Berkshire Museum

Berkshires Jazz, Inc. announces several new events that celebrate April as Jazz Appreciation Month, a long-standing initiative of the Smithsonian Institution. The spring programming spans the timeframe from late March to early May, and includes CD release concerts featuring the Claire Daly Quartet and the Jeff Holmes Quartet.

Barrington Stage Company, the award-winning theatre in downtown Pittsfield, under the leadership of Artistic Director, Julianne Boyd, and Managing Director, Tristan Wilson, proudly announces two additional productions as part of the theatre’s 19th season; the world premiere of Muckrakers by Zayd Dohrn and Disney’s The Little Mermaid JR.

The 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival returns to downtown Pittsfield for the second year from February 14-24, 2013, and features music, theatre, dance, film, visual art, spoken word, comedy and more, including BSC’s 10×10 New Play Festival.

Chef Kirk Grippo has owned and managed the popular Berkshire pub Olde Forge Restaurant, in Lanesboro on Route 7, for the past fifteen years. He was setting up for a party but paused long enough to chat with us. The annual Festival of Trees at the Berkshire Museum is among the events which he caters. He discussed how it takes a staff of 60 to keep up with the busy restaurant.

Single ticket sales exceeded $1M for the second time in BSC’s 18-year history, even breaking last year’s total (the first time was in 2011). Total season pass sales for 2012 are 30% greater than 2011 season pass sales. St. Germain Stage passes alone increased 44% from 2011 to 2012 (after nearly doubling from 2010 to 2011) – representing an all-time record number of season passes. 2012 attendance is more than 51,000, representing a 6% increase over 2011.

The emerging WAM Theatre has taken on the challenge of a world premiere of The Old Mezzo by the renowned feminist writer and one of the Ms Magazine founders, Susan Dworkin. It is an ambitious but uneven collaboration between the feminists, Kristen van Ginhioven, a co founder of WAM and the Berkshire based Dworkin. The production has been staged at the Berkshire Museum through October 28.

Combining numerous objects from its permanent collection augmented by contemporary pieces by six Native American artists- Marcus Amerman, Jeremy Frey, Teri Greeves, Diego Romero, Preston Singletary and Bently Spang, the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield has mounted the special exhibition Rethink! American Indian Art through January 6.

The Cantilena Chamber Choir will premiere scenes from Ethan Frome- A new three act opera by Composer Caryn Block Sunday, October 7, 2012- 5:00 pm at Trinity Church 88 Walker Street, Lenox, Massachusetts. The music will include select choral scenes drawn from the three act opera and dramatic arias, duets and trios for the principal characters in Wharton’s tragic love story based in the Berkshire region.

WAM Theatre’s October 12-28 World Premiere production of The Old Mezzo by Berkshire based playwright Susan Dworkin will feature professional actors from Berkshire County and the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts, the Capital Region of Upstate NY and beyond. It will be presented at the Berkshire Museum.

In a storefront on Summer Street in Adams, Ma., formerly a clothing store, five years ago the multi media artists Matt Belanger and Marianne Petit opened the alternative Greylock Arts. This summer they are celebrating with an anniversary exhibition including many of the artists from New York and the Berkshires that have been included in their edgy program. Their alternative, artist run space, is, hands down, the best in the Berkshires.

It was steamy in the Shed last night for the sweltering launch of the gala, 2012, 75th season of Tanglewood. With Christoph von Dohnányi, a Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1952, the orchestra replicated the very first BSO concert that took place on August 5, 1937. A capacity audience enjoyed the all-Beethoven program, opening with the Leonore Overture No. 3, followed by Symphony No. 6, Pastoral, and Symphony No. 5.

A profile centered on the "two Sister James" of "Doubt" –– Clover Bell-Devaney, the actress who is playing her in Berkshire Actors Theatre's 2012 production, and Sister Peggy McEntee, the woman who inspired the role. Bell-Devaney had the chance to meet McEntee, playwright John Patrick Shanley's first grade teacher and the women he dedicated the "Doubt" film after, while preparing for her role in the play. A friendship developed between the two, and now Sister McEntee will come out to the Berkshires on July for an audience Q & A following that evening's performance of "Doubt."

The front lawn of Berkshire Museum will soon be home to an authentic wigwam. The Museum staff is working with two Wampanoag Indians to build an authentic wigwam, which will be used to enhance programming in conjunction with the Museum’s upcoming exhibition, Rethink! American Indian Art at Berkshire Museum, opening July 7, 2012.

May 23 – June 10. LUNGS, by Duncan Macmillan. Directed by Aaron Posner. New England premiere. St. Germain Stage (formerly Stage 2) at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center, 36 Linden Street, Pittsfield. An intimate drama about a young couple contemplating whether or not to have a child in a time of global anxiety. And that's not all.

Barrington Stage Company was founded in 1995. In 2005, with seed money from the city, the company moved from rented facilities in Sheffield to a permanent home in Pittsfield. Three years later it transformed rented space in the nearby V.F.W. Post as a Second Stage. Now that building has been gifted and Renamed Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center. With no additional debt beyond renovation BSC has now completed its Pittsfield campus.

Hancock Shaker Village (HSV) announces the living history museum’s 2012 plans at a press conference today. The 52nd season will run from April 7 through October 28. It includes a major new exhibition titled A Promising Venture: Shaker Photographs from the WPA, which features the work of photographer Noel Vicentini, who was hired as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project in 1936 to document the Shaker villages in upstate New York and western Massachusetts for the newly-formed Index of American Design.

Heading into the 2012 Summer Season, the Berkshire's newest theatre company, Berkshire Actors Theatre will stage productions of two John Patrick Shanley plays. With Shanley on board as a creative consultant, and an exciting cast list of local actors lined up, BAT is looking to further solidify itself in the local theatre scene. BAT also just released a dynamic promo video for its season.

In addition to exhibitions the Berkshire museum features an aquarium and the renowned Little Cinema. Here is a break down of exhibitions and events through mid July.

The season of Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield kicks off on May 23 and stretches through October. This is a cheat sheet to mark your calendar. Here is a day by day break down of the entire theatre season.

The Berkshire Actors Theatre (BAT) 2012 summer season will pair two shows by John Patrick Shanley, both performed at Berkshire Museum. The season will open June 21 with Doubt: A Parable, Shanley’s Pulitzer and Tony award-winning play. Opening one week later will be a remount of last season’s successful production of Four Dogs and a Bone, which will be performed in repertory with Doubt: A Parable.

The artist David Henderson was inspired by the light and strong, elaborate patterning of the fan vaults of late Gothic British cathedrals. A secularized version of this cathedral design is on view in a large, gallery filling installation at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. We met with the Brooklyn based artist while he was working on final details prior to the opening.

There are too few museums quite like the eclectic Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. It has a parallel interests in the natural sciences and fine arts.The current tandem of exhibitions Taking Flight: Audubon and the World of Birds, (January 12 to June 17) and Morgan Bulkeley Bird Story (January 24 through March 4) neatly demonstrates that disparity.

During a luncheon meeting with the media Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, went beyond just highlighting the coming season of productions. She conveyed the year round commitment and involvement with the Pittsfield community. It helps us to understand how in its fifteen years BSC has grown into one the nation's foremost theartical and educational organizations.

It would be difficult to match the success of the 2011 season of Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. The company set records with its productions of Guys and Doll and a riveting new work by Mark. St. Germain, Best of Enemies. But in a press conference Julianne Boyd, artistic director of BSC, stated that she doesn't want to repeat herself. Opening with a musical, Fiddler on the Roof, Arthur Miller and a farce directed by John Rando, however, looks sure to run the table on the Main Stage. With St. Germain's new Dr. Ruth among the tricks up her sleeve for Stage 2.

The announcement of the closing of Storefront Artist Project after a decade in Pittsfield is just the tip of the iceberg. It is widely feared that a new mayor, Daniel Bianchi, will reverse the positive impact of the transition from abandoned manufacturing to an arts and tourism based economy. Theaters, galleries, artists, the Berkshire Museum and the restaurants that spin off of them are waiting for the other shoe to drop.