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“Vermont Blown Away” will take the form of a friendly competition among teams of glass artists. Items from BMAC’s Study Collection of Ancient Objects will be selected to inspire three-person teams to create new glass sculptures. Teams will have 15 minutes to design a piece and one hour to complete it. These glass pieces will be auctioned off at a later date to raise money for the Vermont Glass Guild’s education fund.

The past stalks a candidate for Congress in the gripping political drama, "Warrior Class." The riveting production runs through Nov. 21 at Boca Stage in Boca Raton, Fla. Boca Stage, a professional theater company, is the new name for the former Primal Forces.

At a time when we should all be thinking about how America’s history might be taught in all its blood and glory, Definition Theatre succeeds in tossing new ingredients into this steamy pot of burgoo. Its new theatrical film, America v.2.1: The Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro, is a raw, sad and funny story of a future America, told in four parts.

Iphigenia, an opera is a cross generational collaboration between 88-year-old jazz legend, Wayne Shorter and the much younger and widely acclaimed performer/ composer esperanza spalding. It was an eight year project that was particularly intensive this past year. After a residence it was presented as "an open rehearsal and work in progress" at MASS MoCA over two nights. It's debut will occur in Boston at ArtsEmerson on November 12 and 13. It will travel from there.

Melia Bensussen demonstrates a sure hand with this Eugene O’Neill play set in Connecticut on July 4, 1906. In Ah, Wilderness!, O’Neill who is better known for his dramas of love, loss, disillusionment, self-delusion and alcoholism, shows his lighter touch. It is a family comedy about some of the same subjects but more upbeat.

The Atlantic Council has partnered with professional theater companies, veterans service organizations, and corporate sponsors to bring staged readings of War Words. This Pulitzer Prize-nominated play depicts stories of men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The production is traveling to different cities.

The poet and Columbia University professor, Bill Wadsworth is a neighbor and friend. He has been on the road for the past month. I sent an e mail inquiring when next we might enjoy another witty and insightful literary luncheon. His response comprised a critique of my current MFA book. This ‘review’ is posted with his permission.

In 1995 Julianne Boyd co-founded Barrington Stage company producing sparsely attended but critically well received shows in a high school auditorium in Sheffield. In 2005 the company purchased and renovated a formed vaudeville house in Pittsfield. Coping with Covid-19 Boyd mounted a successful 2021 season. With the company is good shape, citing age, she is passing the reins to new leadership. In December she turns 77. She will stay on through the search and transition for a new artistic director.

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl is the new production now being staged by the Artistic Home at the Den Theatre. It’s the ancient story of the wife who dies and the husband who tries to bring her back to the world of the living, but Ruhl tells this version from the viewpoint of Eurydice. She has written a funny, contemporized version of this love story, set somewhere nearby and perhaps in some current time.

Arvo Pärt has celebrated birthdays at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His music is often performed at the Temple of Dendur where one wall dances with reflections from a pool of water, reflections that seem to move with the beat of the music. They soothe and elevate, a mood captured by the Nile River in the temple’s original Egyptian location.

Ceramic art works and products have increased substantially in size and expression over the last ten or more years. The sky is the limit here at the current MoCA exhibition and the energy was palpable in the galleries during a rainy Saturday.

Appropriately, Theatre Rhinoceros presents “At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen” in its new, intimate home in The Castro.  Their choice of play to christen the new venue fits like a glove. Thematically, the suitability is clear for the longest running LGBTQ theater company in the universe.  And in a setting where the audience can reach out and touch the performers, a small two hander where the actors’ every small gesture can be seen.

After seven seasons of woke programming Mandy Greenfield has resigned as artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival. There was a tech crew walkout last summer over brutal conditions during hazardous and stressful outdoor productions. During a production of Row in a reflecting pool at Clark Art Institute there were days of delays due to rain and thunder storms . Problems were widely reported in the media. Former artistic director, Jenny Gersten, has rejoined WTF as interim artistic director.

Across the country arts organizations are making a concerted effort to include Americans of color in their presentations.  The concert at Symphony Hall in Boston this week was a highly successful concert of  inclusion.

Ric Haynes is an artist, arts therapist, humanist, and a storyteller. His life has brought him on journeys, both voluntary, and involuntary. Those experiences along with a vivid memory have given Haynes all of the source material he needs to tell his stories.

The play by Lloyd Suh is based on Afong May, who came to the US in 1834 to “perform” for curious Americans telling them about Chinese life. May was purported to be the first Chinese Woman to set foot on American soil.

Stuart Brown, a theater critic and founder of a 24/7 online radio station devoted to musical theater, has created an escape room through which you strive to save Broadway from the Grinch. The escape room will go live around the first week of December. To access the escape room, go to https://soundsofbroadway.com/escaperoom. The "save Broadway" escape room will join two existing ones on the website.

Known for her impassioned ballads and exciting up-tunes, vocalist Dawning Holmes was first heard in the Berkshires during the 2017 tribute to Buddy Rich. She returned the following year to perform with her husband Jeff Holmes' big band at the Berkshire Gateway Jazz Weekend in Lee.

Barrington Stage Company will offer a Playwriting Workshop for Veterans under the direction of Barrington Stage Associate Artist and Award-Winning Playwright Mark St. Germain. In this 4-class seminar, students will explore the fundamental craft of playwriting with the goal of every student completing a ten-minute play. The culmination on the fourth and final day of class will be a rehearsal and performance by professional actors.

My life is mostly solitary. This is by choice.  When I returned from my first year in China to visit my daughters, I found living in society once again to be noisy.  The temple where I lived is isolated in the Wudang mountains 30 kilometers from the nearest city, Shiyan.  The temple complex sits atop the mountain, and life is very quiet, simple, and hard.

As the leaves began falling to the ground, Chef was inspired to create ramen: only available for takeout! Why do ramen? It's sustainable, comforting, and delicious. 

On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the Black Panther Party's founding, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has launched "Black Power in Print," an online project in tandem with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Comprising recently digitized materials and new interviews between artists and scholars, the archive highlights the Black Power movement’s legacy in visual culture and its resonance today.

The virtual screening of Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision- a walk-through installation performance celebrating the lives of Women of Color will premier on November 5th at 8pm. Set inside a historic Women’s Club mansion in Pittsfield MA, each of the 21 rooms represented a stage or theme of initiation in the lives of Black, Indigenous and Immigrant Women of Color.

Marking Lives COVID-19 is a community art project conceived by Concord-based artist Elizabeth Awalt to commemorate the American lives lost to COVID. This exhibition is a realization of the collaborative social media project. It includes North Adams artist Sarah Sutro.

On his vibrant and spirited third recording for Mack Avenue Records, Havana-based pianist and composer Harold López-Nussa sets out to capture that stirring sensation with an exhilarating marriage of jazz and Cuban pop music. On a global tour there are dates for Florence (near Northampton), Boston and NY.