The Board of Trustees of Hancock Shaker Village announced today that director Jennifer Trainer Thompson will step down in July. Thompson has been widely credited for her transformational leadership of the museum and is recognized as an innovator in the museum community. Since her appointment in September 2016, Hancock Shaker Village has grown in size and stature and has been infused, as The Boston Globe noted last summer, “with great gusts of contemporary vitality”.

Michel Van der Aa's music theatre works.  This is a miracle, because he deploys many instruments, not only a libretto, often based on wild imaginings, yet sensibly based on a very simple story. In Upload, we are in the revere of the last act of Walkerie. Now a father is defying his daughter, not the reverse. The Park Avenue Armory mounts a compelling case fot his work

Simon Dinnerstein performed Bach's Goldberg Variations at the Miller Theatre. She is a magician at the keyboard, giving us all the spiritual richness of the work along with great joy.

Playwright Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Award winning play concerns the family reunion from hell.  The family doge, Beverly, was a prominent poet in his younger days, but settled into a long life as a disgruntled teacher and acknowledged but likeable alcoholic.  Several days after his unexplained disappearance, Violet, his wife and family doyenne, musters the troops. 

This spring, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present an exhibition by pioneering abstractionist artist Sam Gilliam. Between May 25 and Sept. 4, “Sam Gilliam: Full Circle” will pair a series of circular paintings (or tondos) created in 2021 with “Rail” (1977), a landmark painting in the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection.

Yussef El Guindi’s new play deftly delves into a constellation of differences – not only cultural, but marital, economic, power, gender, and generational – some between cultures and some within.  The result is a lively dramedy that reveals the causes and consequences of the cracks in the American couple’s marriage.

Through his blog Painting, the artist Martin Mugar posts think pieces about theories of fine arts. He applies in depth critical analysis to a probing review of the Charles Giuliano book Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870 to 2020: An Oral HIstory.

A quality national, non-equity production of Cats is touring the country. The production's most recent stop was the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale. Cats delivers emotionally.

The main subjects of “Endlings” seem like inspiration for the kind of article you would see in “Parade” magazine – “World’s Most Unusual Occupations.”  Three Korean women, aged 78 to 93, are the last of a dying breed in a centuries-old occupation.

Alexis Greene is the author and editor of numerous books about theater, including The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway, written with Julie Taymor, and the biography Lucille Lortel: The Queen of Off Broadway. In addition to writing and editing books about women and theater, Greene’s career spans acting, theater criticism and teaching. She holds a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Broadway Across America has announced the 2022-23 line-ups for Broadway in Miami and Broadway in Ft. Lauderdale. Among the shows, audiences will be able to see "Hamilton" again in Ft. Lauderdale, and "Wicked" in Miami. Perhaps the hottest show on Broadway, "Six" will play in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.

In the beginning was the word, said John in the Bible. This was also said about Cyrano de Bergerac. Jamie  Lloyd and James McAvoy follow up with a version of Edmund Rostand’s play which celebrates the word as it is spoken today. No longer does it depend on a continuously mellifluous voice.

Rabatt (discount), the newest production at the Gorki Theater in Berlin is a hilarious farce about a very serious issue – the burials of poor people in the world of the well to do.

Real Eyes Gallery previously exhibited Gil Riley’s show Peak Machine during the summer of 2020. We hope you will join us to celebrate this colorful, optimistic world. Gil Riley’s imagery is based on a psychomagically constructed myth: Liontamer’s Paradise. Her book of the same name was published in 2016 by American Typewriter Press. This show will include pieces painted and printed on wood and fabric, monoprint and limited edition books, and small wooden sculptures.

Next to Normal which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama is opening the season at Westport Country Playhouse through Sunday, April 24. The musical by Tom Kitts (music) and Brian Yorkey (book and lyrics) tells the story of an American family facing a serious mental health issue.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) recently announced the winners of new play awards for 2021. The Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award went to "Poor Clare" by Chiara Atik. The M. Elizabeth Osborn Award went to Makasha Copeland for their play, "Extreme Home Makeover."

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain are proud to announce a seven-week extension of the North American premiere of The Great Animal Orchestra, a collaborative work between pioneer soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause and United Visual Artists. Due to the overwhelming popularity, the exhibition will remain on view at PEM through July 10, 2022.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. We have to shut down the print edition of this publication for the second time since March 2020 effective immediately. For those of you that follow the American news industry—its local print markets in particular—this should come as no surprise.

Dominique Morisseau has taken a loaded topic, the Big Mamma of black plantation culture, and fixed her in a space during the Civil War mashed up with the present.  Big Mamma is bursting out of her role in the 1860s, getting the notion that with gun in hand and books to be read she can be free.  In the present, she is  a university professor, nurturing a young black student, a white student and a black female assistant anxious for tenure.  Tyler Perry and Martin Lawrence have made fun of Big Mamma. The strength of Tennessee Williams’ white Big Mamma in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, comes from the springboard of this icon of  plantation life.

Star of Freedom has music by Connecticut resident Jeff Blaney and a book by Lawrence Thelen. The piece began life as the concept album Exodus; Executive/Artistic Director Jacqueline Hubbard saw the possibilities and brought it to Thelen to write the book.

Leading the pack with the most honors of the season is the Broadway play The Lehman Trilogy with nine nominations, followed by the Off-Broadway musicals Harmony and Kimberly Akimbo which earned eight nods each. The most recognized Broadway musicals of the season are MJ the Musical and Paradise Square, with seven nominations each.

The true story of six-time world champion prizefighter Emile Griffith is told in Boston Lyric Opera’s (BLO) new production of Champion: An Opera in Jazz by Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard (Fire Shut Up in My Bones), with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer.

“A Sense of Place” is a joint effort of North Adams Contemporary (NAC) and Real Eyes Gallery to benefit Louison House. The non profit will received 50% if sales from the exhibition. . NAC is a collaboration of four artists, Debi Pendell, Diane Sawyer, Sarah Sutro, and Betty Vera.

Odessa Straub begins with sourcing and collecting materials, some of which have been in her possession for years and others acquired from online sites, thrift stores, junk yards and discarded refuse. Her searching and selection process is as intensive—and playful—as her making.

Participating cultural organizations include Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Berkshire International Film Festival, Berkshire Theatre Group, Community Access to the Arts, The Clark, Hancock Shaker Village, Jacob’s Pillow, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, MASS MoCA, The Mount, Norman Rockwell Museum, Shakespeare & Company, The Trustees and Williamstown Theatre Festival.