A. R. Gurney’s Sylvia had a 1995 production in New York featuring Charles Kimbrough, Blythe Danner and Sarah Jessica Parker.  It is one of Gurney’s most frequently produced plays.  A husband in mid-life crisis would prefer the compansionship of a dog to a mistress.

On Saturday, October 16, Heather Bruegl, Director of Education at Forge Project, discusses the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, the indigenous people who once lived on these lands.

Island City Stage's first-ever production was of Tom Jacobson's play, The Twentieth Century Way. To kick off its 10th anniversary season, Island City Stage is reviving The Twentieth Century Way. The play focuses on two out-of-work actors in 1914 who hired themselves out to the Long Beach, Calif. Police Department to entrap "social vagrants (homosexuals)".

Blue grass and Appalachian music usually isn’t my thing, but my toes were tapping while enjoying the play-with- music, The Porch at Windy Hill now at Ivoryton Playhouse through Sunday, Oct. 17.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) announces The Helbing Mentorship Program. Under the program, LGBTQIA+ arts writers will work with leading theater critics to imrpove their craft and publish their work. The year-long program, which will begin in September 2022, includes a $5,000 grant.

Duncan MacMillan’s award-winning, 60-minute, one-person play, “Every Brilliant Thing,” centers on a list reflective of obsessive compulsion.  The narrator/protagonist itemizes everything worth living for.  Remarkably, he starts the list at age seven. 

Italian American Artists Grapple with Christopher Columbus's Legacy at MAD Museum. The Museum of Arts and Design will host 4 NYC artists of Italian heritage for a discussion about the colonial legacy of Christopher Columbus and his importance to the Italian American community. 

The Metropolitan Opera got a public relations boost when they mounted Terrence Blanchard’s ""Fire Shut up in My Bones" as their season opener. An unusually packed theater sweetened the Met's premiere. No question "Fire" is a wonderful piece of orchestral work. Elements of black folk music like gospel, jazz, and stepping, fit seamlessly into the overall scheme.

Slow Burn Theatre Company in Ft. Lauderdale has mounted a sizzling production of the musical theater show, "Songs for a New World." The production runs through Oct. 24 in the intimate Amaturo Theater within the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. This plotless hybrid of musical and song cycle features musical numbers connected by a theme. The composer and lyricist is Jason Robert Brown, of "Parade," and "The Bridges of Madison County" fame.

In “The Claim,” Serge hails from Congo.  Now in the U.K., he seeks asylum.  In this farcical three-hander, the immigrant is interrogated by two British bureaucrats – a male who we’ll call A, and a female, who we’ll call B.

San Francisco Opera’s current production maximizes the values of the piece through excellent casting, fine musical direction by Eun Sun Kim, and the addition of what amounts to another character, the stunning scenic design by Alexander V. Nichols, under the purview of Director Matthew Ozawa.

It turned into a shocking success, the opening of the Dreigroschenoper (Three Penny Opera) in November 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. Now, almost 100 years later, Bertolt Brecht's work with the music by Kurt Weill, is back at its original showing, now called the Berliner Ensemble at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin.

A special concert will cap this weekend on Sunday, Oct. 24, when pianist Ted Rosenthal performs his unique interpretations of George Gershwin compositions. Highlighted by his innovative treatment of the legendary Rhapsody in Blue, Ted’s repertoire for this first “tea time jazz special,” is collectively known as Rhapsody in Gershwin.

A vibrant Mamma Mia! is running at The wick Theatre in Boca Raton through Nov. 14. The production features triple threat performers who are convincing in their roles. Mamma Mia is the first production the Wick Theatre has mounted since the company closed its doors due to the pandemic.

During the era of KIng Cotton North Adams thrived by processing bales shipped north from plantations. The Eclipse Mill produced thread which was woven across the street in the Delftree Mill. Until 1938 the mills employed child labor. During a single visit Lewis Hine created nine photographs outside the mill. These images as well as vintage views of the Eclipse Mill comprise a special exhibition. They flank the entrance ramp to the vast artist/ loft complex. The community based project is an aesthetic, historic and humanistic accomplishment.

You might consider a review of the songs of Rodgers & Hammerstein to be “old hat;” why bother seeing a show with songs that are so familiar to all of us. See it because Ruggiero and the cast take these songs and bring a newness to them with sometimes subtle twists that carry them in the 21st century.

Marking Lives COVID-19 is a community art project conceived by Concord-based artist Elizabeth Awalt to commemorate the American lives lost to COVID. This exhibition is a realization of the collaborative social media project. It includes North Adams artist Sarah Sutro.

The virtual screening of Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision- a walk-through installation performance celebrating the lives of Women of Color will premier on November 5th at 8pm. Set inside a historic Women’s Club mansion in Pittsfield MA, each of the 21 rooms represented a stage or theme of initiation in the lives of Black, Indigenous and Immigrant Women of Color.

Barrington Stage Company will offer a Playwriting Workshop for Veterans under the direction of Barrington Stage Associate Artist and Award-Winning Playwright Mark St. Germain. In this 4-class seminar, students will explore the fundamental craft of playwriting with the goal of every student completing a ten-minute play. The culmination on the fourth and final day of class will be a rehearsal and performance by professional actors.

Stuart Brown, a theater critic and founder of a 24/7 online radio station devoted to musical theater, has created an escape room through which you strive to save Broadway from the Grinch. The escape room will go live around the first week of December. To access the escape room, go to https://soundsofbroadway.com/escaperoom. The "save Broadway" escape room will join two existing ones on the website.

Ric Haynes is an artist, arts therapist, humanist, and a storyteller. His life has brought him on journeys, both voluntary, and involuntary. Those experiences along with a vivid memory have given Haynes all of the source material he needs to tell his stories.

Appropriately, Theatre Rhinoceros presents “At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen” in its new, intimate home in The Castro.  Their choice of play to christen the new venue fits like a glove. Thematically, the suitability is clear for the longest running LGBTQ theater company in the universe.  And in a setting where the audience can reach out and touch the performers, a small two hander where the actors’ every small gesture can be seen.

Across the country arts organizations are making a concerted effort to include Americans of color in their presentations.  The concert at Symphony Hall in Boston this week was a highly successful concert of  inclusion.

Arvo Pärt has celebrated birthdays at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His music is often performed at the Temple of Dendur where one wall dances with reflections from a pool of water, reflections that seem to move with the beat of the music. They soothe and elevate, a mood captured by the Nile River in the temple’s original Egyptian location.

Melia Bensussen demonstrates a sure hand with this Eugene O’Neill play set in Connecticut on July 4, 1906. In Ah, Wilderness!, O’Neill who is better known for his dramas of love, loss, disillusionment, self-delusion and alcoholism, shows his lighter touch. It is a family comedy about some of the same subjects but more upbeat.