Theatre
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Tina Packer Co Founder of Shakespeare & Company
September 29, 1938- January 9, 2026
By: - Jan 10th, 2026Tina co-founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978 along with a cadre of theater artists, served as its Artistic Director until 2009, and continued to direct, teach, and advocate for the Company until her passing. Her indelible creativity will be carried forward by countless artists, students, colleagues, admirers, and friends, and her influence on the world of Shakespeare will be enduring.
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Tina Packer's Epic Women of Will
Five Three Hour Performances
By: - Jan 10th, 2026During a remarkable career one of the greatest accomplishments of Tina Packer was her epic series the five part Women of Will. She started writing the extracted texts while a fellow at The Bunting Institute. After she retired as artistic director of Shakespeare & Company she was able to focus on the project. She performed with male partners from the Company at various stages of development. I saw the series performed with Nigel Gore.
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10 x 10 At Barrington Stage
Winter Theatre Quickies
By: - Jan 16th, 2026With a cast of Barrington Stage Company favorites, BSC presents 10 fast-paced plays full of drama, comedy, wit, and irreverence, in its annual 10x10 New Play Festival, the cornerstone of Pittsfield’s Upstreet Winter Arts Festival. Now in its fifteenth year, 10x10 will run for five weeks, from February 12 through March 15, on the St. Germain Stage at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center in Downtown Pittsfield.
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The Little Foxes
Island City Stage
By: - Jan 22nd, 2026Island City Stage's strong production of "The Little Foxes," by Lillian Hellman is riveting. The production finds the humanity in the story while steering clear of excess melodrama.
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Marjorie Prime
New York's Helen Hayes Theatre
By: - Jan 23rd, 2026What struck me after seeing the incredibly acted production of Marjorie Prime at the Helen Hayes Theatre in New York City was that these two plays (Your Name Means Dream was the other) use AI to provide companionship to elderly people.
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A Streetcar Named Desire
An Innovative Adaptation of a Classic at ACT
By: - Jan 23rd, 2026Having lost the family plantation in Mississippi, Blanche DuBois arrives on the doorstep of her sister Stella and husband Stanley in a working class neighborhood of New Orleans. Sparks fly between the fragile Blanche and the rough Stanley from the outset. No good is likely to come from this punishing relationship.
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Hershey Felder: The Piano & Me
The King of Composer Bios Tells His Own Story
By: - Jan 25th, 2026Hershey Felder's career has been dominated by his creation of one-man plays in which he portrays a composer and performs the composer's works on piano. After Felder's constructing eight well received musical biographies, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley presents his autobiography set in the same format, with the artist performing works of his own preference and those which were important in his professional development.
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What the Constitution Means to Me
A Tour de Force on a Topic of Great Import
By: - Jan 26th, 2026In an autobiographical context, Heidi Schreck analyzes aspects of our Constitution, particularly those that resonate in our current conflictual times. She also contemplates whether it is better to continue amending the existing document or scrap it and start all over again. Jefferson advocated the latter every 20 years.
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Barrington Stage Update
Four PLays Added
By: - Jan 28th, 2026Barrington Stage Company announces four titles for the theater’s 2026 season, including two Pulitzer Prize-winning modern classics, one of the greatest theatrical farces ever written, and a world premiere play. More productions, concerts, and cabarets will be announced soon.
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Woodie King, Jr. of New Federal Theatre
King's Death Announced
By: - Jan 31st, 2026Woodie King, Jr., founder of New Federal Theatre and a prolific producer and director who dedicated more than five decades to providing opportunities for minorities and women in the performing arts, died January 29 at Weill Cornell Medical Center of complications from emergency heart surgery. He was 88.
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The Cottage
Hartford Stage
By: - Feb 02nd, 2026Admittedly, many in the audience laughed heartily at the antics of the characters. You may also. But if you were expecting sophistication, you will be disappointed.
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Heartbeat Opera Gives Us Manon
Opera Lives in New York
By: - Feb 02nd, 2026Heartbeat Opera is offering a striking new Manon, cut and shaped into a taut hundred minutes, restoring much of the original wit and allowing it to sharpen—rather than soften—the opera’s tragic ending. This one-act chamber adaptation features a new English translation by Jacob Ashworth and Rory Pelsue. Directed by Pelsue with meticulous attention to detail and an unerring sense of pace. Conducted by the inimitable Dan Schlosberg, the production is terrific from start to finish
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The Hello Girls
Ross Valley Players' Homage to Brave Young Women in WW I
By: - Feb 02nd, 2026Building on true events and characters, the musical tells of the contributions made by a particular class of women in World War I. For vital battlefield communications in France, General Pershing needed personnel with both telephone operator and French language skills. The answer was ultimately over 200 staff members recruited from the U.S. They were all women. They were The Hello Girls.
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The Cherry Orchard
Marin Theatre's Take on Chekhov's Classic
By: - Feb 05th, 2026The aristocratic Liubov returns from Paris as she can't keep up with mortgage payments on her estate. The rich parvenu Lopkhin, whose family had worked the estate, has a viable plan to save Liubov and her brother financially, but it would involve destroying her beloved cherry orchard. Sometimes nostalgia gets in the way of sound thinking.
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New Home for Sarasota Players
Reaching Its Centennial
By: - Feb 09th, 2026As it prepares to open a new home in Payne Park Auditorium later this year, the Sarasota Players is putting a renewed focus on the shows it stages and reconnecting with the community that has helped it near a centennial celebration.
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The Mountaintop
Oakland Theater Project's Powerful Fantasy About Martin Luther King, Jr.
By: - Feb 09th, 2026Katori Hall's fantasy of MLK speculates his last night before his assassination. He asks a maid who delivers coffee to him in his motel room to keep him company. He finds that this is no working-class simpleton, but a challenge to his assumptions in more ways than one.
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Programming Joy
Cultural Strategy in an Age of Exhaustion
By: - Feb 12th, 2026I keep returning to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Few global artists have been as scrutinized and politicized as he has. His communities remain persistently endangered, and his homeland exists within the long, uneasy tensions of American territorial power. By every expectation of protest performance, that stage could have been a site of fury, a reckoning, an indictment, a civic interrogation broadcast to the largest audience on earth.
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A Case for the Existence of God
New City Players in Wilton Manors
By: - Feb 13th, 2026New City Players is preparing to present its professional production of "A Case for the Existence of God" by Samuel D. Hunter. The production will run from Feb. 20-March 8 in Island City Stage's intimate black box space in Wilton Manors, near Ft. Lauderdale. The play spotlights two struggling men who connect.
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M. Butterfly
The Story of an Unbelievable Relationship
By: - Feb 14th, 2026In this fictionalized true story, a French diplomat has a 20-year relationship with a singer of Chinese opera. Despite carnal encounters, the Frenchman claims never having known that the modest and delicate creature was a man. David Henry Hwang's story and themes are interlaced with those of Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly.
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Salome
West Bay Offers Solid Production of Strass's Classic
By: - Feb 16th, 2026In a psychopathic rage, Herod's adopted daughter, Salome, calls for the beheading of John the Baptist. Tense music underscores the tense drama.
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Driving Miss Daisy
Collaboration between Palm Beach Dramaworks in Florida and Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts.
By: - Feb 15th, 2026Palm Beach Dramaworks (PBD) in South Florida and Barrington Stage Company (BSC) in the Berkshires are staging the classic play "Driving Miss Daisy." The triumphant production continues through March 1 at PBD and runs May 27-June 21 at BSC. "Driving Miss Daisy" tackles timely themes and opens our hearts to people different from us.
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10 x 10 at Barrington Stage
Brightening Winter Gloom
By: - Feb 16th, 2026With a cast of Barrington Stage Company favorites, BSC presents 10 fast-paced plays full of drama, comedy, wit, and irreverence, in its annual 10x10 New Play Festival, the cornerstone of Pittsfield’s Upstreet Winter Arts Festival. Now in its fifteenth year, 10x10 will run for five weeks, from February 12 through March 15, on the St. Germain Stage at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center in Downtown Pittsfield. Get tickets now as this usually sells out.
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Frozen Enchants Little Girls
Adults Not So Much
By: - Feb 18th, 2026Problems begin with the work itself. Frozen does not feature the best music or lyrics. Many of the songs are ho-hum. The story makes the plot of The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast Pulitzer Prize eligible. The music and lyrics don’t elevate the story.
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My Fair Lady
The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton, Fla.
By: - Feb 19th, 2026The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton presents an engaging, yet imperfect professional production of "My Fair Lady" through Sunday. The 1950's musical's basis is George Bernard Shaw's 191 witty and satiric play, Pygmalion.
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Jeff McCarthy’s Kunstler at Barrington Stage
Launching the Season with a Message Play
By: - May 22nd, 2017The brilliant and versatile Jeff McCarthy is a perennial star for Barrington Stage Company. In the era of Trump the season opens with a message play Kunstler by award winner Jeffrey Sweet. It transfers from a sold out Off Broadway run at 59East59 Theatres. In this two hander McCarthy is paired with Erin Roche. The young black student aspires to be a lawyer but not like Kunstler who she initially admired but now despises.
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