During the dead of winter yet again, for the thirteenth time, we embraced 10x10 New Play Festival at Barrington Stage Company. At least for a matinee we woke from hibernation to embrace the treat of arts in the Berkshires.

Celebrated comedian-actor-singer Robert Klein and Grammy Award–winning songwriter and singer Julie Gold are among the 14 artists who will be honored for their musical and comedy artistry at the 39th annual Bistro Awards gala on Monday, April, 1 at Gotham Comedy Club in New York. As is the Bistro Award tradition, the evening will feature performances by all the awardees.

One of the unique features of the show is that it is up to the director and the performers to decide which famous women performers and songs are in the drag sequences. Here, Connors and the cast have offered terrific performances.

The squirrel comes each day to eat peanuts with me on one of the benches in the meditation garden that surrounds my training and teaching deck.  Sometimes she will sit in my lap, sometimes she will sit on the cushion beside me, and sometimes she just sits on the cinder block armrest.  But she comes every day, and several times at that.

I was apprehensive about Long Wharf’s new production, which runs through Sunday, March 10, mainly when I read that director James Dean Palmer is known for his “reinterpretations” of classics.

In my new paintings I am imagining “evolutants” stuck in the mud, from remains of the flora and fauna of the smallest cell-like creatures to the evolution of our present human form, painted as staggered layers of history. They are colorful, animated patterns of biological and imaginary forms painted in acrylic and oil.

Hunter Foster, who played Sam Philips in the original Broadway cast, directs this production with a fine hand. His experience with the show reveals itself in the nuances and choices he makes. The scenic design by Josh Smith shows us the studio of Sun Records in Memphis in the 1950s. The founder of the studio, Phillips helped put rock ‘n roll on the charts.

Prominently located at the western entrance to the Williams College campus and the town, the new Williams College Museum of Art is conceived to serve the College, the local community, and visitors to the Berkshires through a cluster of four program areas. While slightly set apart like pavilions, the better to accommodate their multiple uses, the program areas are unified through their materials, their openness to the natural setting, their organization around a central gathering place, and a distinctive overarching roof that shelters them all.

The brash and lively Castalian String Quartet and man-for-all-seasons Sir Stephen Hough performed at the Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

The American Composers Orchestra joined Carnegie Hall’s musical exploration of the Weimar Republic.  Central to the evening’s presentation were two pieces:  One, ‘Pirate Jenny’ from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera.  The other ‘Clans’ from Lowok Shoppola of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.

The National Youth Orchestra-USA Alumni performed works by George Gershwin and Dmitri Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall. Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted. Daniil Trifonov performed Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with flair, flash and deep feeling.

On Friday, April 19, the Clark Art Institute offers free activities as part of its April School Vacation Week programming. At 10 am, the Clark hosts Earth Walk with Dogs, offering three walks through its trails, ranging in difficulty. From 11 am–1 pm, the Clark presents a pop-up display of dogs and nature-themed works on paper in the Manton Study Center for Works on Paper, located in the Manton Research Center.

Doubt, John Patrick Shanley’s justly celebrated play, is running at the Roundabout Theatre in New York directed by Scott Ellis. 

Williamstown Theatre Festival is pleased to announce Beth Hyland as the recipient of the 2024 L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award for her play SYLVIA SYLVIA SYLVIA. Hyland will receive the $10,000 award and the accompanying $10,000 Jay Harris Commission to write a new play.

Dead Outlaw is Audible’s latest production at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York.  The band is central on stage from start to finish. We enter the world of a rocking hoe-down celebrating life after death.

Jeremy Strong stars in revival. Audiences may be amazed by how many issues in Ibsen's play equate to issues in our times.

David Hertzberg's opera, The Rose Elf, opened The Angel Space series, a collaboration between Unison Media and Green-Wood Cemetery. After whiskey amidst gravestones, the audience took a walk through the glorious grounds, where ancient trees are thick, tall and promising. The production in the Catacombs was thrilling.

Carnegie Hall ended its 2017-18 season Tuesday night with the last of three concerts featuring the MET Orchestra. This year, the pit band at the Metropolitan Opera has been playing under a succession of different conductors. This one was conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Betrayal through informing is at the core of Athol Fugard’s masterful A Lesson from Aloes, one of several penetrating plays that earns the South African playwright a position in the pantheon of modern authors. First produced in 1980, the play is set in 1963, a full three decades before the end of apartheid. Weathervane Productions renders this classic with exceptional skill.

I didn’t think there were really any outstanding musical productions this season. By that I mean productions where the work itself and all elements of the production hit the mark. Most had flaws of some kind.

New Southern Florida theater company's production of Into The Woods is mostly a success. The director's approach suggests the innocence our youth has lost in the aftermath of tragedies. Mostly, this production leaves Into the Woods intact.

Peace for Mary Frances by Lily Thorne is produced by The New Group. It is in many ways a tough play, a domestic drama set during the final weeks of hospice at home. The cast featuring Lois Smith and J. Smith-Cameron is terrific.

Under the guise of the Red Scare, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), abrogated the rights of thousands of people. Their practice of denouncing their political opposites is little different from the same strategy used by the current presidency.

The author recently visited Cartagena, Colombia. The city is a 500-year old urban jewel in the Caribbean with a wonderful scaled and visually vibrant Old Town (el Centro Historico). It is a wonderful destination on the western edge of the Caribbean. Planning of Cartagena both in terms of preservation and new development is a challenge, but climate change and rising sea levels is threatening its cultural heritage.

Astrid Hiemer contributed 19 photo illustrations for my fifth book of gonzo poems Topsy Turvy. On Sunday of Labor Day weekend we collaborated for a reading and book launch at historic Bascom Lodge on Mt. Greylock. There was a nice turnout on the porch. Jose, Alvin, Rick and Art joined us for the jazz dinner that followed. We stayed the night and had breakfast with hikers. It was an adventure we need to have more often.