Public History in Performance
Directed by Trudy Williams, The Red Skies Music Ensemble (co-founded in 2010 by George Boziwick and Trudy Williams) presents original humanities based multimedia shows for the general public that animate facts and interpretations in American public history and culture that have been often overlooked, omitted, or hidden in plain sight.
Using music as the portal, the hour-long Red Skies shows combine a lively research-based narration with live music, theatrical vignettes, and large screen archival images to bring general audiences on a journey of exciting experiential engagement with the meanings of artifacts, archives, special collections and exhibits of local and national libraries, museums, historical societies and house museums.
The shows, authored by Trudy Williams or co-authored with George Boziwick, weave meanings and inter-connections across time and medium, aiming to inspire a closer relationships of audiences to their shared humanities heritage.
Performances include an audience participation component during the show and a Q&A at the end. The shows are crafted for easy adaptation to any size space, formal, informal, indoors and out; and are cast and crew are drawn when feasible from the community where a shows will be performed.
And the shows are exciting and fun! A comment from a museum director who commission two shows: " The Red Skies shows [brought] our collections areas and galley walls to a fully-fleshed out, breathing, dancing-in-the-aisles reality."
Performances (partial list). The Library of Congress; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Lincoln Center Public Program Series; The Oberon Theater of the American Repertory Theater, sponsored by the Harvard Houghton Library and A.R.T. Special Programs; Yale University Institute of Sacred Music; The Emily Dickinson Museum; International Emily Dickinson Society, Amherst College; The Long Island Museum. Find out more at www.TheRedSkiesMusicEnsemble.com
2024 Performances: June 28, 29, 30: Cornstalk Fiddles: Soundscape and Place in 19th Century Hadley.’Trudy Williams, Author. Sponsored by Hadley Historical Society. Partnership: Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum
2024 In Development: Rhythm and Rails Trudy Williams, Author. Partnership with Historic Northampton.
Complex Harmony: Music, Walt Whitman and the Railroad. Trudy Williams, Author
