Book of Mountains & Seas, a new opera by Huang Ruo and Basil Twist, takes us out of ourselves and our space into a new and exotic world. Yet we are anchored in human concerns. Huang Ruo originally adapted The Book of Mountains and Seas, a work created in China in the 4th century BC and set its spirit in a vocal-theater for twelve singers.  Full of good humor and infinite curiosity, Ruo comments on the visions possible with this unusual number: 2, 3, 4, 6.  He uses all the combinations seamlessly. 

The Hours, a new opera by Kevin Puts, previewed at Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Cultural Center in Philadelphia.  The stellar cast featuring Renee Fleming in what we call the Meryl Streep role, Kelli O’Hara in Julianne Moore’s and Jennifer Johnson Cano in the role for which Nicole Kidman, with a fake nose, won an Academy Award for best actress. Philip Glass wrote the score for the film. Puts gives us a richer diversity in orchestration.

Leyma Lopez discusses her work with Berkshire Fine Arts

With her most recent world premiere, “Escape from the Asylum,” Patricia Milton provides a sequel that is starting to suggest a series of crime-procedural, period-pieces of the sort that would run on PBS.  Like its predecessor, this comedic play charms with quirky characters, clever dialog, feminist issues, and a plot twist leading to a surprise ending. 

Pittsfield CityJazz Festival has moved from our traditional mid-October date to become part of the nationwide Jazz Appreciation Month activities, which take place every year in April. The music starts on April 23.

A non-equity national touring production of Anastasia is traveling the country. The production has included a stop at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County. This production is a visual delight, and also delivers emotionally. For information about touring stops, go to https://anastasiathemusical.com/tour.

In action that shifts back and forth between scenarios, playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes’ clever 2012 Pulitzer Prize winning “Water by the Spoonful” follows two seemingly independent threads through Act 1.  One is a chat group for recovering cocaine addicts.  The other concerns two young adult, Puerto Rican American cousins bereaving the passing of one’s mother.   The threads will intertwine in Act 2.

The musical ran on Broadway for over four years, garnering six Tonys, including the most coveted – Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Book.   Accordingly, any production of “La Cage aux Folles” starts with great material.

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.

"Ben Butler" is a comedy that takes place at the beginning of the Civil War. The play, by Richard Strand, is part comedy, part historical drama, and part biography. Boca Stage is presenting the play through April 10.

Since its 1897 founding, the Boston Marathon has regularly transformed in its appearance, its demographics, and its meaning.  As its 126th running on April 18 nears, The Lotvin Family Gallery examines how the marathon’s changes have been reflected in the pages of another Boston institution, The Boston Globe, now celebrating its 150th year of publication.

The Hours is the highly anticipated new work by Kevin Puts. Renee Fleming, Kelli O'Hara, and Joyce Di Donato will star.

Dishwasher Dreams looks through the lens of two generations of an immigrant family. Written and performed by Alaudin Ullah, it is filled with humor but also sharp observations. Ullah was a ground-breaker as one of the first East Asian standup comedians who gained wide appeal.

Unionized staff at the Whitney Museum of American Art will be outside in front of the Museum for tomorrow evening’s VIP opening of the 2022 Whitney Biennial, handing out leaflets with information about union negotiations. The Union, consisting of almost two hundred professional, facilities and visitor services workers has been negotiating for several months for a first contract.

The building of wall drawings at MASS MoCA has become a pilgrimage site for Sol LeWitt one of the foremost artists of his generation. They are on semi-permanent display with a contract for 25 years. For a more limited time, through June 11, there is the opportunity to experience the work on a more personal and intimate manner with Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints at the Williams College Museum of Art.

Leave it to Leon Botstein, America’s great educator, to bring Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige to Carnegie Hall, where is premiered in 1943 as a fundraiser for the Russian war effort, (The world turns.) Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Anderson and Langston Hughes were in attendance that evening. Now Botstein conducting is cool.  He often listens and taps his foot, slightly swaying to the improvisatory sections of works performed

Lynn Nottage's drama, Intimate Apparel is a fine fit at Palm Beach Dramaworks (PBD). The professional, nonprofit company's production runs through April 17. PBD's production, fittingly, takes place in the company's intimate Don & Ann Brown Theatre.

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. 

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents an exhibition devoted to Chilean artist, poet, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Santiago), who has been based in New York for the last forty years.

Director Layne has cast 22 performers to tell the achingly poignant story of Cyrano and Roxane.  There are a couple metaphors on the foibles and folly of the human condition that run throughout that could easily recall a memory or two bringing misty eyes to those in the audience who can still relate. Yes. It’s somewhat of a tragedy masquerading as a comedy in dead earnest  Love is like that sometimes.

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington and Tate Modern, London, Philip Guston Now is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. The exhibition features 73 paintings and 27 drawings from public and private collections, including both well-known and rarely seen works. Among the highlights are paintings from the 1930s that are rarely on public view; a reunion of paintings from Guston’s groundbreaking Marlborough Gallery show in 1970; a striking array of small panel paintings made from 1968 to 1972 as the artist developed his new vocabulary of hooded heads, books, bricks and shoes; and a powerful selection of large, often apocalyptic paintings of the later 1970s that form Guston’s last major artistic statement.

American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University announces the full cast and creative team of its upcoming revival of 1776 directed by Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus. Co-presented with Roundabout Theatre Company (RTC), the production begins performances at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, MA, on Tuesday, May 17; opens officially on Thursday, May 26; and plays through Sunday, July 24, 2022.

In 1977, María Irene Fornés’ innovative “Fefu and Her Friends” replicated the notion of an all-female cast but flips the script on all of those dimensions.  It concerns a reunion of a group of friends gathered to rehearse a presentation to be given to a charity; themes are varied, including women’s relationships with women, which was pretty daring at the time; the single setting is Fefu’s house; action takes place in one day; and the characters, if a little wacky, are grounded in realism. 

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.

Gong Lum's Legacy is presented by Woodie King Jr.'s New Federal Theater in association with The Peccadillo Theater Company. Written by Charles L. White. Directed by Elizabeth Van Dyke. The world is still Jim Crow's.  We can peek into  to the the lives of those oppressed by the system, both the African Americans and the newly arrived Chinese immigrants.