The Fuller Craft Museum is one the few specifically craft museums in the United States. Ranging from the traditional to the high tech, its appealing and thoughtful current exhibit showcases a wonderful assemblage of diverse Japanese utensils and accessories used in domestic as well as professional kitchens.

AstonRep Theatre Company marks the anniversary with a stirring production of The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project. It’s a documentary-style play that gives voice to members of the Laramie community—a roster of more than 60 citizens played by 12 actors.

Jonathan Spector’s world premiere Good, Better, Best, Bested depicts one night in the lives of a cluster of people in Las Vegas. With a serio-comic look at situations profound and mundane, the play is provocative, engaging, and well produced.

The very talented playwright Ayad Akhtar has combined multiple viewpoints with a political thriller to create the compelling The Invisible Hand now getting an excellent production at TheaterWorks in Hartford through Sunday, June 24.

As with any Albee play, one can spend hours dissecting the lines and the characters. Glenda Jackson and Laurie Metcalf won Tony's for their preformances.

It is now in the Midlands of Ireland. A bitter middle aged woman drifts in and out of the multi-layered consciousnesses. She is dying. Ireland's emerging premier female playwright Marina Carr invites us into attend her last moments.

Barrington Stage Company has assembled a dream team for the world premiere of The Royal Family of Broadway. It is a musical makeover of the 1927 play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. When word gets out about the first smash hit of the Berkshire season tickets may be hard to come by between now and July 7. This production was home grown by Barrington's Musical Theatre Lab.

Secret Life of Humans at 59E59 Theaters is a thoroughly engaging, funny and thoughtful evening of theater. David Byrne and Kate Stanley have asked in a fresh style: Can we humans survive?

It was a picture perfect Sunday afternoon when we took a long and winding drive to the 3,491 foot summit of Mt. Greylock. It's rustic Bascom Lodge was constructed as a WPA project in the 1930s. It fell into neglect but was renovated and the road repaired in 2009. There are dorm and private rooms for hikers. In season three meals a day are served and dinner on weekends is generally sold out. There are free events on the porch and we attended a mashup organized by Berkshire Playwrights Lab. At 7 PM we joined the family style dinner. For spectacuar views and a sense of adventure it's a summe treat that's hard to beat.

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge has just launched “Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell and the Narrative Tradition.” During a recent press preview we enjoyed an unencumbered view of the scholarly and superbly installed exhibition. Founding director, Laurie Norton Moffatt, discussed what the Rockwell legacy means in light of the controversy of the sale of two of his works by the Berkshire Museum. One of those works "Shuffleton's Barber Shop" was acquired by George Lucas who is loaning it to the Norman Rockwell Museum for the next 18 months.

Florian Zeller’s latest play, a tragic/comedy with a translation from multi-award winning Tony and Oscar playwright/translator Christopher Hampton, practically guarantee’s one an evening of stimulating quality theatre. Hampton does all the translations for French/Iranian playwright Yasmina Reza of “Art” and “God of Carnage” fame, as well as Zeller’s plays.

In their current repertory season, Repertorio Espagnol is presenting the two hander, El Credito by Jordi Galeran. We meet a loan officer who can’t say yes and a clever borrower with no assets. No one has heard Polonius’ advice: neither a borrower or a lender be. The setup is classic.

City Theatre's Summer Shorts is in its 23rd year of entertaining southeast Florida audiences This year's line-up is diverse. A pleasantly surprisingly, unseasonal "Short" opens this year's festival

Summering in Annisquam Martin Mugar, like the Ipswich based author, John Updike, became aware of distinct difference of class and culture. Thre were the easy, self confident debutantes who shopped at the A&P in their bathing suits. And the townies, like Sam, who unnoticed lusted for them. Recently, Mugar was reminded and inspired by watching the author crossing a street ages ago. Here he spins the yarn of old.

Until recently the Museum of Fine Arts has neglected artists of Jewish heritage known as The Boston Expressionists. There were a handful of works that were burried in storage. Major works by Hyman Bloom and Karl Zerbe were included in a gift from Saundra B. Lane and William H. Lane. The museum is planning a major exhibition and catalogue for Bloom. It is likely that there will be other projects and publications. There are no current plans for showing or collecting works by Zerbe and Jack Levine.

In Mies Julie at Victory Gardens Theater, playwright Yaël Farber translates the relationship between a privileged young woman and a servant from Midsummers Eve in Sweden to the Karoo, South Africa, on Freedom Day in 2012, the day commemorating the end of apartheid.

Huang Ruo in music and David Henry Hwang in words ask: What will you do to become American? What will you endure? In a seamless wrought tale of a first generation Chinese American from Chinatown, we watch the world rect to a young man's wish. It is a horrifying story whose conseuqences we have only begun to grapple with. Huang Ruo and Hwang make great opera out of the story.

The Kansas City Symphony is a superb group pf superb artists, who make their home in one the of the performance treasures of America Like Dallas and other smaller cities across the country, Kansas City community leaders decided to spiff up its arts’ presence, A decade ago they dtermined to build a new home for its Symphony Orchestra and somewhat larger hall for events on tour.

There is an upcoming concert by Christopher Janney, who will present with fellow dancer and musicians works that will again push boundaries. The event will occur on June 8 at the Boston University Dance Theater.

Until a few years ago the vast Simmons Furniture Store anchored the Park Street business area of downtown Adams. The town has improved curbside cosmetics. Now that business has been revitalized as Real Eyes Gallery with two large spaces. One featuers an arts and crafts store while the other displays works by former Met Opera scene painter, Bill Riley. He and his wife Francine Anne Riley are now gallerists as well as continuing as arts activists and community catalysts.

Trap Door Theatre’s production of Mark Brownell’s Monsieur d’Eon Is a Woman, directed by Nicole Wiesner, is a striking example of the company’s highly stylized, choreographed, madcap productions. Eleven performers are in constant motion.

Seniors are now living longer, healthier and better lives. Add to that little blue pills and it's not just kids who are hooking up. Morning After Grace by Carey Crim explores what happens when the old lady you wake up is just that.

Based on Mary Rogers’ 1972 novel of the same name, Freaky Friday’s popularity is validated by the three film versions that have appeared, with each variant tweeking the storyline. This is the first stage musical effort, and award winning playwright Bridget Carpenter’s adaptation is well suited to the theater with integrated subplots and laugh lines throughout. Tom Kitt’s music is tuneful and bouncy in keeping with the musical theater pop idiom, while Brian Yorkey’s lyrics consistently drive the plot and are full of insight and humor.

“Disobedience” is a mesmerizing, interior, fascinating, and affecting screenplay that carefully structures the movie to squeeze maximum emotional impact from its two stars, which it does in spades. It’s a bold and daring film even by today’s standards.

Brokeback Mountain finally arrives at New York City Opera. The company originally commissioned the piece over a decade ago. It is a powerul and moving work.