Tracy Letts’ script for the Steppenwolf Theatre world premiere production, Mary Page Marlowe, explores her identity in 11 scenes and 80 minutes. In his dramatic deconstruction of a life, the scenes are not performed in any ordered way and Mary Page is represented from age 12 to 69 by six different actors. (And a baby doll. Originally three actual infants were to alternate as infant Mary Page, but director Anna D. Shapiro decided during previews that was too much verisimilitude. Shapiro has children herself, so I don’t know why she thought a baby would do what it was being directed to do. Directing babies would be like herding cats.)

"In our time, theater here began to blossom about 25 years ago," wrote Howard Shapiro, a Philadelphia-based theater critic and ATCA's conference chairman in a welcome note to attendees. "And about 15 years ago the scene exploded. Of the 50-plus stage companies that pay their actors, designers and creative teams, about 35 hold Actors' Equity contracts at any given time. Metropolitan Philadelphia is now home to more than 1,000 Equity members, plus sizable communities of scenery, costume, lighting and sound designers; directors and playwrights. The theater community is a minor Philadelphia industry."

Boston Baroque strayed from its central focus on Baroque music to play Mozart's eternally popular "The Magic Flute." I don't like its quasi-religiosity, but Mozart's music proves irresistible. Martin Pearlman played his Baroque band with style, and the vocal cast was (mostly) excellent.

Joya de Ceren in El Salvador is a village preserved intact under layers of volcanic ash. Evacuated during eruption, what has been left behind reveal Mayan life from AD 600. Copan in Honduras is the most elaborate of all Mayan cities, as it was home to kings representing God on earth. Temple sculptures and portraits of kings carved in stone amidst a natural setting with birds and trees make the visit a wondrous experience.

Jeremy Denk is a formidable writer and pianist. While a man of such iconoclastic and apt thoughts might let 'intent' dominate performance, Denk succeeds in melding his ideas into the keyboard and creating music of seamless satisfaction.

Sasha Cooke and Simon O'Neill singing Mahler's Song of the Earth gave ravishing performances with the San Francisco Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas. Woodwinds and brass also stood out in Schubert and Mahler.

We set off on a 10 day trip to Hamburg, Germany, from two airports: Albany and Washington, D.C. and arrived per schedules - what a relief. Our hosts came with two cars to transport us all to Ahrensburg, in southern Schleswig-Holstein, just outside of Hamburg, my home town. Nearly 40 family members met on Easter-Monday in Hamburg for a family reunion, which we orchestrated from North Adams, MA. What a wonderful experience! We ventured into Hamburg a few times per U-Bahn, subway transportation. The city always shows its best side to visitors, even sometimes in the rain. On our first trip into the city we were enthralled to see the 'Miniatur Wunderland,' the biggest railway system exhibition there is. Here an account of our adventures in English and German.

Irina Maleeva, born in Bulgaria but who has lived in the United States for over 40 years, started her movie career at the tender age of 14 while living in Italy. She was discovered by famed filmmaker Federico Fellini and went on to work with some of the premiere filmmakers including Orson Welles.

Charming ACJW pianist Michael James Smith told us that when Carnegie first opened 125 years ago, no American music was played. Now we had an American evening, from Copland and Ives to an early Glass chamber piece and the stunning Carnegie premier of Steven Mackey's Micro Concerto. Cellist Caleb van der Swaagh explained tongue-in-cheek how hard it is to be a cellist and how easy it is to play 35 different percussion instruments, many of them featured by Mackey.

African American artist, Nick Cave, creates ritual, fetish costumes Sound Suits which transform and vitalize issues of gender, identity and race. With curator Denise Markonish he discussed an installation that will open at Mass MoCA on October 15 in the vast Building Five.

The watercolors and ink works making up the exhibition were selected from the artist’s estate by ACME Gallery Director David Cowan. Collectively they chronicle Johnson’s response to the landscape that surrounded him during his summers in the art colony during the 1950s, and reveal how the sights of Provincetown informed the development of his unique and important visual voice.

Waterford, CT – The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center announced today the 2016 summer season of plays, musicals, and other works in development at the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Puppetry Conference, and Cabaret & Performance Conference.

Legendary actors Wesley Snipes, Laurence Fishburne, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson took their first steps on the stage directed by Woodie King, Jr. before they blasted onto the Big Screen. Woodie has found a new giant, Reginald L. Wilson, who he directs in a mesmerizing performance at Harlem Besame, on the exact spot that Sugar Ray Robinson, arguably America's greatest boxer, conducted his enterprises in Harlem.

Contemporary music is alive and well in America and two special composers have been honored by the VIrgil Thomson Award and the Charles Ives Prize.

On Halloween night, various individuals are weighing their life questions and answers. Sparky Miranda is desperate for a way out of her situation. She’s up to her neck in debt, she might be actually falling for the man who pays her bills, and now her week-end date has threatened to kill her. A seemingly sweet stranger offers shelter and a drink. Where will the night end? With dark humor, two-time Pulitzer finalist Gina Gionfriddo presents complicated and somewhat incomplete characters wrestling with love, money, and their past. This sometimes awkward show is about people making strategically bad life choices and mostly talking about it. Using contemporary themes roughly juxtaposed, the playwright uncomfortably lays out no easy answers.

When the famous and respected literary lion Wyatt Holloway suddenly passes away, his wife, sons and lovers are left to figure out how to relate to each other and find direction in their lives. “I Will Look Forward to This Later” will be playing at The New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher St., NY, NY) through April 23.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has selected Qui Nguyen’s “Vietgone” as the winner of the 2015 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2014.

The Route of the Maya itinerary through Central America is an opportunity to see the archeological, cultural, and natural wonders of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Nicaragua. El Salvador is home to an attractive Pacific coastline, imposing volcanoes, picturesque small towns, and the vast Cihuatan Archaeological Park.

No classic drama remains unexplored by the gifted puppeteer Theodora Skipitares. Now at La Mama, she presents Six Characters in Search of More than an Author. Or Actor for that matter. An intriguing take on Pinocchio, Oedipus, Rhoda (the Bad Seed), and the Louds, America's first reality family. Margaret Mead is a surprising tour guide.

Remy Bumppo’s new production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Life of Galileo is the powerful story of the famous mathematician whose findings about the structure of the universe defy church teachings. His story is supremely relevant today because it poses crucial issues such as science vs. religion and government control of expression.

One can’t help but enjoy the sparkling and inventive on-stage musical comedy machinations of ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder’ in one of the Ahmanson’s slickest and audience-pleasing productions this season. The musical runs in LA through May 1.

Jacqueline S. Salit and Fred Newman’s new take on a Clinton Presidential candidacy struggles to define itself. Is it a play? A musical? A satire? A serious morality play? It ends with a distasteful and irresponsible message.

Back in the '70s, David Del Tredici was the hottest composer in town. Then he and the movement he led, neo-Romanticism, faded from view. His obsessive, rapturous works based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice" deserve to be heard. Gil Rose and his Boston Modern Orchestra Project obliges. The result - two and a half hours of lush music - was largely satisfactory. We want to hear more.

Alexandre Tharaud is more than a musician's musician. His heart-rending performance of the Bach Goldberg variations put him at the same pinnacle of pianists as the Bach work is for music afficiandos. In a concert series performed in an intimate acoustic marvel, the crypt of the Church of the Intercession in upper Manhattan, Tharaud delivered a mesmerizing take on this crown jewel of compositions.

Charlie Parker ended up an unknown in Bellevue's morgue. While the opera Yardbird is set in the jazz club Birdland then on 52nd Street, affectionately named after the genius of bebop, Bird himself is in purgatory, not yet buried, writing a final symphonic work and plagued by memories of the women in his life. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee makes an indelible impression in the title role.