In an engaging cabaret entertainment, Julie Benko recalled her experience as all manner of stand-in performer with beautifully crafted songs from those shows and witty vignettes. She's also made it to the top, having played Fanny Brice, the lead in "Funny Girl," on Broadway over 180 times.

Over hill and dale, through mill towns and pastures, the entourage gathered in Glens Falls. Family and friends came from far and wide to celebrate yet another exhibition of the representational artist couple Pennie Brantley and Robert Morgan. The faithful were yet again rewarded by a stunning exhibition at LARAC in Glens Falls, New York.

Jacob’s Pillow announces that tickets are now on sale to the general public for the full schedule of programming at this summer’s Dance Festival, which will offer nine weeks of performances by world-class artists, live music, and free and paid family-friendly events, on indoor and outdoor stages. In addition to featuring local and regional artists, the festival will include dance companies traveling from across the United States, Canada, England, Switzerland, Italy, Argentina, Spain, and beyond. 

Though John Patrick Shanley’s play opened in 2004, he wisely set it in 1964. The Catholic church was in turmoil, but not for the priest abuse scandals that were roiling the church in 2004. The turmoil was caused by changes implemented by Pope John Paul the XXIII and Vatican Two, including the dropping of the Latin mass, proclamations on religious tolerance, and a philosophy that the church needed to be more involved with the community.

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is producing Macbeth (an undoing) at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn. The Royal Lyceum’s production of Macbeth (an undoing) at TFANA is a promising start to a reciprocal partnership, The Shakespeare Exchange, between Royal Lyceum and Theatre for a New Audience.

For over 30 years, Yinka Shonibare CBE has used Western art history and literature to explore contemporary culture and national identities. Suspended States is the artist’s first London solo exhibition in over 20 years. It showcases new works, interrogating how systems of power affect sites of refuge, debates on public statues, the ecological impact of colonialisation and the legacy of imperialism on conflict and consequential attempts at peace.

Twelve-year-old Amir comes from wealth and the dominant Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan. His only close friend, the illiterate Hassan, is not only from the deprived minority Hazara tribe but is the son of the servant of Amir's father. Hassan's kite running skills allow Amir to compete at the highest level in this important activity, but Amir will betray the trust of friendship, and the consequences reverberate.

Last fall, as Ferrin Contemporary shifted directions, we knew that moving the gallery meant we would have more time to focus on the work and exhibitions featuring gallery artists. It also gave us the freedom to travel to museums where their work is now on view and attend public events.

Pop acts at Tanglewood this summer.

I am pleased to introduce you to a new exhibition called One Life, curated with the inspirations of dance, plant life, and Coleridge’s poem “The Eolian Harp.”  

Carsie Blanton is a songwriter with hooks, chutzpah, and revolutionary optimism. Inspired by artist-activists including Nina Simone and Woody Guthrie, her catalog careens through American popular song from folk and swing to pop-punk protest anthems.

Imagine one opera about the heralded 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match and another about an obscure Belgian bird singing competition. How would they be packaged in a program? Of course, by framing them as broadcasts from ABC's Wide World of Sports, with Howard Cosell at the mic. Innovative production techniques lift these already interesting little gems.

When Kristina Wong's performing career was shut down by Covid, she turned to a skill that many Asian women learn from their mothers - sewing. Using social media and meeting technology, she organized a brigade of "aunties" who produced many thousands of cloth masks when masks were in short supply. In a high energy performance, she frames this personal experience in the context of the political world of 2020-21.

 Drawing inspiration from the 2007 cult-horror film by Mitchell Lichtenstein, this energetic show satirizes purity culture and sexual desire while tossing in a bit of biting commentary on misogyny.  

From Urinetown to Hello Dolly Boston's Lyric stage has programmed a seasons of hits. Unabashedly Artistic Director Courtney O’Connor says, “We’re thrilled to share six stories that focus on character connection and joy told by artists you already know and love and new artists we can’t wait for you to meet."

John Adams’ masterpiece Oratorio, El Nino, is being given a full production at the Metropolitan Opera this spring. The work premiered at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in 2000.  Kent Nagano conducted.  Luxury casting included Dawn Upshaw, Lorrraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White

Comedy reigns this summer in the Berkshires! Barrington Stage Company (BSC) is pleased to announce that it will be the new home of the Berkshire Comedy Festival, produced by the Long Island Comedy Festival in partnership with BSC. The company will also present special preview performances of Alison Larkin: Grief...A Comedy, written and performed by Berkshire resident, writer, and comedian Alison Larkin, prior to its UK premiere and world tour this summer.

Six play finalists are in the running for a major national annual award presented by theater critics. The American Theatre Critics Association annually presents the 2024 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New play Award. The winner will be announced in May.

Gatsby is directed by Tony Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812; Moby-Dick) with choreography by Tony Award winner Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge!). The production features an original score by international rock star Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine) and Oscar and Grammy Award nominee Thomas Bartlett (Doveman), and a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living). Keenan Tyler Oliphant is associate director and Camden Gonzales is associate choreographer. Casting will be announced at a later date. 

Jeremy Strong stars in revival. Audiences may be amazed by how many issues in Ibsen's play equate to issues in our times.

The Davis Museum at Wellesley College is proud to announce the third iteration of the biennial Prilla Smith Brackett Award. This biennial award honors an outstanding female-identifying visual artist based in the Greater Boston area. Funded by Prilla Smith Brackett (Wellesley Class of 1964) and administered by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Brackett Award will be given to the artist whose work demonstrates extraordinary artistic vision, talent, and skill. The award winner will be announced in Fall 2024.  

Nightclub entertainer Joey Evans attracts a patroness, Vera, who stakes him to a club of his own. But she is older, domineering, married, and hot for him. He's a footloose schemer with the morals of an alley cat. What could possibly go wrong? Happily, the clashes of nightclub life are revealed with liberal doses of the beautiful tune "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered."

"Kathia St. Hilaire is a remarkable young artist who creates captivating works that combine a wide range of media,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “She interweaves Haiti’s history and her own personal biography into images that are beautiful, sometimes difficult, and utterly original.”

While offering instruction in the various taiji forms I teach, I often refer to a forest stream and urge my students to become it, ever-flowing, to find and then move at the pace of their breath, ever-flowing, just as the stream finds its pace.  The stream does not move from one place to the next; there is no line of demarcation between places.  The stream simply flows.  

With minimal marketing and fanfare the Cape Ann Museum launches its 2024 season with the special exhibition In the Round: 20th Century Cape Ann Sculpture which opens April 6 from 3 to 5 pm. It focuses on major sculptors who lived and worked on Cape Ann. In July there will be a survey of women artists. The museum has pulled back to business as usual following last summer's blockbuster Edward Hopper and Jo Nivison exhibition in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art.