Writing Playshop for Children Ages 8-12
Fridays, January 9, 16, 23, 30, 4:30 – 5:30pm. Big Red Books, 120 Main St, Nyack
Start the new year with a winter collaborative playwriting class for Middle-graders (3rd-6th). Teacher Victoria Oltarsh, sci-fi author of the award-winning book, The Boy and the Secret of the Stars, published lyricist, and lifelong playwriting and theater teacher will guide the young writers in how to write a 10-minute play. At session’s end, there will be a table read of the students’ plays in a showcase for family and friends.
Free. Register by phone at 845-875-7707 or in-person.
Reading & Book Signing with Children’s Author Nancy Castaldo
Friday, January 9, 5:30 – 6:30pm, Big Red Books, 120 Main St, Nyack
Award-winning nonfiction author Nancy Castaldo has been writing books about our planet for decades from her home in the Hudson Valley for children and adults. Her work has received numerous honors, including the Green Earth Book Award, National Science Teachers Association Best STEM Book designation, Eureka Honors, Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing honors, and multiple Junior Library Guild Gold selections.
Free –
Imber’s Left Hand, followed by a talk with director Richard Kane and artist Jill Hoy
Friday, January 9, 6:00 – 8:00pm, The Angel Nyack, 18 S Broadway, Nyack
Come celebrate resilience and the power of art and witness the incredible true story of Hoy’s late husband artist Jon Imber and his inspiring commitment to painting after an ALS diagnosis. The program is a collaboration between the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center and Perry Lawson Fine Arts
Tickets: $10 EHHM Members, $15 General Public
Reserve your ticket online at edwardhopperhouse.org
Optional pre-screening exhibition visits:
5:00 – 5:45pm: Ticket holders may view the exhibitions at Edward Hopper House Museum (82 N Broadway) & Perry Lawson Fine Art (90 N Broadway), with light refreshments.
On view through February 15, 2026, “Side by Side,” at Edward Hopper House, celebrates the shared artistic life of Jon Imber and Jill Hoy, and right next door at Perry Lawson Fine Art, see “Jill Hoy: Narratives of Form and Color” through Jan 11, 2026.
High School Student Zoe Greenberg discusses her Young Adult Novel, Vie and the Bear Under the Tree!
Saturday, January 10, 2:00pm, The Sparkle Bookstore, 642 Main St, Sparkill
Zoe Greenberg started writing Vie and the Bear Under the Tree when she was in 8th grade. Her favorite hobbies are writing to avoid math homework, playing video games to avoid math homework, and hiding with her pets Babycat, Wilfred, and Mr. C. to avoid math homework
An Evening with David Yazbek presented by ArtsRock
Saturday, January 10, 7:00pm, The Angel Nyack, 18 S Broadway, Nyack
How does he do it? He has no idea, but he’ll try to figure it out. Join us for an evening with The Band’s Visit composer David Yazbek!
Direct from his performance at 54 Below in NYC, David will play and sing songs from his shows and albums.
Tickets: General Admission $40, Premium Seating $65. Purchase tickets here.
Opening Reception for Storefronts, an exhibit of drawings by Bill Batson
Sunday, January 11, 2:00 – 4:00pm, thru February 8, Lagstein Gallery, 85 S Broadway, Nyack
Bill Batson taps into nearly one and a half centuries of family history in Nyack and a lifetime of political and cultural organizing to archive, celebrate and preserve his community through his art. The majority of the works in Storefronts originally appeared as illustrations for his Nyack Sketch Log series that produced over 300 entries for Nyacknewsandviews and two books. The ideas in his essays inspired the Flash Sketch Mob, The Bench by the Road Monument in Memorial Park, the Phoenix Repertory Theater’s documentary “What Happened to Jackson Avenue” and the Rockland Civic Survey Project engaging students in Ramapo and Nyack High Schools.
The premise of Batson’s work is that commemorating a place by observing and recording the built and natural landscape empowers the art maker and viewer to become vigilant to the commonplace complexities of our surroundings and therefore better able to defend their communities. To Batson, the unexamined place is not worth living in.
Gallery Hours: Sat and Sun 1:00 – 4:00pm or by appointment, lagsteingallery@gmail.com.
Trafficked in America
Sunday, January 11, 4:00pm, Nyack Center, 58 Depew Ave, Nyack
FRONTLINE and the Investigative Reporting Program at U.C. Berkeley tells the inside story of Guatemalan teens who were forced to work against their will on an Ohio egg farm in 2014.
Panel Discussion to follow film with Stefany Ovalles, Center for Safety & Change, Yesenia Polanco, Nyack Schools, Homeland Security Investigations and NYS Department of Labor.
This program is a collaboration between the Center for Safety & Change and Nyack Center
Rivertown Film presents It Was Just An Accident
Wednesday, January 14, doors open at 7:30pm, film begins at 8:00pm, Nyack Center, 58 Depew Ave, Nyack
Winner of the Palm d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and the first film by Panahi since his most recent imprisonment in Iran, It Was Just An Accident is a moral dilemma of a man who has a random encounter with someone he suspects was his torturer while in prison. To decide what action to take, if any, he contacts others who were tortured, possibly by the same man. What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences, and questions are raised about the way that tyrannical rule corrupts a society.
There will be a Zoom discussion with the film’s cinematographer, Amin Jafari following the screening.
Tickets are $13/General Admission, $11/Students & Seniors, and $9/Rivertown Film Members. Click here for more information and tickets.
Wheeltown with Kathy Good
Thursday January 15, 5:00pm, The Sparkle Bookstore, 642 Main St, Sparkill
Kathy reads and performs from her work in progress, Wheeltown.
Kathy Good is an author, illustrator, poet, musician, and spacehuman from Rockland County. She worked with Prince in the video for “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.”
Perfect Arrangement, a play by Topher Payne
Friday, January 16— Saturday, February 7, Elmwood Playhouse, 10 Park St, Nyack
Set in the 1950s, this comedic play follows two gay couples, Bob and Jim, and their respective “wives,” Millie and Norma, who work in the U.S. State Department. To avoid persecution during the Lavender Scare, they maintain a carefully constructed façade of heterosexual marriage. Their charade unravels when they are assigned to identify “sexual deviants” within their ranks, forcing them to confront their identities and the fragility of their so-called perfect arrangement.
Presented by special arrangement with Concord Theatricals.
Click here for tickets or more information.
MLK Day at St. Charles AME Zion Church
Monday, January 19, 10:00am, St. Charles AME Zion Church, 432 Valentine Ave, Sparkill
Celebrate America’s national holiday honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
featuring a keynote address from Pastor Cedric McKoy First Baptist Church, Spring Valley, hosted by Pastor Rev. Dr. Brandon McLaughlin
Nyack NAACP 42nd Interfaith Commemorative Service in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, January 19, 2:00pm, Pilgrim Baptist Church, 80 N Franklin, Nyack
Editor’s note: This article is sponsored by Wright Bros. Real Estate where Experience meets Excellence at Nyack’s Longest Operating Brokerage.
