautauqua Opera Company For its 2025 season, Chautauqua Opera continues its 95-year history of producing opera at Chautauqua Institution while also strengthening its commitment to developing new opera. Alongside a production of Puccini’s La bohème in Chautauqua’s Amphitheater, the company will conduct workshops of three new operas. Ranging from chamber operas to large-scale pieces, these workshops will feature Chautauqua Opera Company’s 16 Young Artists collaborating with celebrated composers and librettists. Chautauqua audiences will have the exclusive opportunity to experience these new...
Happy Sustainable Holidays! Growing up in the 70s in a large Irish Catholic family that was just one generation removed from the deprivations of the Great Depression, Christmas was a time to make up for the lean times and boy did we go big! One day wasn’t enough to open all the presents, and so we started with stockings the night before. Christmas morning was a frenzied blur of wrapping paper flying in all directions as my siblings, cousins and I tore through present after present, barely pausing to appreciate any individual gift. Americans spend over half a billion dollars...
The 2024–25 school year has brought exciting growth in the Chautauqua Arts Education School Residency program, Feelin’ the Beat. This program was created for students with disabilities to support social emotional learning goals and to develop musical expression through drumming. Over time, the program has expanded to support students who have different kinds of learning challenges, many of whom were impacted by the effect of the pandemic on their learning experience. This program has been offered since 2014 when it started by serving two schools. Fast forward 10 years and the program will be in 15 schools this year —...
Chautauqua Theater Company has announced their commission and development of a musical adaptation of The Crossover, the critically acclaimed novel by New York Times best-selling author and Chautauqua Institution’s Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and writer-in-residence Kwame Alexander. Under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll, CTC is cementing its reputation as a national home for exciting new works. Carroll’s tenure has brought a renewed focus on commissioning, developing and producing works from new and established American Playwrights. This commitment to fostering innovative storytelling is exemplified with recent commissions such as Kate Hamill‘s The Light and The Dark, C.A....
Chautauqua Institution is celebrating a major investment by New York State in the science-based conservation of Chautauqua Lake. A $4.7 million grant to Chautauqua Institution from the New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation (NYSEFC) will sustain scientific research and related infrastructure investments in Chautauqua Lake through May 2027. Institution President Michael E. Hill, says this investment from New York State represents a milestone in the multiyear vision for Chautauqua Lake conservation named in Chautauqua Institution’s strategic plan, 150 Forward. “When our Board of Trustees in 2019 named the development of science-based solutions for the conservation of Chautauqua Lake as one...
Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC), the resident theater company of Chautauqua Institution, today announced their commission and development of a musical adaptation of The Crossover, the critically acclaimed novel by New York Times best-selling author and Chautauqua Institution’s Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and writer-in-residence Kwame Alexander. Under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll, CTC is cementing its reputation as a national home for exciting new works. Carroll’s tenure has brought a renewed focus on commissioning, developing and producing works from new and established American playwrights. This commitment to fostering innovative storytelling is exemplified with...
In 2014 Junk Free Skin began in a small retail space in Buffalo, New York, where the founders set out to create a bath and body line using clean ingredients and truly sustainable, plastic-free packaging at an affordable price. Today the company is a thriving manufacturing facility equipped with the latest technologies and delivering products nationwide. If you visited Chautauqua this past summer, you may have picked up a free sample of their foaming hand soap at the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative (CCI) table on Bestor Plaza. I got to see Junk Free Skin’s founder, Tom Akers, at the Western...
The Off-Broadway company has also announced a year-long discount ticketing initiative. Off-Broadway’s Primary Stages has announced the lineup of productions for its 2024-2025 season, which marks its 40th anniversary. The company will also take part in a discount ticketing initiative throughout the season. The season will kick off with Kate Hamill‘s The Light and the Dark (The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi), running November 2-December 15. Jade King Carroll will direct the work, which is presented in association with Chautauqua Theater Company and Jamie deRoy. The work, which had its world premiere at CTC earlier this year, tracks how painter Artemisia Gentileschi transcended trauma to become one of...
In July 2024, Chautauqua Institution’s Director of Arts Education Suzanne Fassett-Wright presented at the Kennedy Center’s ED@LEAD Conference. This event is an outgrowth of the Kennedy Center’s LEAD (Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability)Conference. Fassett-Wright lead a session titled “Feelin’ the Beat: Where Drumming and Social Emotional Learning Meet,” sharing out about the Chautauqua Arts Education School Residencies drumming program. This program was developed originally to serve students with disabilities, integrating music and social emotional skill learning. However, it became clear with so many students struggling with social emotional skills due to the pandemic, many schools have been hosting this...