Front Page
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BSO Opens its Boston Season
Free Concert in Symphony Hall
By: - Aug 26th, 2025The Boston Symphony opens its fall season with a free concert at Symphony Hall on September 17.
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Dishwasher Dialogues Back to the Beginning
A Fresh Start
By: - Aug 24th, 2025We started posting Dishwasher Dialogues about two thirds on. That ended last week. By popular demand we are now backtracking to the very beginning. This weekly column from Paris is one of our most read features. Everyone loves Paris.
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Circus & the Bard at Shakespeare & Company
Best Fun of the Season
By: - Aug 22nd, 2025Much of the spoken word flew over my head but the circus elements had the kids bounding up from their seats and the rafters shaking. It may have been, at least for me, the most entertaining fun I have enjoyed in a heck of a long time.
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Re-Inventing Judy Rhines at Cape Ann Museum
Gloucester Artists Gabrielle Barzaghi and Peter Littlefield Collaborate
By: - Aug 20th, 2025Gabrielle saw Judy as a fighter. She's a witch and also a pissed off teenager. It was Gabrielle's idea that a beast should attack Judy, who strangles it. She skins it with her teeth and takes its power (figure 4). “After blood-stained clothing was found, it was reported that Judy was killed by a beast. But in a fit of rage, she strangled it, gutted and skinned it with her teeth. Then she cooked it. She was stuffed with meat and took a nap.”
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Mark Twain Tonight
At TheaterWorks
By: - Aug 24th, 2025Twain was known for his satire, humor, and often darker view of mankind and its plights. The performance I saw talked about slavery and threats to democracy.
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London Theatre
Five Plays in Five Days
By: - Aug 20th, 2025I had wanted to see Giant, starring John Lithgow, since it won rave reviews during a limited run at the Royal Court. Now it is in the West End (Broadway), and I hope it will come to NYC. Lithgow gives a stunning performance as Roald Dahl, the author of children’s books such as James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and others.
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Ava – The Secret Conversations Written and Starring Elizabeth McGovern,
Stage 1, New York City Center,
By: - Aug 20th, 2025The most telling thing Ava says is that “they took away my voice” in reference to being dubbed in the film version of Show Boat. But in reality, her voice was taken from her throughout her career.
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The Unseen Hand
Laozi’s Wisdom in an Age of Spectacle
By: - Aug 19th, 2025In the 17th chapter of the Tao Te Ching, Laozi outlines a hierarchy of leadership: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists; not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him.” This timeless wisdom offers a stark and challenging contrast to the political reality of modern America, where leadership has become a spectacle of personality, and one figure, in particular, seems to occupy every moment of the national consciousness.
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Alabaster
A Dramedy About Making Connections and Resurrecting Damaged Women
By: - Aug 18th, 2025A tornado destroyed June's family and farm. In isolation, she communicates with a goat. But when Alice, who brings photographic dignity and beauty to damaged women, shows up to do a layout on June, each faces her shortcomings with the possibility of escaping the pain of the past.
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Art Deco
Century Celebration
By: - Aug 16th, 2025Still fresh today, the Art Deco period – which influenced the construction or fabrication of buildings as well as luxury décor and functional objects — is considered one of the finest moments in design history.
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Sophia Ainslie: Woven
Launches Fall Season for Boston's Gallery NAGA
By: - Aug 19th, 2025The work lives between abstraction and representation, woven from personal and cultural threads. I am interested in hybridity - how different visual languages can inhabit the same space. There is friction, but also connection. The paintings become a weaving of self and story, an attempt to make sense through making form, the experience of being shaped by multiple places and the ongoing search for coherence in layered identities.
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King James by Rajiv Joseph at Barrington Stage Company
Nothing But Net
By: - Aug 17th, 2025King James by Rajiv Joseph is a lively and entertaining two-hander about fans, black and white, of Lebron James "The KIng" and the Cleveland Cavaliers. A regional sports market the CAVs hadn't won an NBA title in 50 years. In desperate need of cash Matt is willing to sell 19 courtside home game tickets pairs to Lebron's rookie season. Through four quarters the play, backlit by the career of James, tracks the complex relationship of eventual best friends.
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Dishwasher Dialogues: Last Call
If You Live Long Enough Life Ends
By: - Aug 17th, 2025I am not sure what old is anymore. Somewhere along the line it feels like we picked up an extra decade on our ancestors; those of us who have been lucky enough to keep our health. ‘Ninety is the new eighty’ sort of thing.
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Christine McCarthy Worked Wonders
Director of Procvincetown Art Association and Museum
By: - Aug 15th, 2025After several years at the Institute of Contemporary Art,. at 35, Christine McCarthy was ready to move on. The Provincetown Art Association and Museum was in desperate need. Taking an initial 50% salary cut she took the job in 2001 only with a commitment from the board for change. She raised $8 million for expansion and renovation. Today PAAM is thriving under her leadership while the once quaint and affordable fishing village on the Lower Cape is no longer what it used to be.
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Berkshire Author Steven Reed Nelson Publishes a Provocative Book
Fire in the Wire: Electricity Empowers Human Evolution Beyond Homo Sapiens
By: - Aug 15th, 2025Western Massachusetts author and entrepreneur, Steven Reed Nelson, is a free range thinker. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and layman in the field of science, he proposes that the term Homo sapiens be replaced by Homo electric. The introduction of electricity some 200 years ago has greatly impacted human evolution.
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Patricia White 1948-2025
A Guiding Light for Emerging Voices in Theater
By: - Aug 15th, 2025Patricia White, the long-time company manager of Woodie King, Jr.'s New Federal Theatre (NFT) and a well-known figure in Black Theatre, died August 10 after a brief illness. "Pat," as she was widely called, was well-known throughout the theater community as a director, mentor, producer, backstage coordinator, grant writer, box office manager and administrator. Her comprehensive understanding of the theatrical process helped shape countless productions and careers.
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MASS MoCA Programming
Through December
By: - Aug 13th, 2025MASS MoCA announces new programming through December 2025, including the opening of exhibitions Jimena Sarno: Rhapsody and Zora J Murff: RACE/HUSTLE, concerts by Chuwi and Harold López-Nussa and plenty of opportunities to experience the museum for free including a celebration of Día de los Muertos, Open Studios, and an after-hours Family Night. FreshGrass | North Adams, the campus-wide festival of roots and bluegrass music, kicks it all off with the best in the genre.
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Kennedy Center Honorees
A Matter of Taste or Lack Thereof
By: - Aug 13th, 2025Kiss, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, George Strait, and English actor Michael Crawford will receive the Kennedy Center Honors at a Donald Trump-hosted ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8. He has hinted that the Kennedy Center should be renamed for him or at least to have co-billing.
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Wozzeck
A Fine Rendering by West Edge Opera of the Atonal Masterpiece
By: - Aug 10th, 2025Downtrodden Franz Wozzeck suffers abuse from those in higher social classes and is betrayed by his common-law wife who has an affair with a Drum Major. West Edge depicts the drama of the underclass in concert with the dissonance of Alban Berg's music.
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Dana C. Chandler, Jr. Artist and Activist at 84
Protested MFA and Founded AAMARP at Northeastern University.
By: - Aug 09th, 2025Artist and activist Dana C. Chandler, Jr. ( (April 7, 1941 – June 9, 2025) was the foremost Boston African American artist of his generation. Implementing change he got things done. As Edmund Barry Gaither, director of the National Center for African American Artists and MFA adjunct curator put it "Dana shook the tree and we harvested the fruit."
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The Dishwasher Dialogues: Museums
The ladies of Wichita
By: - Aug 10th, 2025Then on a Sunday afternoon, you’ll be queuing for the Louvre, and you’ll start chatting with a lady from Wichita, Kansas, and she’ll ask you all sorts of questions. How do you know so much about Paris? Are you a professor or something like that? And I’ll say no I’m a bartender and a painter.
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Heavenly Earth
At Manship Artists Residency
By: - Aug 11th, 2025Curated by Manship Artists Sharon Bates and Donna Hassler, our biennial exhibition Heavenly Earth includes some 70 pieces installed throughout the Starfield landscape and inside the Manship Barn Studio. The thirteen juried artists have responded with a range of compelling works that reflect both the thematic prompt and the natural and cultural significance of this historic setting. Work by Laraine Cicchetti is also presented in her memory.
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Three Women Draw: Gabrielle Barzaghi, Susan Erony, Ann Ledy
Gloucester's Jane Deering Gallery
By: - Aug 11th, 2025Steps from the Cape Ann Museum, currently closed for renovation, is the Jane Deering Gallery. Opening on September 6 is Three Women Draw: Gabrielle Barzaghi, Susan Erony, Ann Ledy. A commonality is the studio as a place for solace and creativity deflecting the ongoing barrage of bad news.
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The Federal Theatre Project as Play
Hallie Flanagan and Subsidized Art
By: - Aug 10th, 2025This is exactly the moment to remember a time when the federal government saw theatre not as a luxury, but as a public good—bringing professional productions to cities large and small across America.
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Joan at Barrington Stage
The Queen of Comedy Has the Last Laugh
By: - Aug 07th, 2025Joan written by Daniel Goldstein is a compelling and well crafted play about one of the dominant comic geniuses of her generation. The complex story of Rivers is portrayed by four actors assuming multiple roles. As such it is an absorbing evening of drama. Where it falls short, ironically, is as comedy.
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