The Little White Way

James Van Alen isn't sure he wants to tell a reporter just how terrific he thinks the Powerhouse Theater festival at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is. "If people find out about it, it's going to get mobbed," he says. Van Alen, a stockbroker, has attended a dozen Powerhouse productions each summer for 15 years. "They're as good as, if not better than, plays I've seen on Broadway and off-Broadway," he says. Indeed, many of the plays that end up on New York City stages get their start at the Powerhouse.

New York Stage and Film, which co-produces the festival with Vassar, mounts three new plays, half a dozen works-in-progress, plus numerous readings and other performances each summer. In the coming season, which runs from June 22 to Aug. 5, comedian Alan King stars in Mr. Goldwyn, a witty, glitzy play about the legendary moviemaker, and film actor Jay O. Sanders plays the lead in The Hurdy Gurdy Man, an examination of race and friendship set in Boston. Tickets cost $15 to $25--or you can wait till the plays hit New York, and pay $65 or more.

Other colleges in the area include Marist College (also in Poughkeepsie), the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and Bard in Annandale-on-Hudson.