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Berkies 2023
Theatre Awards in the Berkshires
By: - Nov 15th, 2023Several categories saw ties this year, including the top honors for Outstanding Musical Production and . Barrington Stage Company’s production of Cabaret and the Sharon Playhouse production of Something Rotten shared the musical award. Shakespeare & Company’s production of August Wilson’s Fences shared the top play production honors with Bridge Street Theatre’s East of Berlin.
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Four Plays From Broadway And Beyond
Premieres and Revivals
By: - Nov 15th, 2023These were seen by the reviewer on a trip to NYC for the American Theatre Critics Association conference. Each of the four is worth seeing with history and music being common threads. Supported by excerpts of period music, "Spies" tells the true story of a 17th century friar who was charged with preventing what would become the 30 Years War. The dark "Watch" uses operatic form and modern dance to tell a story related to the real-life mass murders in a Charleston church with a black congregation and a Pittsburgh synagogue. "Wholesale" is a heavily adapted revival of the 1962 musical that launched Barbra Streisand's career. "Love" tells the story of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos in sung-through immersive disco fashion!
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Clark Summer 2024 Exhibitions
Highlighting French Artist Guillaume Lethière
By: - Nov 20th, 2023The Clark Art Institute announces its summer 2024 schedule, featuring a robust program of exhibitions, events, and activities. Leading its summer program is a major new exhibition of works by French artist Guillaume Lethière featuring some eighty paintings, prints, and drawings. Organized in partnership with the Musée du Louvre (Louvre Museum), the exhibition premieres at the Clark and then travels to Paris for an autumn 2024 exhibition at the Louvre.
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Sanctuary on Netflix
SumoThrows Its Weight Around
By: - Nov 24th, 2023I was seduced into binge watching Sanctuary, an eight episode Japanese series on Netflix. It focuses on sumo wrestling, the national sport that is unique to Japan. Obesity is essential to success in the sport resulting in disease and premature death. While I had no prior knowledge of the sport I am now a fan.
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Barrington Stage Anounces 2024 Programming
La Cage aux Folles and Next to Normal
By: - Nov 29th, 2023BSC will produce the Tony Award-winning musical La Cage aux Folles, and the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, Next to Normal, which will be directed by Alan Paul, in a co-production with Round House Theatre, Bethesda, MD.
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Rhiannon Giidens Broadends the Silk Road
In San Diego The Trancontinental Railroad arrive
By: - Nov 28th, 2023The Transcontinental Railroad connected the Eastern and Western United States the same way that the Silk Road of Asia connected the Orient to Europe. Upon completion of the railroad, goods that would take six months to travel by boat around the Horn from the West to East Coast now were transported across the country in days. Most importantly, ideas and culture were transported. This crisscrossing changed the United States and made it the superpower it is today.
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Above the Fold at Cape Ann Museum
A Million Images Donated by Owners of Gloucester Daily Times
By: - Nov 30th, 2023The captivating photographs in the exhibition draw on an important archive of an estimated one million photographs, a recent acquisition donated to the Museum by the North of Boston Media Group, owners of the Gloucester Daily Times. Through the photographs and personal accounts of more than one dozen GDT photographers, the exhibition reflects the people and stories of Cape Ann and shares the integral role that local photojournalism plays in documenting the community.
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Jenny Holzer: Light Line
Installation for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
By: - Dec 11th, 2023From May 17 to September 29, 2024, the Guggenheim Museum will present the solo exhibition Jenny Holzer: Light Line, a reimagining of Holzer’s 1989 landmark installation.
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The Rose Elf by David Hertzberg
Unison Media and Greenwood Cemetery Present Opera
By: - Jun 07th, 2018David Hertzberg's opera, The Rose Elf, opened The Angel Space series, a collaboration between Unison Media and Green-Wood Cemetery. After whiskey amidst gravestones, the audience took a walk through the glorious grounds, where ancient trees are thick, tall and promising. The production in the Catacombs was thrilling.
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Tilson Thomas Conducts the MET Orchestra
Ruggles, Mozart and Mahler
By: - Jun 07th, 2018Carnegie Hall ended its 2017-18 season Tuesday night with the last of three concerts featuring the MET Orchestra. This year, the pit band at the Metropolitan Opera has been playing under a succession of different conductors. This one was conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
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A Lesson from Aloes by Athol Fugard
Presented by Weathervane Productions
By: - Jun 10th, 2018Betrayal through informing is at the core of Athol Fugard’s masterful A Lesson from Aloes, one of several penetrating plays that earns the South African playwright a position in the pantheon of modern authors. First produced in 1980, the play is set in 1963, a full three decades before the end of apartheid. Weathervane Productions renders this classic with exceptional skill.
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Highlights of Connecticut Theatre Season
Overview of Seventy Plus Productions
By: - Jun 11th, 2018I didn’t think there were really any outstanding musical productions this season. By that I mean productions where the work itself and all elements of the production hit the mark. Most had flaws of some kind.
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Into the Woods in South Florida
Classic Musical by Lightning Bolt Productions
By: - Jun 11th, 2018New Southern Florida theater company's production of Into The Woods is mostly a success. The director's approach suggests the innocence our youth has lost in the aftermath of tragedies. Mostly, this production leaves Into the Woods intact.
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Peace for Mary Frances by Lily Thorne
The New Group Tackles Hospice
By: - Jun 11th, 2018Peace for Mary Frances by Lily Thorne is produced by The New Group. It is in many ways a tough play, a domestic drama set during the final weeks of hospice at home. The cast featuring Lois Smith and J. Smith-Cameron is terrific.
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FINKS by Joe Gilford
Better Dead Than Red
By: - Jun 15th, 2018Under the guise of the Red Scare, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), abrogated the rights of thousands of people. Their practice of denouncing their political opposites is little different from the same strategy used by the current presidency.
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Cartagena: Conserving Cultural Heritage
A 500-year-old Urban Jewel in the Caribbean
By: - Sep 03rd, 2018The author recently visited Cartagena, Colombia. The city is a 500-year old urban jewel in the Caribbean with a wonderful scaled and visually vibrant Old Town (el Centro Historico). It is a wonderful destination on the western edge of the Caribbean. Planning of Cartagena both in terms of preservation and new development is a challenge, but climate change and rising sea levels is threatening its cultural heritage.
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Topsy Turvy on Mt. Greylock
Bascom Lodge Reading and Book Launch
By: - Sep 04th, 2018Astrid Hiemer contributed 19 photo illustrations for my fifth book of gonzo poems Topsy Turvy. On Sunday of Labor Day weekend we collaborated for a reading and book launch at historic Bascom Lodge on Mt. Greylock. There was a nice turnout on the porch. Jose, Alvin, Rick and Art joined us for the jazz dinner that followed. We stayed the night and had breakfast with hikers. It was an adventure we need to have more often.
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Talking to Jay and the Americans
Founding Member Sandy Yaguda
By: - Sep 06th, 2018Despite occasional lineup changes, the band has always had a “Jay.” Even so, the original name that was bestowed upon them by the legendary songwriting and producing team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller did not use any of the bandmembers’ names. What's in a name? The vintage band is on tour this fall.
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2018 Theatre Season in Connecticut
Hamilton on Tour
By: - Sep 07th, 2018Connecticut is blessed with an abundance of fine professional theaters – from the major regional companies (Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed, TheaterWorks, Westport Playhouse) to more locally oriented theaters (Ivoryton Playhouse, Playhouse on Park in West Hartford, Connecticut Repertory Theater at UConn, Sharon Playhouse, Seven Angels in Waterbury, MTC in Norwalk and ACT-CT in Ridgefield). Plus there are the major presenting house that bring in national tours – the Bushnell in Hartford, Shubert in New Haven and the Palace in Waterbury.
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Mesa Verde National Park
Visiting Southwest Colorado
By: - Sep 07th, 2018Spread over 52,000 acres on high plateaus (7,000 to 8,500 feet), Mesa Verde National Park offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Puebloans who built their homes there from around 650 until about 1300 AD.
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Do Bourbon Barrels And Zinfandel Mix
Nice Nuance
By: - Sep 07th, 2018A new group of wine drinkers prefer their Zinfandel aged in bourbon barrels. It's the small nuances of charred vanilla on the palate that makes the difference. To achieve that consistantly, makes me want to jump on the bandwagon.
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Detroit ’67 by Dominique Morisseau
Produced by Aurora Theatre
By: - Sep 09th, 2018Dominique Morisseau’s scintillating Detroit ’67 encapsulates that tragic time through a lens that never leaves the basement of a black ghetto home over several days that July. Set near the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount, this intersection would become the epicenter of death and destruction in Detroit.
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A Gewurztraminer From Alsace Worth Buying
A Thriving Family Business
By: - Sep 10th, 2018Since the early 1800's, the Baur family from near Colmar, in France's Alsacian region, has owned several plots of land in this rich, limestone and clay soil area, known for Gewurztraminer (white wine). The family started bottling the wine in 1950 and now thrives with great grandson, Arnaud running the operation.
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Separate and Equal at 59E59th Street
Things Get Bad Before They Get Better
By: - Sep 10th, 2018Birmingham passed an Ordinance in May of 1951 which prohibited blacks and whites from playing games together, among other injunctions. Boys will be boys. Often in the South they are allowed to play together until they reach puberty. An empty lot with two baskets was too tempting for six boys, three black and three white, to resist. The consequences are tragic.
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Dostoyeksky’s Crime and Punishment
At Chicago's Shattered Globe Theatre
By: - Sep 12th, 2018Dostoyeksky’s Crime and Punishment is a thriller, a slow-paced intellectualized thriller. If you haven’t read the novel since college days, Chris Hannan’s 2013 adaptation—on stage at Shattered Globe Theatre—will sneak up on you.
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