Huntington Theatre

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents performing arts programming at its Boston Harbor location for Summer 2012. Programming includes perennial summer favorites Talking Taste, Harborwalk Sounds, and DJs on the Harbor, plus dance performances and the return of Experiment, bringing 50 writers, dancers, actors, and performers to the museum for an immersive theatrical experience.

Do not miss Huntington Theatre Company opening of The Luck of the Irish. The American Repertory Theater continues its creative & invigorating Futurity: A Musical by the Lisps. The Boston Symphony Orchestra presents Ravel, Salonen and Stravinsky under the baton of the acclaimed maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen while the Celebrity Series features the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. The Harvard Film Archives showcases three exceptional films by Michael Glawogger and The Museum of Fine Arts presents films on Gerhard Richter Painting and Hollywood Scriptures series.

The Huntington Theatre Company raised $730,000 in support of its education and community programs at last night’s Spotlight Spectacular gala honoring 30-year managing director Michael Maso with its highest honor, the Wimberly Award. Tony Award-winning Broadway star Joanna Gleason (Sons of the Prophet, Into the Woods, “The West Wing”) hosted the event at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel that was attended by 430 guests.

Ed Pincus films at the Harvard Archives while the Turkish film festival continues at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The American Repertory Theater showcases Futurity: A Musical by the Lisps and the Boston Symphony Orchestra presents Brahms: A German Requiem. Leon Kirchner’s opera, Lily (a musical adaptation of Saul Bellow’s novel Henderson, the Rain King) will be performed at the New England Conservatory First Monday at Jordan Hall. Happy Passover and Happy Easter.

The American Repertory Theater presents Futurity: A Musical by The Lisps while the Huntington Theatre Company features Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The Luck of the Irish. The Boston Turkish Film Festival continues at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Harvard Film Archives presents a retrospective on Carmelo Bene. The Coolidge Corner Theater features “She Stoops to Conquer” a play from the National Theater in London. The Boston Symphony Orchestra welcomes Orchestra Greek violinist and conductor Leonidas Kavados.

Nicky Silver's play THE LYONS -- a critical and popular success when it debuted last fall at Vineyard Theatre -- transfers to Broadway's Cort Theatre (138 W. 48 St.) with its entire original cast intact, including the Tony Award-winning stars Linda Lavin and Dick Latessa, along with Michael Esper, Kate Jennings Grant, Brenda Pressley and Gregory Wooddell. The Vineyard Theatre production of THE LYONS will be presented on Broadway by producer Kathleen K. Johnson. Mark Brokaw directs.

The formidable August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom isn't really about the legendary blues woman of the 1920s and her music. The erastz recording session is a trope for Wilson's views of social and cultural issues of the 1920s in a cycle of ten plays representing ten decades. All of which have been produced by the Huntington Theatre Company.

With wonderful performances, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is one of the 10 play Cycle by playwright August Wilson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicler of the 20th Century African-American experience. Set in Chicago in the 1920s, it is an ambitious discourse about race, art, God and religion along with exploitation of black recording artists. This fact based drama is brilliantly performed and produced-- a must see.

John Douglas Thompson undertakes considerable research to develop roles. He compares and contrasts his performances in O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and The Iceman Cometh now in rehearsal in Chicago. He has a two year grant to study Shakespeare's comedies and the tragedies of Marlowe through Theatre Communications Group. It will culminate in his third production with Theatre for a New Audience. Again he will be directed by Arin Arbus. On February 27 he will give a reading of The Misanthrope at the Clark Art Institute through Williamstown Theatre Festival.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra features the cellist Gautier Capuçon while the Boston Conservatory Theatre presents The child Spells by Ravel. The Harvard Film Archives showcases Robert Fenz films with the director in person while the Museum of Fine Arts presents animation by Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli.

Widely hailed as one of the best new Broadway plays, Time Stands Still is the story of Sarah and James, a photojournalist and a foreign correspondent, who are reeling after a recent brush with death while on an assignment. Will their relationship of nearly a decade be more threatened by a traditional go at domesticity than the roadside bombs of Baghdad?

Huntington Theatre Company announces that its 2012-2013 Season will include MacArthur “Genius” David Cromer’s groundbreaking new production of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American classic Our Town December 7, 2012 – January 13, 2013. Cromer will direct and play the Stage Manager, a role he previously performed in Chicago and Off Broadway productions.

With Brooks Ashmanskas, currently playing in God of Carnage at The Huntington Theatre, you come to expect the unexpected. Starting with a straight interview it doesn’t take long for the wheels to come off. From there it devolves into a comedic, bar knuckles slug fest. But all in outrageous fun. Read this and weep. Tears of hysterical joy.

Two upper middle class couples meet to negotiate the damage done by one couple's eleven year old hitting the others' eleven year old with a stick. Add wit and today's lifestyles and the result is comedic carnage. The play goes from a polite discussion of child rearing and soon escalates into verbal fireworks. Award winning God of Carnage lays waste to each of the four characters and our notions of parenting. It should be seen and heard.

The ICA has two extraordinary programs not to be missed: Dance/Draw exhibition and Trisha Brown Floor to Forrest performance final week as well as Andy’s Warhol: God Squad’s Kitchen that showed to sold-out performance in New York. The Harvard Film Archives presents three films by directors Dominik Graf, Christian Petzold and Christoph Hochhäusler the result of their correspondence on the subjects of film aesthetics, the Berlin School, Germany and the film genre. Music can be heard at the MFA: J.S. Bach: The Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord and at the venerable Symphony Orchestra with excerpts of Weber, Beethoven, Harbison & Strauss.

It is that time of year when we look back at the highlights and insights of the past season. Take a deep breath and anticipate what lays ahead for 2012. There is much to remember as well as look forward to.

The World Premiere of Captors at the Huntington Theatre Company is a provocative drama about the capture and immediate aftermath of infamous Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann's captivity. Brilliantly orchestrated to illuminate the interaction between Mossad operatives and fugitive Eichmann as he is attempted to be interrogated. This play wrestles with the issues of good and great evil, the refocus of the world's lens upon the Holocaust and the question of what it means to be a meaningful part of humanity.

In conjunction with the world premiere of Captors, the Huntington Theatre Company will host a Jewish Community Night featuring Alan Dershowitz on Wednesday, November 16 at the BU Theatre, Avenue of the Arts (264 Huntington Avenue). Captors, by Evan M. Wiener and directed by Huntington Artistic Director Peter DuBois, tells the thrilling true story of the capture of architect of the Holocaust Adolf Eichmann by secret Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960.

72 year old playwright Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro demonstrates that new ideas and creativity are not limited to just the young. Her new play Before I Leave You speaks of love, friendship and disconnection in various funny and sensitive ways. Set at and around Cambridge's Harvard Square, it is a story of academics as flawed members of the human family.

A week full of exceptional films: Andy Warhol at the Harvard Film Archives; The Palestinian Film Festival at the Museum of Fine arts, Trisha Brown dance performance at the ICA; Shumann and Strauss at The Boston Symphony Orchestra and much more....

Great box office returns underscore the quality and appeal of the Mary Zimmerman production of Candide at the Huntington Theatre Company. The record for a musical has garnered over $1.5 million dollars. Candide has left audiences amused, entertained and thoughtfully stimulated. Only 12 more performances left.

Mary Zimmerman has adapted and directed the production of Candide which is enjoying a successful run at Boston's Huntington Theatre. During an extensive dialogue she discussed the controversy of her three Met productions which were harshly reviewed by critics and opera traditionalists. She is negotiating with the Met for a new production as well as revivals. She also spoke about working with and creating an opera with Philip Glass.

An exceptional week of cultural activities in Boston & Cambridge: Trisha Brown’s Floor of the Forest, a mixture of sculpture, dance & performance at the ICA. The Harvard Film Archives showcase the work of the British filmmaker Ben Rivers and Romanian Andrei Ujica.

Inaugurating its 30th anniversary season, Voltaire's satirical picaresque story with Leonard Bernstein's music has been beautifully presented by the Huntington Theatre Company. This is a full blown show of exquisite pageantry with magnificent singing, musical score, humor, staging and choreography. A true theatrical spectacle, this presentation is a don't miss event.

When Nicholas Martin, after eight years of running the Huntington Theatre in Boston, took a similar position at Williamstown Theatre Festival the renowned festival was widely viewed as not what it had been. From 2008-2010 that state of the art excellence returned to the Berkshires. Under new artistic director, Jenny Gersten, Martin is directing She Stoops to Conquer surrounded by his theatrical family. During a rare day off we discussed his remarkable life in theatre.