Front Page
-
Anette Miller and John Doughlas Thompson Honored
Celebrated at Gala 2025
By: - Mar 31st, 2025Shakespeare & Company has announced its Gala 2025, slated for Saturday, June 28, will honor award-winning actors Annette Miller and John Douglas Thompson. In addition to performing on its stages – including together in Richard III in 2010 – both actors are alumni of Shakespeare & Company’s Center for Actor Training, which offers acting intensives and workshops for artists at varied stages in their careers and provides the basis for the company’s aesthetic.
-
Berta Walker Legendary Provincetown Gallerist
Then and Now
By: - Mar 31st, 2025Last October Astrid and I spent an afternoon with the legendary Provincetown gallerist, Berta Walker. The gallery is now in its 35th year. It was business as usual although artist Grace Hopkins manages the day to day operation. There were disruptions as she greeted visitors but I attempted to discuss her career as well as her famous father and grandfather. They were collectors and philanthropists. Her grandfather founded the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Her father, Hudson Walker, served on museum boards and was one of the Monuments Men during WWII.
-
Kirill Petrenko DIscusses Being Jewish
Petrenko Has Led the Berlin Philharmonic for Five Years
By: - Mar 30th, 2025When Kirill Petrenko was elected by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra members to lead their orchestra five years ago, people were surprised. Becauase he is Russian by birth? No, because he is a Jew. Now the Berlin PHilharmonic publishes an interview with him on what it is like for him to be Jewish.
-
Grease
Nostalgia and Hijinks by the Bucketful at Altarena Playhouse
By: - Mar 31st, 2025Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski didn't expect to see each other after their summer fling, but Sandy transfers into Danny's school, Rydell High. How can Danny still be cool with his Greaser friends, yet rekindle the sensitive relationship with Sandy? And how can Sandy befriend the Pink Ladies while poaching in their territory? A great soundtrack and a ton of humor tell the story.
-
Fat Ham
Hamlet Reimagined as a Contemporary Comic Drama
By: - Mar 29th, 2025Juicy, a young, thicc, gay, black man, is visited by the ghost of his father, Pap, who demands that Juicy exact revenge for Pap's murder by his brother Rev. But Juicy's disposition doesn't lean toward violence, and mother Tedra suggests that he leave the past behind. Serious themes underlie the comedy.
-
Directors New Films at Lincoln Center and MOMA
What Is the Future of FIlm?
By: - Mar 27th, 2025New Directors/New Films runs at MOMA and Film at Lincoln Center from April 2 to 13.
-
Pillow Honors Norton Owen
2025 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award
By: - Mar 27th, 2025The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award is presented each year to an artist of exceptional vision and achievement, and carries a cash prize which the artist can use as they choose. As a beloved archivist and mentor, and a founder of the award-winning digital archive platform Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, Owen has curated decades of resources, events, and creative collections for public access, providing entry points into the vast Archives at Jacob’s Pillow.
-
Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage
Not So Funny
By: - Mar 27th, 2025The play is set in an art gallery in Miami during the Basel Art Festival, a major cultural event. Mariana runs a small gallery and discovers that the paintings from the current exhibition have been stolen; later that day, she is hosting a reception with many affluent collectors attending.
-
The Inspector at Yale Rep
Less is More
By: - Mar 26th, 2025The primary difficulty with this production is because each “bit” is drawn out to its utmost, the play runs over two and a half hours. A tighter production would have had more effect.
-
La Jolla Playhouse Presents the New Hamilton
3 Summers of Lincoln Soars
By: - Mar 24th, 20253 Summers of Lincoln is a captivating production blending historical and contemporary dance and music to explore the meetings between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass during the American Civil War. Set across three summers—1862, 1863, and 1864—the play dramatizes Lincoln's leadership struggle and Douglass’ unwavering commitment to abolition.
-
Cleveland Orchestra Offers Defiant Hope at Carnegie
Welser-Most Conducts Speaking Instruments
By: - Mar 21st, 2025Franz Welser-Most, and the Cleveland Orchestra he will have directed longer than any other conductor, arrived at Carnegie Hall this week to bring us hope through music in these difficult times.
-
Mrs. Krishnan's Party
Celebrating India's Onam Festival Via New Zealand
By: - Mar 21st, 2025In this immersive theatrical event, the title character prepares dal and rice for 100 theater goers, while she and her assistant entertain and engage with the visitors. The script, acting, and improvisation provide a fun-filled experience and a bit of learning about Indian festivities.
-
The MFA to Show Van Gogh Roulin Portraits
Collaboration with Van Gogh Museum
By: - Mar 20th, 2025Organized in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits is the first exhibition devoted to the artist’s deep connection to the family and the making of their portraits. Featuring 23 works by Van Gogh—including 14 of the Roulin portraits—as well as earlier Dutch art and Japanese woodblock prints that inspired him, the exhibition includes iconic works from the MFA’s collection alongside more than 20 key loans from prominent international collections. The exhibition presents 10 letters from Joseph Roulin to Van Gogh and the artist’s siblings together for the first time, offering an intimate and tender look at their friendship.
-
Pittsfield CityJazz Festival
Highlighta Include Count Basie Orchestra at the Colonlal
By: - Mar 18th, 2025Here is the lineup for the nineteenth Pittsfield CityJazz Festival, which runs from April 24 through May 4 in downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the cultural capital of the Berkshires.
-
Push/Pull
Central Work's Premiere of an Innovative Piece with Unusual Subject Matter
By: - Mar 18th, 2025Sculpting the human body may not seem like dramatic grist, but this two-hander transcends its topic matter by incorporating universal themes. Nolan and Clark were friends from the sixth grade but went separate ways after school. Nolan seeks a professional certificate in body building. Meanwhile, Clark wants his weightlifting mentorship, believing that muscles will make him more masculine.
-
Yielding with Strength
Bamboo as Metaphor
By: - Mar 18th, 2025In essence, yielding with strength is a practice of cultivating inner resilience. It is about developing the ability to adapt to change, to flow with the currents of life, and to find strength in suppleness. It is about recognizing that true power lies not in rigid control, but in the ability to yield, to adapt, and to flow.
-
William H. Holst’s Provincetown: Point of Origin and Homecoming
An American Modernist Painter and Educator
By: - Mar 17th, 2025William Holst was in Provincetown during the summer of the seminal Forum '49. He returned to study for several more seasons absorbing Hofmann's methods which he refined and taught. He developed what some refer to as Holstian Theories which included an expansive exploration of Hofmann’s ideas, but largely carried out in black and white. While an important artist of his generation Holst is not well known today. His influence on other artists, however, is palpable.
-
Last Call Sizzles at New World Stages
Bernstin and Von Karajan Wrestle at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna
By: - Mar 16th, 2025You'd never know that Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan skied together. Their meeting at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna did take place and is compellingly dramatized in a new play, Last Call.
-
Victoria Bond Presents the Jack Quartet
A Cutting Edge Anniversary Celebration
By: - Mar 15th, 2025Victoria Bond, composer and conductor, presents what she calls cutting edge music. Cutting edge it is. Yet, what Bond is able to do for this famously inaccessible music, is to bring it to the ear and give pleasure. At the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater in Symphony Space in New York, the Jack Quartet performed.
-
Southwest Photos by Allan Seppa
Downtown Pittsfield, Inc. and Framework
By: - Mar 16th, 2025The exhibition by Berkshire based artist Allan Seppa will feature photography of Southwest America, specifically of Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. At Framework by Downtown Pittsfield, Inc. (437 North Street).
-
Nobody Loves You
ACT's Sparkling Musical Send-up of Reality Dating Shows
By: - Mar 14th, 2025Jeff is a PhD candidate in philosophy who ridicules reality shows. But chasing after his ex-girlfriend, he finds himself in the studio of such a show. Although he's candid about hating everything about them, the show runner anticipates good audience response if Jeff becomes a contestant. Like oil and water, they don't mix. But comedy ensues.
-
Fly by Night
Hillbarn's Charming Rendition of a Musical About Hope, Love, and Loss
By: - Mar 11th, 2025Daphne leaves South Dakota for New York City along with sister Miriam. Set over a year leading up to the Northeast Blackout of 1965, one sister seeks stardom on Broadway and the other is happy as a diner waitress. Their aspirations, relationships, and random events are the basis for a thoughtful pop musical.
-
Steve Locke at MASS MoCA
A Poetic Response
By: - Mar 12th, 2025Steve Locke is having a show now installed at MassMoCA (opened last August – goes to until Nov 8). Three years ago I wrote a poem to Steve, whom I know, after seeing his exhibition of “Cruising” at the Alexander Grey Gallery
-
Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical
Min Kahng Creates Another Lively Stage Piece for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
By: - Mar 10th, 2025Korean-American June lives in an assisted living facility. She swears up a storm; has major sex urges; and unfortunately, two men have died in her bed. Granddaughter Jade is an influencer and vloger who insinuates herself into June's life for her own selfish purposes, but when June is accused of murder, they will work toward common purpose in this comedy musical.
-
The Pigeon Keeper
Opera Parallele's World Premiere of a Timely Fable
By: - Mar 08th, 2025During a time of drought and poor fish catch, a fisherman and his daughter save a young boy from the sea, but he is from a different land and does not speak their language. Clashes ensue over how to deal with this involuntary interloper. The touching and well-produced opera benefits from its relevance to our current times and from the large role played by the San Francisco Girls Chorus.
