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Tú Amarás (You Shall Love)
At NY's Baryshnikov Arts Center
By: - Feb 23rd, 2020After performing around the world Bonobo, the internationally acclaimed Chilean experimental theater company finally made its way to New York City’s Baryshnikov Arts Center, with Tú Amarás (You Shall Love), a socio-political offering with a surreal touch that examines what is an enemy, how do we create one, and how do we connect to others.
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Lucas Hnath Gives Us Dana H.
Probing a Mother's Kidnapping
By: - Feb 25th, 2020Lucas Hnath has a gift for making the past present on stage. In a marvel of edited tape, brilliant acting and staging, the Vineyard Theatre is hosting his play, Dana H. We don't see Edgar Bergen manipulating Charlie. Yet we hear the tape voice of the real Dana as it is mouthed by Deidre O'Connell. Taking on the voice, O'Connell inhabits the character, soundless, but with more subtle and apt gestures than you can imagine. It is a stunning evening of theater.
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Real Eyes Gallery 2020
March Madness Starts With Henry Klein
By: - Feb 26th, 2020Real Eyes Gallery in Adams, Mass resumes its monthly exhibitions. One of two repeaters Henry Klein returns with Uber Waves: Other Location on March 7. Gallerist Bill Riley, the other prior exhibitor, is slotted for August. On March 14 at 5pm, Kathline Carr and Patricia Sheppard will read their poetry. Ricky Darell Barton shows in April followed by Gil Riley (June), Lauren Olitski (July), William Riley (August), Pennie Brantley and Bob Morgan (September), Diane Reed Sawyer (October), Cotter Luppi (November), and To Be Announced (December).
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Lincoln Center Great Performers' Mahler
Surrounded by Concerts and Films
By: - Feb 26th, 2020Lincoln Center's Great Performers surrounded us with Gustav Mahler for five days. In addition to a concert by Ivan Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra, three films were offered.
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Beauty and the Beast
At the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center in South Florida
By: - Feb 29th, 2020Beauty and the Beast is enchanting, playful, funny and magical at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center. The classic Disney musical is timely with messages about tolerance and treating everyone with respect. The show is visual delight, but it also teaches people not to judge people based solely on their external appearances. The production, which is strong despite obviously fake fight scenes, runs through March 8.
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I Am My Own Wife
At Long Wharf
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Even the simplest human being is complicated and Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the central character in I Am My Own Wife is scarcely a simple human being. She is incredibly complex and her story is amazing.
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Donald E. Lacy's Colorstruck
Theater for the New City Mounts Premiere
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Colorstruck and its creators come to us from the San Francisco Bay area where they have been involved in radio, theater and film. They are also participants in community outreach in the arts. Lacy has crafted a one man show which straddles a gap where tears laughter and anger resolve. On an empty stage, Lacy emerges from darkness, a black man in black clothing. He speaks for 75 minutes, lighting up our hearts and minds.
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Welser-Möst Conducts the New York Philharmonic
From the Domestic Life of Strauss to Widmann's Streets of Babylon
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Franz Welser-Möst leads what is arguably the best orchestra in the United States, the Cleveland. His mastery of Richard Strauss' music is well-known. He began the program with the US premiere of Babylon Suite by Jörg Widmann, composer in residence at Carnegie Hall this year.
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Aspect Chamber's Musical Enemies: Debussy and Chausson
Grace Park and Gilles Vonsattel Superb on Violin and Piano
By: - Mar 02nd, 2020Irina Knaster founded the Aspect Chamber Music series to provide an enriched communal atmosphere for the performance of music. Concertgoers are invited to come early and drink wine and chat before the concert and during the intermission. Knaster fills the halls at the Bohemian National Center and Columbia's Italian Academy, two beautiful settings. She featured Grace Park and Gilles Vonsattel performing Debussy and Chausson.
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Marie Cuttoli at Barnes Foundation
The Modern Thread from Miro to Man Ray
By: - Mar 04th, 2020A new exhibit at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia features the collection of Marie Cuttoli, an entrepreneur who convinced many of the artists of her time to create designs for her the workshops, first in her own design studio in Paris and then for the tapestry weavers of of Aubusson, France.
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SWEAT by Pulitzer Prize Winner Lynn Nottage
At the Palm Springs Woman’s Club
By: - Mar 07th, 2020Prolific, award-winning American playwright Lynn Nottage, the only female to win two Pulitzer Prizes in drama, is also considered to be one of the most produced playwrights not only in America but across the world. “SWEAT” is an absorbing and profound production that grapples with the issues plaguing most of America’s workforce today.
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Jazz Pianist McCoy Tyner at 81
Played Boston’s Jazz Workshop with Trane
By: - Mar 07th, 2020In 1963 at The Jazz Workshop I heard McCoy Tyner with Trane. It was Trane's only Boston gig. Later Tyner played Lulu White's and we caught him a few back at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. His massive attack was much admired by aspiring pianists. He just checked at 81.
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A Florentine Tragedy and Gianni Schicchi
At Livermore Valley Opera
By: - Mar 09th, 2020These two operas make for a highly entertaining evening. The only false note concerns the orchestra, which was skillful in the comedy on opening night. But especially in the overture and early parts of the tragedy, dissonant tracts sounded more out of tune and out of sync as if the orchestra hadn’t mastered Zemlinsky’s more challenging and unfriendly music. It also overpowered the singers at times.
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Metropolis Ensemble Debuts at National Sawdust
Ricardo Romaneiro's Score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis
By: - Mar 11th, 2020Metropolis is a Grammy-nominated Ensemble founded by Andrew Cyr, who encourages artists to realize their bliss. The group was not named for the Fritz Lang film, but the temptation to take on this silent great must have been tantalizing. The live, electronic score by Ricardo Romaneiro was brilliant and brilliantly realized by the musicians. Cyr conducts.
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Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
New York Production Opened and Shut
By: - Mar 13th, 2020With a sexy (for the late sixties) ad campaign depicting all four characters in bed, a headline that read “Consider the Possibilities” – some newspapers would not run this ad – and a titillating R-rated story which dealt with infidelity and wife swapping, the movie—the number 5 moneymaking hit of the year—rang up some 31 million dollars at the box office.
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Mishima and Williams Celebrated in P'Town
The 14th Annual 2019 Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
By: - Mar 14th, 2020A day late and a dollar short, NY critic, Edward Rubin, is notorious for blowing off deadlines. By now the September, 2019 14th Annual Tennessee Williams Theater Festival is a faded memory. Arguably a rose pressed between the pages of a book. But here in loving detail Rubin posts a definitively detailed, documentary account of an historic event. It also serves as a preview of what to expect this September. By then, hopefully, the virus will have passed and we will enjoy the last gasp of summer with magnificent theatre and high jinks by the sea.
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A Puppet Universe Kosmos Invers at HERE
Kalan Sherrard Laucnhes an Electric Take
By: - Mar 15th, 2020Kosmos Inverse is the world below and the world way out there. We have a powerful feeling of infinity as we are being cast into a carnaval space. The central sphere resmbles a mop. Depending on the lights, it can be colored red and green and purple. Pigs, an elephant who strongly resembles Mo Willems’, two classic rubber dolls, and a busty woman bounce before us.
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White Blacks: The Saga of an American Family
Melanie Maria Goodreaux Writes and Directs
By: - Mar 31st, 2020We begin as the guests at a black debutante ball in New Orleans. White staircase, be-gowned young women, stiffly poised young-men stand on the threshold of their presentation to society. Step by step we see the painstaking bows and courtesies of a society steeped in the mores of color and class that are expressions of the history of that city.
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Grammy to Fantastic Mr. Fox by Tobias Picker
Best Opera Recording Conducted by Gil Rose
By: - Mar 19th, 2020The libretto by Donald Sturrock is based on a book by Roald Dahl. Three farmers, Bunce, Boggis and Bean want revenge on Mr. Fox for taking their chickens, their geese and their cider. They are frustrated by Mr. Fox’s clever tactics. Gil Rose brings the music and story to life in this masterful recording which won the 2020 Grammy for Best Opera Recording.
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Home Alone
Coping with Self Isolation
By: - Mar 21st, 2020I was joking with one of my daughters this morning about masks. She works in law enforcement, and was sharing a few stories about people who have called 911 about running low on toilet paper, and people who have come to her station to complain about a spouse who won't take this "virus thing" seriously. She wears a department-issued N95 mask, but she asked me if I knew where she could get a mask to protect her from stupid
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Boston Gallerist Arthur Dion
Gallery NAGA on Newbury Street Since 1977
By: - Mar 25th, 2020Gallery NAGA, with a lease from Church of the Covenant, was organized as a cooperative in 1977. In 1982 Arthur Dion was hired as director and soon became sole owner. With a commitment to painting and studio furniture it prevails on what was formerly Boston's gallery row. Now director emeritus Dion stepped away from daily management. As part of compiling an oral history of contemporary art in Boston, Dion shared insights of his remarkable career.
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Terrence McNally at 81
Renowned Playwright Succumbs to Coronavirus
By: - Mar 25th, 2020Prolific playwright Terrence McNally loses his battle with coronavirus. McNally was an American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee. The prolific writer also won five Tony Awards.
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MFA Director Matthew Teitelbaum
A 1993 Interview with the Acting Director of the ICA
By: - Mar 29th, 2020A native of Toronto, Matthew Teitelbaum, departed Boston in 1993 to take a curatorial position at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In this interview he was acting director of the Institute of Contemporary Art. Then 37, it provides insights of his curatorial vision and process. He went on to be director of the AGO. In 2015 he returned to Boston as director of the Museum of Fine Arts.
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Rafael Mahdavi: Corona Chronicles
Pandemic News from France
By: - Mar 30th, 2020During a time of confinement we reach out to family and friends by phone and e mail. From France my artist friend, Rafael Mahdavi, wrote a wonderful detailed note. He also sent a remarkable new work that inspired this piece. Art represents hope and salvation through the darkest moments of human condition.
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Jacob's Pillow Cancels 2020 Season
Response to Pandemic
By: - Mar 31st, 2020For the first time in its 88-year history, the Jacob’s Pillow Board of Trustees and Executive Leadership have made the decision to cancel the 2020 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, previously scheduled for June 24-August 30 along with its annual gala scheduled for June 20.
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