People
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Brooks Ashmanskas a God of Carnage
A Comedic Bare Knuckles Slug Fest
By: - Jan 14th, 2012With Brooks Ashmanskas, currently playing in God of Carnage at The Huntington Theatre, you come to expect the unexpected. Starting with a straight interview it doesn’t take long for the wheels to come off. From there it devolves into a comedic, bar knuckles slug fest. But all in outrageous fun. Read this and weep. Tears of hysterical joy.
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John Douglas Thompson Two
Developing the Terry Teachout Play Satchmo
By: - Jan 14th, 2012This summer at Shakespeare & Company John Douglas Thompson will premiere a one man play Satchmo at the Waldorf written by the Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout. Thompson is in the early stages of research on the life and music of the legendary jazz musician Louis Armstrong.
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Thespian John Douglas Thompson One
Next Up Iceman Cometh at Chicago's Goodman
By: - Jan 12th, 2012John Douglas Thompson discusses working with Sam Waterson and Bill Irwin this season in King Lear at the Public Theatre in New York. And pending plans for Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh in Chicago at the Goodman Theatre with Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy.
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Clem DeRosa Drummer and Jazz Educator
was co-founder of the International Association for Jazz Education
By: - Dec 30th, 2011Pittsfield based jazz entrepreneur Ed Bride remembers a friend and colleague Clem DeRosa. The Texas based drummer and educator was the founder of the International Association of Jazz Education.
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Artist Helen Frankenthaler at 83
Her Paint and Reputation Spread Thin
By: - Dec 28th, 2011In 1952 a remarkable painting "Mountains and Sea" placed a recent Bennington College graduate, Helen Frankenthaler, in a position of innovator of what critic/ boyfriend, Clement Greenberg, dubbed Post-Painterly Abstraction. The movement is more widely known as Color Field Painting. We discussed her work in 1981 during an exhibition at the Rose Art Museum. At 83 she died on December 27.
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Boston Art Dealer Joan Sonnabend
Created Collections for Sonesta Hotels
By: - Dec 26th, 2011When Boston art dealer. Joan Stoneman, married Roger Sonnabend she had an enormous influence on his family owned chain of Sonesta Hotels. Under her charge the international hotel chain pioneered the policy of purchasing and commissioning major collections of contemporary art. She is remembered as a formidable presence during the transition of the contemporary art scene in Boston during the late 1960s and 1970s.
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Sculptor John Chamberlain at 84
Car Crash as Art and Metaphor
By: - Dec 23rd, 2011Car Crashes with their bent and distorted slabs of polyrchormed sheet metal were the inspiration and metaphor for the signature work and jagged life of sculptor John Chamberlain. An appreciation with memories of time spent with the artist in the late 1960s and 1970s in New York and the Berkshires.
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Vaclav Havel Dead At 75
Czech Playwright, Poet, Dissident Conscience and President
By: - Dec 18th, 2011George Abbott White met and admired Vaclav Havel, and Havel's death has brought back memories of Havel's impact not only on the Czech Republic democracy but even more so on his historic contribution to his time and place.
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Denise Markonish Part Three
Curating a Survey of Canadian Art for Mass MoCA
By: - Dec 16th, 2011For the past three years Mass MoCA curator, Denise Markonish, has trekked across Canada making hundreds of studio visits. When not on the road she has researched exhibitions and catalogues. Few American curators and critics are as broadly informed on the vast and complex topic of contemporary art in Canada. It is a project she took on almost by default given the general lack of interest and commitment. In June the museum will exhibit the work of 64 artists in what should prove to be an eye opening and ground breaking overview. This is the third and final segment of a critical dialogue.
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Denise Markonish Part One
Mass MoCA Canadian Show Opens May 26
By: - Dec 15th, 2011On May 26 Mass MoCA curator, Denise Markonish, will present the result of a three year long survey of contemporary art in Canada. From some 400 studio visits she has selected roughly sixty artists. During an in depth dialogue we explored our common roots as alumni of Brandeis University and its troubled Rose Art Museum. In this first installment we explore her education and career as a young curator prior to joining the staff of Mass MoCA. The article has links to parts two and three.
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Denise Markonish Part Two
Projects for Mass MoCA
By: - Dec 15th, 2011The concept of Mass MoCA was initiated more than twenty years ago by Tom Krens then the director of the Williams College Museum of Art. When he departed for the Guggenheim Joe Thompson took over. The museum opened some eleven years ago with Laura Heon as chief curator and her associate Nato Thompson. Both have since parted. The team of curators Susan Cross and Denise Markonish accentuate Chapter Two of the museum's evolving history. When Markonish was hired the museum was in the midst of an ugly conflict over a later abandoned project by Christoph Buchel in the vast Building Five.
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James Aponovich Part Two
Is Conceptual Realism an Oxymoron
By: - Dec 13th, 2011Working nine to five, six and a half days a week, the realist painter James Aponovich sees himself as an art worker. Over a year which ends in May he has set a goal of completing one new painting a week. All 52 works will be shown at the Clark Gallery in June. While he has been out of the New York art world for several years in 2014 he is scheduled for a one man show at the prestigious Hirschl & Adler Gallery. This is the second and final installment of a dialogue with the New Hampshire based artist.
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Painting Marathon by James Aponovich: One
A Painting a Week for a Year Then a Show at Clark Gallery
By: - Dec 11th, 2011James Aponovich is regarded as among the foremost American realist painters. He is in the midst of a conceptual project to finish a painting a week for a year. It was the subject of a broadcast on Chronicle this past week. In May the entire series of 52 paintings will be shown at Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Mass. This was an occasion to catch up with a superb artist and old friend.
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What Is the Fate of the Syrian Blogger Razan Ghazzawi?
Syrian Regime Repression on Freedom of Speech
By: - Dec 05th, 2011Razan Ghazzawi an America born Syrian blogger was arrested on Sunday on the Jordanian-Syrian border on her way to a conference in Amman on the laws governing freedom of speech and expression.
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Social Media Subterfuge As Art
Egyptian Magda el-Mahdy Aliaa’s Controversial Blog
By: - Nov 26th, 2011Can art coalesce with social change? It can indeed and has historically been the case. Nowadays, with the social media prevalence the information streams are more than ever instantaneous while being more diluted. In the name of “Democratic Despotism†to quote Alexis de Tocqueville all stories have their one minute bite so is Magda el-Mahdy Aliaa’s different faces of extremism blog.
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Julianne Boyd of Barrington Stage: Two
Planning Several Seasons in Advance
By: - Oct 25th, 2011In planning plays for Barrington Stage Company artistic director Julianne Boyd relies on a small circle of trusted associates like composer/ lyricist, Bill Finn, actor Christoher Innvar, and playwright Mark St. Germain. Usually she is developing programming two and three years into the future. Since, ultimately, decisions fall on her shoulders she describes it as a lonely job.
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Art, Fiction Intersect with Reality
Memory of a Car Accident
By: - Oct 24th, 2011A car accident in Brookline, Massachusetts elicits Andy Warhol and Malcolm Morley vivid car crash paintings. It also ignites the enigma of memory and the necessity of reflection and public discourse as in Proust’s Search of Lost Time.
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Lewis Black on Caris’s Peace
Documentary Featured in Williamstown Film Festival
By: - Oct 20th, 2011Surgery for a brain tumor left the actress Caris Corfman with long term memory but no short term memory. In a struggle to overcome a cornucopia of health and memory issues she developed a one woman play. It is the culmination of a documentary film by Gaylen Ross which will be screened as a part of the Williamstown Film Festival. Her friend and one of the producers, the comedian Lewis Black, discussed Caris, his approach to comedy, and the play One Slight Hitch which was produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this past summer.
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Elayne Polly Bernstein Schwartz, on October 4
Remembering a Patron of the Arts
By: - Oct 06th, 2011Elayne Polly Bernstein Schwartz, was known to the arts community as Elayne P. Bernstein. Her name is attached to the theatre at Shakespeare & Company, in Lenoz, which she generously helped to create. She was involved with many Berkshire cultural organizations including Jacob’s Pillow, Barrington Stage, Berkshire Theatre Group, Tanglewood, and Norman Rockwell Museum among others. Her overriding passion revolved around Shakespeare & Company.
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Mark St. Germain Four
On Not Reading His Reviews
By: - Aug 22nd, 2011During dialolgues with theatre people it is usual to learn that they do not read reviews of their work. Or if they do well after a production has closed. We asked the playwright Mark St. Germain about that and found a rational and compelling response. While his play The Best of Enemies, which returns to Barrington Stage Company from October 6 to 16, got rave reviews he indicated knowing of them indirectly.
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Mark St. Germain Playwright Part Two
Relationship with Barrington Stage Company
By: - Aug 21st, 2011In this segment of an extended dialogue with the playwright he describes a unique relationship with Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company. They have worked together on a number of plays including the hits Freud’s Last Session, which continues its run Off Broadway through October and The Best of Enemies which will return to Barrington Stage from October 5 to 16. It opened to rave reviews and sold out houses in August. From New York Freud travels to Chicago for an open ended engagement
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Mark St. Germain Three
Integrating Durham Schools in 1971
By: - Aug 21st, 2011What does it take for the playwright Mark St. Germain to get into the heads of explosive combatants the black activist, Ann Atwater, going head to head with the Klansman. C. P. Ellis. Or to put a screed of racial slurs into the mouth of a young black mediator, Bill Riddick, sent by the federal Department of Education to bring about the integration of schools in Durham in 1971. It is the topic of St. Germain's play, The Best of Enemies which returns to Barrington Stage for its second run from October 5 to 16.
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Playwright Mark St. Germain Part One
The Best of Enemies Returns To Barrington Stage
By: - Aug 19th, 2011The August run of Mark St. Germain’s new play The Best of Enemies set attendance records for a drama on the Main Stage of Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass. The play returns from October 5 to 16. We met with him to discuss the play, his relationship with Barrington Stage and the craft of a playwright.
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Blythe Danner at Tanglewood Jazz Festival
Returning to Old Haunts in the Berkshires
By: - Aug 08th, 2011Tony Award-winning actress Blythe Danner will be the featured guest on Judy Carmichael’s “Jazz Inspired†on Saturday, September 3, at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival. Danner will perform with pianist Mike Renzi and bassist Neal Miner. Judy Carmichael’s “Jazz Inspired†will be taped before a live audience at Seiji Ozawa Hall on Saturday, September 3, at 2 pm, and broadcast at a later date on 170 stations in the United States and worldwide.
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Nicholas Martin Part Two
With a Little Help from My Friends
By: - Jul 21st, 2011As the Beatles song suggests, during a long and fruitful career in theatre, producer/ director, Nicholas Martin has been "Getting by with a little help from my friends." Actors from his well tended Rolodex regularly appear in plays that he produces and directs. Members of his theatrical family are gathered for the comedy She Stoops to Conquer which opens this week at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
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