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Red Bull theater company's 11th Annual Short New Play Festival will take place virtually on Monday, July 12. A recording of the livestream will be available until 7 p.m. ET on Friday, July 16. This year's theme is "Restoration." Red Bull is a professional company in New York City. It “brings rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences.”

If you know Pearl Bailey’s work, the show by Rashidra Scott will let you enjoy not only the music but her wisdom and if you don’t know about her, you will discover this terrific entertainer.

“Kaleidoscapes and Sights Unseen”, an exhibition by photographer J. Alexander Baker, at the Eclipse Mill Gallery, is a series of semi-abstract waterside scenes of rivers that reveal unexpected patterns hidden within the natural world. Baker’s digital manipulation of limited color palettes, reflection, repetition and focus transform the Hudson, and other rivers, into kaleidoscopic dreamscapes that exist in the space between observed reality and imagination - "Riparian Kaleidoscapes".  

Berkshires Jazz is delighted to be jumping back into ‘live’ programming with six events in the second half of 2021, including three in August. It is the most ambitious schedule in our 17-year history, and reflects our confidence that there is a pent-up demand for in-person jazz events. 

 Images Cinema will host a “sneak preview” of the first episode of Hudson Falls, a new comedy/drama/mystery series, on Wednesday, July 21st at 7:30 PM. This special event will be a fundraiser for the nonprofit theater and will include an onstage conversation with the cast and the creator/producer of the show, independent TV/movie producer Elias Plagianos of Clarkstown, New York.  

Ekua Holmes (born 1955) is an artist, community activist and lifelong resident of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood whose body of work explores themes of childhood, family bonds, memory and resilience. This summer, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), presents Paper Stories, Layered Dreams: The Art of Ekua Holmes, focused on her award-winning children’s book illustrations, which reveal stories of self-determination, love and community.

In an earlier version of Tennessee Rising, presented at the 2017 United Solo Festival in New York City, Jacob Storms received an award for the Best One-Man show. The following year, fast-travelling word of mouth got him a headlining gig at the Saint Louis’ Tennessee Williams Festival. This current version, directed by Alan Cumming, was originally scheduled to premiere at the Beaubourg Theatre in New Orleans in March 2020.

The Al Hirschfeld Foundation's latest online exhibition focuses on canines. The show features drawings of some of the most famous dogs in 20th century media. The drawings of Al Hirschfeld stand as one of the most innovative efforts in establishing the visual language of modern art through caricature in the 20th century.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC) announces extensions for the first four productions of the theatre’s 2021 season: Who Could Ask for Anything More? The Songs of George Gershwin, Chester Bailey, Eleanor and Boca.

One of the treasures of the Berkshires is Close Encounters with Music, the brainchild of premiere cellist Yehuda Hanani. Close Encounters performs in nooks and crannies around the Berkshires and also in more prominent venues like the modern Osawa Hall designed by William Rawn of Boston, who went on to create much the same successful combination of indoor and outdoor space in Sonoma County, California. Concerts are performed in the charming turn-of the-century Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. Conceived by Joseph Mcarthur Vance, this hall was brilliantly updated by Hugh Hardy.

Berlin Philharmonic had its big season finale in Waldbühne Stadium, Olympic Park, Berlin. Gershwin, Bernstein and John Williams were featured on a program re-introducing the Berlin Philharmonic live and to their live audience. Wayne Marshall conducted, and performed the Rhapsody in Blue. Martin Grobinger,  a  percussionist, was featured in a John Williams’ The Special Edition.

In 1818 the Hancock Shakers established the South Family to handle the overflow of new members. Also known as the "Young Believers’ Order," South Family members lived before committing fully to the Church and community.  They closed the South Family in 1849. In celebration of the opening of the South Family Trail on Saturday July 17, there will be member reception and interpretive walk starting at 10AM.

As summer temperatures rise Melting Point is the theme of a collaboration between Ferrin Contemporary in the Berkshires and Heller Gallery in Manhattan. The group exhibition of glass and ceramic artists entails use of the melting point as central to their practice.

There is a new pop-up gallery, Poker Flats, in Williamstown. There will be a public opening reception Saturday June 26  4-6pm.

Layon Gray's historical drama "Cowboy" tells the tale of the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal. The play is Off-Broadway-bound. The world premiere production at the National Black Theatre Festival in 2019 sold out its run in a few hours. The current Miami production is nearing its closing weekend, and has been selling out .

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home announces its line-up for the 2021-2021 Summer Lecture Series. Now in its 28th year, the Summer Lecture series bring leading biographer and historians to the Berkshires. This year’s series will New York Times bestselling author Janice P. Nimura, Pulitzer-prize winner author Debby Applegate, and Biographer Sydney Ladensohn Stern.

Nancy Rhodes, founder and artistic director of Encompass New Opera Theatre, led a Zoom for an international audience of teachers. Rhodes formed Encompass just as the women’s movement was blossoming. There are special women in the American music world who have soldiered on in their professions, whatever complications were created by gender.  Bursting onto the scene at about the same time as Gloria Steinem, Nancy Rhodes created an innovative company.. 

Erika Marquardt was an extraordinary woman, painter and artist. We were dear friends and I have followed her and Susan Erony's work since 1995. The rare collaboration between those two painters of more than 1000 small paintings ( 7"x10") lasted from 1998 to 2006. And they also collaborated on a large triptych. Altogether an amazing feat!

With their fully-staged production of Christopher Chen’s work, kudos to Mountain View’s Pear Theatre for leading the way in the return to indoor theater after 15 months of pandemic-imposed darkness.  The adventuresome small company not only offers socially-distanced indoor performances to a play with a full cast, but also outdoor performances and online streaming, to accommodate all manner of theater lover.  Hallelujah!  

Opera Saratoga announces the company’s return to the stage for its 60th Anniversary with a season of performances inspired by the iconic novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Working closely with a team of medical professionals and a dedicated COVID Safety Officer, Opera Saratoga is committed to bringing audiences and artists together safely for the 2021 Summer Festival, which will be produced outdoors during June and July in partnership with the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), Saratoga Spa State Park, and Pitney Meadows Community Farm to provide three unique performance spaces for audiences to safely enjoy two fully staged productions and a special concert.

The Yale Center for British Art opens a student-curated online exhibition that showcases four decades of experimental British filmmaking. The result is the Center’s first exhibition presented exclusively online. Art in Focus: The Provocation of Conditions features four short films. All four films can be viewed exclusively on the Center’s website from June 21 through August 23, 2021.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, the Shakers welcomed many African Americans into their communities. The Shakers believed that all were equal in the eyes of God, and allowed anyone to join their communities, provided that they turned over their property and all material wealth once they committed to communal life.

The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (mowna) announces a special sneak-peek of the film "pandemic statements," directed by cari ann shim sham* with a pre-show musical performance featuring accordionist Sarah Bellows, and a post show Q&A with the "pandemic statements collaborative” in the mowna party room. The event will take place virtually on June 25th at 8 pm Eastern Time. Tickets for this event are sliding scale, pay what you wish, and include access to the 2021 mowna Biennial exhibition.

In this new book of color photographs, all shot in 1981, Allen Frame attempts to revisit a zeitgeist that had given rise to an aesthetic that was distinctly New York. The distinctiveness was related to a circle of friends, many – though not all of them - gay men, who were making art at a specific moment in New York’s history.  FEVER is Frame’s personal documentary of that time, before the deepening tragedy of AIDS that would claim the lives of many of the young artists pictured in this book.

All phases of the oeuvre have been interesting going back decades to our first encounters. Trained in Europe there has been an intriguing cultural confluence of L'art pompier, formalism, conceptualism, Americana, and pop. Imagine a painting conflating Bougereau, Malevich, Duchamp, Warhol and Rosenquist. Miroslav Antic sent images of work created during the pandemic.