Press Releases

The Hermitage property is owned by Sarasota County and is leased to the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Inc.
The property is maintained by the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Inc. and the Sarasota County Department of Parks and Recreation.

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Mar

Fri

“Between Two Worlds” @ Hermitage Artist Retreat Beach

Tickets

Mar 12 @ 5:30 pm

“Between Two Worlds”
Friday, March 12 at 5:30pm
With Hermitage Fellows Gowri Savoor & Monica Youn
The Hermitage Beach
Entrance at: 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, FL 34223

Register here. $5 per person.

Visual artist Gowri Savoor discusses the importance of mapping systems within her work, and will facilitate an interactive, communal mapping experience that aims to connect us in this challenging time of physical-distancing. Poet Monica Youn will read from her manuscript in progress, which includes poems on the theme of deracination – to form a racial identity based on other people’s stereotypes, rather than from any central core of authenticity.

Capacity is limited to accommodate safe social distancing. Registration is required and early reservations are recommended. Masks are requested and strongly encouraged. Audiences members are invited to bring their own beach chairs and blankets.

Gowri Savoor (pictured above) is a visual-teaching artist, whose practice includes sculpture, drawing and the Indian art of Rangoli. Born in England, she was educated in Manchester and Leeds, and moved to the United States in 2007. Savoor is the founder of A River of Light, an organization committed to bringing art to the community through participatory art events, parades and installations. Savoor has been a teaching artist for over twenty years with experience in arts integration and community building. She continues to exhibit both nationally and internationally. Further information and examples of her work can be found at www.GowriSavoor.com. Gowri Savoor’s Hermitage Artist Residency is generously sponsored by Jan & Bill Farber.

Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre, which won the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award, longlisted for the National Book Award, and named one of the best poetry books of 2016 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed. Her previous book Ignatz was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been awarded the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hermitage Fellowship, Witter Bytter Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and a Stegner Fellowship, among other honors. The daughter of Korean immigrants, and a member of the Racial Imaginary Institute, she teaches at Princeton and in the M.F.A. programs at NYU and Columbia.

Mar

Fri

“The Great American Mime” @ Hermitage Artist Retreat Beach

Tickets

Mar 19 @ 5:30 pm

“The Great American Mime”
Friday, March 19 @ 5:30pm
With Hermitage Fellow Bill Bowers
The Hermitage Beach
Entrance at: 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, FL 34223

Register here. $5 per person.

Celebrated mime and performer Bill Bowers will make the ancient art form of mime accessible to our contemporary audience. This Hermitage Fellow and “speaking mime” deftly intersperses narrative with stunning visual portraits. He invites a look at the humor, pain, and beauty of our humanity through simplicity and grace.

“To watch Bill Bowers is to see the technical elements of a style that brings Marcel Marceau readily to mind, joined to the American West. Mime can be wonderful – the air between him and us is his palette.” -The New York Times

As an actor, mime, and educator, Hermitage Fellow Bill Bowers has traveled to all 50 of the United States, and throughout Europe and Asia. His Broadway credits include Zazu in The Lion King and Leggett in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Bowers has written and performed his own plays Off-Broadway and in theaters around the world. These plays include: Night Sweetheart ‘Night Buttercup, Under a Montana Moon, It Goes Without Saying, Beyond Words, and All Over the Map. Bowers has been hailed by critics as “the great American mime,” winning top honors at festivals throughout the world. He was a student of the legendary Marcel Marceau.

Bill Bowers’ Hermitage Artist Residency in honor of the Bruce E. Rodgers Endowed Residency.

Mar

Fri

“Future Tradition” with Pulitzer Prize-Winner Du Yun @ Hermitage Artist Retreat Beach

Tickets

Mar 26 @ 5:30 pm

The Hermitage Artist Retreat presents “Future Tradition,” a presentation and conversation with Pulitzer Prize Winner and Grammy Award Nominee Du Yun, Friday, March 26, 5:30 p.m., on the Hermitage Artist Retreat Beach.

Registration is required. Click here to register.

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, and currently based in New York City, Du Yun works at the intersection of opera, theater, cabaret, oral tradition, public performance, electronic music, visual art, and noise. Her body of work is championed by some of today’s finest performing groups and organizations around the world.

Known for her “relentless originality and unflinching social conscience” (The New Yorker), Du Yun’s second opera, Angel’s Bone, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. She was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Composition category. As an avid performer and bandleader, her onstage persona has been described by the New York Times as “an indie pop diva with an avant-garde edge.”

Du Yun’s Hermitage Artist Residencies generously sponsored by Sondra & Gerald Biller, Robyn & Charles Citrin, and Tina & Dan Napoli.

Registration is required. Click here to register.

Mar

Wed

“Storied Stories of the Creative Process” @ Hermitage Artist Retreat Beach

Tickets

Mar 31 @ 5:30 pm

“Storied Stories of the Creative Process”
featuring Michael Riedel & Robert Plunket

Presented in partnership with Sarasota Magazine

Wednesday, March 31st @ 5:30pm
The Hermitage Beach, 6660 Manasota Key Road (Manasota Key)
Also via Live-Stream

Registration required. Click here to register.

Longtime columnist for the New York Post, host of “Theatre Talk” on PBS, and celebrated author Michael Riedel, along with Sarasota’s own “Mr. Chatterbox” Robert Plunket, will present a talk at the Hermitage Artist Retreat – a leading home for artistic creation and development– sharing candid and colorful stories of famed artistic projects in early development. Moderated by Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg.

Capacity for the live event is limited due to social-distancing. A live-stream will also be available. Registration required. Click here to register.

Michael Riedel has been the theater columnist for the New York Post since 1998. New York magazine has called his column a “must-read” for the theater world. Michael began his radio career as regular on the Imus in the Morning show in 2011. In 2017 WOR, New York’s oldest and highest-rated station, asked him to cohost its morning show with well-known sportscaster Len Berman. The Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning show is the highest-rated morning radio program in the New York City area. Michael’s book Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway won the Marfield Prize for arts writing in 2015 and is widely considered to be the successor to William Goldman’s celebrated 1967 book about Broadway, The Season. A graduate of Columbia University, Michael lives in the West Village.

Robert Plunket (Sarasota Magazine’s own Mr. Chatterbox and a longtime contributing editor) is an acclaimed comic novelist whose works include My Search for Warren Harding (named by The Guardian as one of the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read) and Love Junkie. He’s also a sometime actor who appeared in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours.

Apr

Fri

“Transformations in Music & Words” @ Hermitage Artist Retreat Beach

Tickets

Apr 2 @ 5:30 pm

“Transformations in Music & Words”
Friday, April 2 @ 5:30PM
With Hermitage Fellows Henry Clarke & Denise Dillenbeck
The Hermitage Beach
Entrance at: 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, FL 34223

Register here. $5 per person.

Music can transform a single life, and literature can transform a whole culture. Henry Clarke will read from his latest work, as he challenges us to explore how writing helps us to record, interpret, and shape our culture and society.

Violinist Denise Dillenbeck will share musical samples as she reads from her memoir: How Beethoven Saved Me, exploring the relevance of classical music and its power to transform a life.

Henry Clarke (pictured above) is a writer and actor. Television credits include Chuck, House, Lie to Me, Blacklist: Redemption, Power, The Good Fight, FBI, and a Chinese television show called Action English. He has performed Off-Broadway with the SourceWorks Theater and Mint Theater, and regionally with the American Repertory Theater, American Conservatory Theater, Hartford Stage, L.A. Theater Works, and Shakespeare & Co., among many others. As a writer, his plays have been performed in festivals and university theaters, and one was commissioned by the U.S. Embassy for two tours of China. Henry holds a B.A. in English from Harvard University, an M.F.A. in playwriting from Smith College, and an M.F.A. in acting from The Moscow Art Theater School. Henry is currently writing a triptych of novels that explores the overwhelming systems of power and privilege that keep the bad guys on top, and what the good guys can do about it.

Denise Dillenbeck is a versatile musician with a focus in solo performance. She has toured Europe and America with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and has played with the Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Pennsylvania Ballet Theater, Philly Pops, and many other orchestras across the U.S. She is currently concertmaster of the Yakima Symphony, York Symphony, Siletz Bay Music Festival Orchestra, Lake Chelan Bach Festival Orchestra and the Northwest Sinfonietta. She was associate concertmaster of the Tacoma Symphony, and has served as concertmaster for orchestras across the states and in England and Germany. She is passionate about teaching, and has worked with dozens of violin students and young string quartets, and has also taught college courses on music, including a course on viewing world history and literature through the prism of Beethoven. As a teaching artist in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Community Partnership Program, she led urban elementary school students in experiential music learning, and directed workshops on aesthetic education for classroom teachers and music educators. The San Francisco Chronicle hails her playing as “simply first-rate.”

March – April 2021 Mar – Apr 2021

Press Releases

Hermitage Artists Respond to COVID-19.

Engage Creativity