New York Times

Growing up as an Irish kid in the Bronx provided playwright John Patrick Shanley with inspiration from tough love and hard knocks that earned him a Tony, Oscar and Pulitzer prize. Exuding the street wise persona of a made man he read and discussed his works during the annual Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival.

The publishing conundrum. How to attract readers tied to their mobile devices and induce them to read a book. Ken Siman and his partners Christian and Benjamin Alfonsi have produced a packed multimedia edition of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for iphones and ipads. Is this the answer to book reading in the 21st century?

Award-winning directors Scott Edmiston and Summer L. Williams are also scheduled to be a part of the company’s 25th Anniversary Season.

While a graduate student at Brown University, in 1970, the art historian Edmund Barry Gaither was recruited for a shared appointment as adjunct curator of the Museum of Fine Arts and working with Elma Lewis as director of the National Center for African American Artists. He still holds those positions. In this first part of an extensive interview Gaither describes jumping in to curate the major MFA exhibition African American Artists from New York and Boston. He was soon multi- tasking while being pressured by a diverse range of individuals and groups.

As a part of our research and oral history of modern and contemporary art and culture, some time ago, I contacted Kenworth Moffett. At the end of the tenure of Perry T. Rathbone as director of the Museum of Fine Arts, in 1971, a department of contemporary art was created with Moffett as its founding curator. He asked me to send him some questions and this essay is the result of that correspondence. During the years when he was director of the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art we always enjoyed an annual lunch when vacationing in nearby Palm Beach.

In 1970, on the occasion of its centennial, the MFA commissioned Walter Muir Whitehill, a trustee, to write its two volume history. Some 44 years later The Boston Raphael by Belinda Rathbone is the only published update examining that venerable Boston institution. In an extensive interview we have examined the legacy of her father as well as probed into issues and conundrums that were thoroughly researched but beyond the scope and agenda of her book. This is the third and final installment of that dialogue.

The Robert Falls directed Goodman Theatre production of The Iceman Cometh has transferred from Chicago to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. John Douglas Thompson revives his role as the down of his luck former high roller Joe Mott. A couple of summers ago we discussed African American characters, including his portrayal in The Emperor Jones, in plays by Eugene O'Neill. Thompson returns this summer to Shakespeare & Company where he is well known to Berkshire audiences.

The stars return to Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer for the first season of artistic director Mandy Greenfield. These include newcomers Kyra Sedgwick, Audra McDonald , Cynthia Nixon as well as the return of Jessica Hecht. The festival runs from June 30 – August 23, 2015.

Though there is no accounting for taste - as they say, that’s what makes horse races - one can conjecture as to why so many of the critics, major and minor, from the New York Times, to the Hollywood Reporter to Time Out, have filed rave reviews. We beg to differ.

The Boston Raphael is the first major book on the Museum of Fine Arts since Walter Muir Whitehill's centennial history in 1970. This is part one of an in dept interview with biographer Belinda Rathbone about the New York Times best selling profile of her father, former MFA director, Perry T. Rathbone.

As a critic and journalist New York based Edward Rubin, known to friends and colleagues as Fast Eddy, has a finger in many pies. On the eve of the Super Bowl he reveals a deep and abiding love of sports. Much of this passion was inherited from his sporting father. Hey, who knew?

The play by Emily Mann presents a tender oral history life story of the real-life Delaney sisters of Raleigh, North Carolina, who share their observations, experiences, anecdotes and memories of two lives fully lived in the time of Jim Crow law in the South; who then moved to the North, settling in New York City first in a vibrant Harlem and then into the white suburb of Mount Vernon. It’s a remarkable journey and story of sisters who never married and reached 100 plus.

George McNeil emerged as one of the First Generation Abstract Expressionist and New York School painters during the late thirties. He was shown in the New York Worlds Fair in 1939, and in 1935 he was a member of the W.P.A. and served on the Federal Art project with artists such as Willem de Kooning and James Brooks.

Sharon Playhouse will present a developmental workshop of Ed Dixon’s Georgie: The Life and Death of George Rose to kick off its 2015 Season from May 14-17 and May 28-31 in the Stage 2 at the Bok Gallery. John Simpkins directs.

On a miserable January day the media gathered for lunch on stage at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. Artistic director Julianne Boyd announced programming for the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage. There are still slots to fill on the Mark St. Germain second stage. Once that is complete Boyd will move on to schedule the cabaret largely based on who is available for the 99 seat basement venue. The company will again collaborate with the Berkshire Museum to present a youth oriented production.

Splendidly portrayed by Karen MacDonald, Molly Ivins was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal from deep in the heart of Texas,. She had a rapier wit that made her one of America’s highest-regarded political satirists and beloved rabble-rousers. Red Hot Patriot weaves personal anecdotes with Molly’s humor and wisdom, celebrating her courage and tenacity. This is especially true even when a complacent America wasn’t listening. She was a personable monument to First Amendment rights and virtues. This is a terrific play about an American original.

In the November issue of Art in America there was a story "Richard Bellamy. Interview by Billy Kluver and Julie Martin, introduction by Judith E. Stein." It was a sidebar of Stein's research on the Bellamy an eccentric, brilliant and complex art dealer. We spoke about that research as well as work with the little understood or appreciated movement of Figurative Expressionism.

“Festival 2015 delivers a remarkable range of dance from ballet to tap, music from classical to jazz, brand new works commissioned by the Pillow, and the most astonishing performers in the world,” comments Ella Baff, Executive and Artistic Director of Jacob’s Pillow. “We start the season with Ira Glass’s Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host and the re-opening of the Jacob’s Pillow Archives as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of public access and a major expansion of its home, Blake’s Barn. We end with a celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Martha Graham Dance Company, a world premiere by Mats Ek, and the up and coming company MADboots Dance. Quite a range indeed.”

In one act and 90 minutes Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Ayad Akhtar has compressed an explosive take on medieval Islam and its square peg in a round hole of the conundrum of contemporary American society. How does an ambitious individual of Muslim heritage assimilate and succeed in our corporate culture? Not really according to the compelling play Disgraced.

In 2013 Shakespeare & Company produced a star studded gala Broadway in the Berkshires. With On the Town from Barrngton Stage and Williamstown Theater Festival's Elephant Man both currently enjoying rave reviews it seems more like The Berkshires on Broadway. Now WTF's Fool For Love is headed for the Great White Way next year.

Jay Milder came of age during the Second Generation of the New York School as one of the seminal Figurative Expressionist painters and one of the SoHo loft pioneers. Today Milder's influence on painting is widespread and he has been cited as influence of both Neo-Expressionism in the United States and the graffiti art movement in Brazil.

Yesterday's lively press conference at Mass MoCA, announcing the $54.4 million Confluence Campaign, was preempted by a news leak of an embargoed press release by Geoff Edgers of the Washington Post. While that story provided a tantalizing overview the press conference covered many of the complex and exciting details. This updates our prior reports with more to follow.

During the recent Williamstown Film Festival Diane Pearlman and Berkshire Film & Media Collaborative hosted a lunch at the Williams Inn. It featured independent film star, Lilli Taylor, and her husband, Nick Flynn, a poet, essayist and author of three books of memoirs. Williams College professor, Jim Shepard, led the dialogue.

In May of 2000 we were shocked to learn that the leading realist artist Gregory Gillespie hung himself. In hindsight there were clues to his state of mind.

Completing a $145 million renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute repoened this summer. The occasion was launched with a stunning range of special exhibitions. During a recent opening of Magna Carta we asked the museum's fast moving director, Michael Conforti, for an overview of the season and when we might expect to see Treasures from the Prado?