A full-length play-within-a-play has a cast endure zany pratfalls. Unpreparedness, dipsomania, love triangles, antagonisms, prop misplacements, and more produce endless farce.

The first band to sign with MASS MoCA Records is The Kasambwe Brothers, a multi-generational band who has been making music together for almost 40 years and are grounded in the rich, musical heritage of Malawi, Africa.

Attention to detail helps the audience immediately form attachments with the cast. Even with the first cuts, you are disappointed that a favorite or two did not make it. By the end of the show, you are upset when a favorite doesn’t make the final cut.

The presentation of All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me comes to the La Jolla Playhouse via it’s DNA New Work Series.  The play follows young married couple Ty (Hennesey Winkler) and Nora (Kineta Kunutu) as they move into Ty’s childhood home.

When my students ask what I ate, the answer is this: I ate warmth and energy on a bustling street corner. I ate harmony and balance from shared plates. I ate history in a piece of braised pork belly and mindfulness in a simple egg tart. And in my last meal, I ate a final, perfect memory. I ate China, and I returned full.

Stebbins writes, “People are inclined to view past changes in taste as unique misjudgments that will not happen again….   How unthinking, how stupid, they think, not realizing that the pattern has been repeated again and again in the past and will be in the future. We now recognize that the process is a continual one. Each past canon was established for good reason; there are no mistakes, there is only history. Many of the favored artists of any period including our own will drop from favor, something that art dealers never tell their clients, or museum curators their boards.”

One of the canon's most fabled operas, the story of a frail, doomed courtesan and her star-crossed love for a man from the upper class has resonated with audiences of all ilks for over 170 years. Verdi's sumptuous score with stunning arias and ensembles is matchless.

New City Players is set to stage a professional production of the stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps." Four performances will portray a variety of characters.

If you are lucky enough to have tickets for Noises Off at the Legacy Theatre in Branford, prepare yourself for riotous laughter.This farce by Michael Frayn combines a behind-the-scenes look at a play (Nothing On) as well as the complicated relationships among the cast.

George LeMaitre and Patricia Fietta have renovated an enormous mill in Adams, Mass. It includes the generously spaced Gallery 13 ½ . Instead of Never on Sunday it is open Only on Sunday. Starting at 3 the gallery will serve sundaes. So its sundaes on Sunday. The artist is North Adams Eclipse Mill resident Joanna Klain. The gallerists are also showing examples of their own work.  

David Robertson and the New York Philharmonic performed a program that displayed the orchestra in all its glory.

Bread and books. Two more essentials. Shakespeare and Co. will always be dear to my heart. The first real bookstore to sell my book of poetry. And to host a reading I gave there. George Whitman, the founder, was a dedicated and friendly guy. I remember him as being serious about what he was doing. Creating a place for writers and artists to hang out and do what they do.

The absurdist and experimental South Florida professional theater company, LakeHouseRanchDotPNG, is giving the absurdist play, "Art Duty" a fine world premiere production. The production runs one more weekend at Main Street Players' intimate black box space in Miami Lakes. The play reflects the zeitgeist.

Tenor Pene Pate gave his first concert in New York at the Park Aveneue Armory. He has a superb voice, impeccable, warm deilvery and a special generosity, charcteeristic of his Samoan heritage.

Korean-Canadian immigrant Appa Kim owns a mini-mart in Toronto. He faces challenges in the two areas of greatest importance to him, his family and his business. Those interests intersect as the store sustains the family; as he has no succession plan because his children aren't interested in running the business; and because he has a good offer to sell the store. But isn't it funny how conditions change?

It’s shoulder season for the arts. With deft serendipity Alan Paul, artistic director of Barrington Stage has maxed on bucolic euphoria by going local with The Weekend: A Stockbridge Story by Ben Diskant. It is being given a world premiere directed by Paul.  

Jonas and Betsy have been a part of my life - and the life of my extended family - since they moved to the Berkshires when I was a kid. Jonas and my father Peter were great friends and engaged in some epic cross-country aerial adventures over the years. I worked for Jonas - and with him - on myriad projects over the years - we were in touch just a few days ago about making some updates to his website, which I’ve managed since the web began back in the early 2000s.

If you listened carefully to a panel discussion at the Guggenheim Museum a few weeks before the opera by Mason Bates, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, opened, you could hear the problems staging this work was going to face at the Metropolitan Opera.

A couple of days ago my friend Jonas Dovydenas was killed in a collision while visiting his native Lithuania. He was a renowned photographer and philanthropist. For a number of years he was on the board of The Mount with two as chairman. In 2010 he flew in for lunch. We met at the North Adams airport. But he forgot the book, a work in progress, that he wanted to show me. It was back in Pittsfield. We flew back, seven minutes each way, for a truly memorable experience.

Berkshire artists and patrons Jonas and Betsy Dovydenas visited his native Lithuania a couple of times each year. He was on hand to present an annual prize for Best Lithuanian Novel which he funded. On September 23 they were involved in an accident. He was killed and she was injured. We interacted with them recently during a performance at Shakespeare & Company. As a settlement with the cult Bible Speaks, for a time, they owned the campus of the former Lenox School for Boys which is now the campus of Shakespeare & Company. In 2014 I interviewed him about his photography exhibition at the Lenox Library.

New South Florida theater company Bridge Across the Pond has teamed up with Barclay Performing Arts, and The Find Your Voice Foundation to stage Arthur Miller's "The Price." The production will take place in an intimate venue in Boca Raton, Fla.

Dating to just a few years after his return from Paris, The Diver is perhaps something of a transitional work for Arthur Polonsky, presenting a stark and puzzling juxtaposition of figural elements. At the most direct and literal level, the painting simply depicts the titular diver leaping off a dock, with a distant bridge standing before far-off factories.The work is on view at Childs Gallery, 168 Newbury Street, Boston.

Theatre Lab, Florida Atlantic University's professional resident theater company, presents the world premiere production of "Heebie Jeebies: Tales from the Midnight Campfire."

The carte orange was a subway pass with your picture on it. You renewed it once a month, and it allowed you to travel wherever and as often as you wanted on the metro and buses of Paris. The pass was second class, unless you splurged. In those days the metro had first class carriages too.

Joseph de Rocher faces execution for the grisly murders of young lovers. Though unrepentant, he requests and receives spiritual counseling from Sister Helen Prejean. The opera based on the true story scintillates on all dimensions.