It used to be if you were out of the city—and the city was New York—you were out of touch with the performing arts scene. Lower Westchester was considered a vast artistic wasteland, except for a small number of established venues such as the Tarrytown Music Hall and Caramoor. People searched high and low for local theater companies and musical venues worthy of their patronage—but all in vain. Well, those days are gone forever. A major flowering of the arts has taken place in the suburbs lately, specifically in our corner of northern Westchester County. Pleasantville, Ossining, and Briarcliff Manor have become home to a range of local artistic productions that are guaranteed to satisfy the most ravenous arts-seekers.

4. Next stop: the Theater. If you enjoy extraordinary playwriting and top-notch acting, run—do not walk—to the Blueberry Pond Theater, located in a quiet, leafy park in Ossining.
Blueberry Pond is the only›professional theater company in Westchester County whose season consists solely of original, cutting-edge work. Every play presented by the company is developed and fine-tuned by the writers, actors and directors in the group’s lively weekly lab sessions. Also, throughout the year, Blueberry offers readings of promising plays, free of charge to the public.
The troupe, which takes its name from the blueberry bushes surrounding the home of its founder, Jean-Paul DeVellard, has grown in the five years of its existence to include 44 theater artists. They have entertained special audiences—in addition to their regular audiences—with staged readings at Westchester Center for the Arts in Mt. Kisco and at Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow. And for the last three years, the group has been successfully involved in the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival in New York City.
Critics have been enthusiastic, hailing Blueberry’s productions as “bold, inventive, and often lyrical.” The votes are in, and all agree—Blueberry Pond has to be on the must-see list of serious theater-goers in Westchester.

Blueberry Pond Theater
877-367-4849
www.blueberrypond.org
Ticket prices: Adults: $25, Couples: $40, Students: $15