Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s second act

The question, said Williamson, is always: “What’s going to happen tonight? And so that makes it very alive … and memory making.”

Now, after hosting the festival for 34 years at Boscobel House and Gardens overlooking the Hudson River and West Point across the way, the theater company is moving, while keeping the key ingredients that make HVSF such a beloved, summer fixture intact. In 2022, it plans to open a few miles south in another locale in Garrison, a hamlet of Philipstown. There, outdoor, tented performances will resume and audiences will be oriented toward sweeping northeast views of Breakneck Ridge and Storm King Mountain.

The move, which has been touted on the festival’s site and in its brochures since 2020, initially came as a surprise. In the midst of negotiating a new lease at Boscobel in 2019, a philanthropist and fan of the HVSF offered an incredible gift that has grown over time: roughly 100 acres of protected land along with a restaurant, inn and wedding business at the soon-to-be-former golf club, The Garrison, for HVSF to run and use for their future and first permanent home.

For the first time in its history, HVSF will not have to rent space to rehearse or store props, or put actors up overnight in a nearby hotel — the new property off of Route 9 has plenty of space to house performers and consolidate all of its production needs. And the theater company stands to expand its audience and revenue base: it currently attracts 32,000 audience members a year to Boscobel, and brings in roughly $4 million a year to the region; a new year-round campus would attract 50,000 visitors, increase staffing, and inject an estimated $7.6 million into Putnam County.

“I mean, that’s an offer that you can’t refuse,” said Kate Liberman, HVSF’s Managing Director.

This summer, as the company hosts its last season at Boscobel, it is simultaneously moving its site plans through the Philipstown planning board approval process. Though they have substantial support, including from local and state legislators, there are many variables that could impact the project’s ultimate design and initial season.

The accidental golf course owner turned arts benefactor

In 1999, conservationist Christopher Davis purchased a roughly 200-acre golf course after moving to Garrison from New York City.

“I’m a city kid,” he said. “So this was like coming to Eden.”

A developer threatened to spoil his new idyll with plans to build townhouses and homes on this golf course for sale in Garrison, which came with a wedding venue, restaurant and 8-room inn. So Davis, who runs an investment firm, purchased the property, called The Garrison, which sits upon a ridge off of Route 9 overlooking the Hudson River.

But he has never tried to make a go of being a successful golf course owner. “I play golf with my son, who does love golf, so this has not been easy for him,” he laughed. “And I think golf is a beautiful game. But the environmental side of me feels like golf courses are not really a wonderful use of land,” given the water and pesticides required to maintain it, and the few people who get to enjoy it.

For nearly all the years he ran The Garrison, it lost money. “I was not running it to optimize a business outcome … This was a passion project driven by my love of the property and my commitment to the community and as a conservationist,” said Davis, who is also on the board of the Hudson Highlands Land Trust, which he chaired for 15 years.

As he looked to his future, he wanted a more meaningful use for his asset, and upon learning that HVSF was in negotiations and potentially looking for new home, he offered them the land and the existing businesses, which Davis estimates is worth around $6 million, given all the conservation easements and development restrictions that will come with the real estate transfer.

The golf course will cease operations at the end of the year, and the land will ultimately be cultivated into meadows and gardens, with pathways the public can access. If for some reason HVSF also ceases to exist — a question some residents have asked the town’s planning board — the land will be permanently protected from development in any future sale.

“The Hudson River School of painting … it all happened right here,” said Davis. Creating a year-round arts campus in the Hudson Highlands, in his mind, will help foster a renaissance of the Hudson Valley, once “the fulcrum of America’s first artistic movement.”

A piece of the 200-acre property will also one day house Davis’ retirement home, and on a personal level, he looks forward to the perks of his new address, though he says he is years away from building it.

“I loved the idea of coming out of my house and instead of dodging golf balls, running into writers and actors and musicians and having this beautiful world-class arts facility right in the middle of our community.”

Merging nature and culture in Philipstown

Being able to perform year-round is one of the most exciting things about the festival’s future home, said HVSF Artistic Director Davis McCallum.

“At Boscobel we’ve been crammed in between Memorial Day to Labor Day to do as many performances and create as much wonderful stuff to share with people. But in a home of our own we can transition from being a seasonal festival to a year-round cultural anchor for the Hudson Valley.”

HVSF has no intention of moving everything indoors. The landscape will be as much of a character in upcoming performances as it is now, only instead of a seasonal tent, it will be a permanent open-air structure, slated for completion in 2023 or 2024, pending planning board approvals. They’ve engaged their design team, Studio Gang, to imagine an immersive experience, said McCallum, one that “capitalizes on what makes the Hudson Valley so unique, which is this incredible blend of nature and culture.”

In the short term, The Garrison’s restaurant and wedding venue could also serve as classroom, rehearsal and office space, or an indoor theater during the colder months and the current, temporary tent would be used for the initial season. And in the long term — say, 10 years — the terms of the real estate deal proscribe HVSF a small footprint to build a new, 250-seat indoor theater that would complement the roughly 500-seat tent. Accommodations would also grow over time to include a 20-room hotel plus cabins to house actors and staff during the performance season. Once complete, HVSF facilities would comprise no more than five acres of their 98-acre property.

Another massive perk of HVSF’s gift is that it comes with a business that provides the theater company another revenue stream that will benefit the audience and the restaurant. 

Currently, The Garrison’s restaurant is open only four nights a week. In future summer seasons, when HVSF anticipates having performances six nights a week, “We’re going to be bringing people through all the time,” said Liberman. “Everybody wants to get dinner before the show or a drink at the bar afterward.”

The beloved picnics at Boscobel will be a fixture at their new Philipstown home, too, available for purchase at the restaurant or permitted as a bring-your-own option. 

“So much of what’s entwined with the HVSF experience is picnicking — being able to … take a picnic out on the lawn and look at the extraordinary view, which people have been able to do for three decades at Boscobel and we’re really committed to replicating that experience,” said Liberman.

Awaiting stage directions from the town

As grand as HVSF’s plans and Davis’ gift are, there have been grumblings in the community about the ramifications of bringing a world-class arts center to a town of nearly 10,000. In letters to the town planning board between May and early June, there were as many letters in support of the project as there were either in opposition or with questions about how plans might impact things like traffic or the aquifer, a number of which HVSF addresses in a detailed FAQ on their site.

Not everyone, it turns out, is excited about the prospect of becoming a permanent home for a famous theater company. “While [HV]SF used to be a local thing, it really isn’t any longer,” wrote one longtime resident, Susan Coleman. “This action, as currently envisioned, seems way more the project of wealthy individuals and the Westchester, NJ surrounding clientele than it will be for Philipstown … Tickets will be out of reach for many. The community benefit here is questionable.”

So far, HVSF has been responsive to the town’s requests for revisions and answers about the development’s impacts. And should there be any delays in the approval process, HVSF is prepared to make more adjustments.

“If our progress through the Philipstown planning board is delayed, we would work with Chris Davis and the town to come up with a solution that would allow us to host performances at The Garrison in a format and at a scale that would be allowed by the current zoning regulations,” McCallum commented by email.

Whatever the outcome, Nance Williamson is eager to continue performing in her backyard.

As a regional theater actor, her pre-pandemic career had her traveling to cities like Cincinnati, San Diego and Minneapolis, before coming home each summer to perform at HVSF. Apart from her husband, who often works with her, “not too many of your friends or family have been able to see [you perform on the road], and so you have these islands of experience and of a career that aren’t necessarily shared with a community.”

At HVSF, it’s different. She and her husband moved to Garrison from New York City in 2002, and acting in her hometown is one of the things she loves about being a part of HVSF.

A stop at the gas station to fill up could mean an encounter with an audience member and neighbor who might compliment her acting, or complain about the current season. Either way, she enjoys the feedback.

“I can’t tell you what a gift that is, because you have a sense of belonging in a really deep, rich rooted way that actors don’t usually get to have.”

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Correction: Picnics at the new home of HVSF will be available for guests to either bring themselves or to purchase. An earlier version of the article stated they would only be available through the restaurant.