MILLBROOK — Theater is blossoming in Millbrook, in large measure because of the Half-Moon Theater, along with some help from the Millbrook High School. Friday and Saturday, June 3 and 4, at 8 p.m., Half-Moon presented the first 10-Minute Play Festival at the Millbrook High School auditorium. The event consisted of 10 (which turned out to be 11) plays, 10 minutes each, with 16 different actors, actresses and playwrights based locally and from New York City.“It’s a really fun way to see a lot of different playwrights and styles, and every playwright has their own sort of voice,” said Geoff Tarson, artistic director of Half-Moon Theater. “I think it’s wonderful because there are so many different plays and it varies so it never gets slow. There is a new one coming in just a few minutes.” All of the plays were written for the 10-Minute Play Festival with a loose theme of city versus country. “Some are very much about that, really almost taking that literally,” said Tarson. “Some are a little subtle, taking that sense a city person has coming into a country environment. Some of them are just very vaguely related to that, sort of entwined.” Along with the plays’ themes of city versus country, the playwrights themselves are a mix of country and city residents. There is no shortage of accomplishments among the playwrights and directors. Ranging from Fulbright scholars to television writers, the playwrights have worked with distinguished actors and in productions of their work around the world.It is no wonder that Annabel Barrett, 19, a Millbrook actress, is happy to be involved with the Half-Moon Theater.“I am young and seeing people who have been doing this a lot longer is just really inspiring. It’s fun because they’re all really my friends,” said Barret. “I have known the entire Half-Moon Theater for years. Everyone is just brilliant and funny, and basically the humor that you see on stage is exactly the way it is in real life.”Though Half-Moon Theater is based out of Poughkeepsie, the relationship with Millbrook is growing.“We have been doing readings in Millbrook for the last two years. We are trying to provide theater for Millbrook that it doesn’t seem to have,” said Tarson. “We have been doing our productions in Poughkeepsie, but we have definitely been trying to increase our audience and our visibility in Millbrook, which has been really supportive.”Though Half-Moon has done readings at the Millbrook Book Festival, Grace Church Parish House and Punch Gallery, the 10-Minute Festival is the first to be done at the Millbrook High School.“The reason we’re doing it at the high school is because we honestly wanted to accommodate more of an audience,” said Tarson. “We are only doing it for two nights, and because it’s a larger cast and so many playwrights, we wanted to make sure there were enough seats.” Tarson said if there were a space available to buy or share with another business, the theater company would like to have a permanent space in the village.“We are a new theater company and we don’t have a lot of money. But we would love to work with Millbrook. If Millbrook was interested in that as well, we feel like we could make Millbrook our home,” he said.Tarson said he hoped that the audience that came to see the 10-Minute Festival enjoyed the variety that the theater has to offer.“Its exciting to see that many plays and styles, and be like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I saw this play that was really wacky and off the wall and this play that was very real and very subtle,’ and that was all one evening,” said Tarson. “I think it’s hopefully really impressive in that way and enjoyable because people will not know what to expect and hopefully they’ll be really pleasantly surprised.”
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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