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Georgia has been very much our minds this year and last. The state significantly contributed to the return of Happy Days. The Atlanta Opera Company is offering Love Letters to Atlanta on February 14. Morris Robinson, Jamie Barton and Kevin Burdette.

Preparing for live-reopening, Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is sharing its rehearsal process. Arin Arbus, a regular as TFANA, directs. She and John Douglas Thompson have worked together on Otello and Macbeth. Now they take on Shylock and Merchant of Venice.

Boston Lyric Opera has boldly re-adapted Poe’s famous gothic horror story “The Fall of the House of Usher” with music of Philip Glass. It streams on operabox.tv for seven days starting on January 29/

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reopens February 3!.

Though not a play about COVID19, it is a true story of a pandemic expert. An interactive deep dive into the profundities of scientific exploration and the harrowing realities of facing your own mortality, The Catastrophist by Lauren Gunderson is a world premiere theatrical experience built of and for this moment in time. 

Irish Repertory Theatre (IRT) will show all nine of its original digital productions created during the pandemic. The festival starts on Jan. 26 and runs through Feb. 21. The event includes pieces by Brian Friel, James Joyce, Conor McPherson, and Eugene O'Neill. While there is no cost, IRT encourages donations.

There was an email invitation recently for a Zoom workshop in the UK, where one could learn how to draw a self-portrait or, as it was advertised: 'Learn how to draw a selfie...' Our Interactive Selfie Project, 2021, has wonderfully spoken to very many participants. There are now 130 selfies or almost selfies, as I called it, concluding phase 3. And, in fact, the project may yet continue.... -- Also, please read the article. Many, who have taken part, also contributed thoughtful messages.

Theatre Lab, Florida Atlantic University's professional resident theater company, will offer its new play festival online this year. Miami’s Juggerknot Theatre Company and the international-based PopUP Theatrics offer the chance to travel the world from the comfort of your home. "Travel" to places such as Lagos, Mumbai, Portland-Oregon, Beirut, Los Angeles, and Mexico City.

In 2015, Michael Conforti retired as director of the Clark Art Institute after some 20 years. The Clark is very different now then what he signed on for. Today, the Clark hosts summer blockbuster shows and is one of the nations foremost research centers. From the beginning, it has had close ties with Williams College where Conforti teaches a graduate course in museum studies. He oversaw the expansion and renovation with architect Tadao Ando. While running the Clark he was on the road and hard to pin down. Now retired, we worked together on an extensive overview of his career, accomplishments, and issues for museums.

Make Do is not what many artists are doing in the time of Covid. In the process of coping, they have extended boundaries, created new forms, and looked particularly to visual distribution channels  to show their new work. Chriselle Tidrick is a formidable aerial dancer who has also appeared on stilts at the Metropolitan Opera. Here is the dancer herself on how she came to create "The Limits of Escape."

Still Standing Standing Still, a virtual exhibition by North Adams artist, Galen Cheney, is now on view at Blue Heron Online Gallery. Linking through the site provides a slide show of recent work as well as a studio visit with the artist. Works may be purchased on line.

Mike Kaplan is a producer, documentary director, actor, award-winning poster designer and marketing strategist. He is known for co-producing The Whales of August, (Lilian Gish’s last film.) A Clockwork Orange,  I'll Sleep When I'm Dead,  Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and more. In addition, he is noted for his collection of historic movie posters that have been exhibited in Museums from Los Angeles to Jacob’s Pillow. He is also a songwriter.

Sandy Katz, a theatre critic and travel writer from Charleston, Carolina, busted out with charisma and personality. Dubbed “Traveling Sandy” her bags were always packed for any destination.

Wide Slumber is a taped work presented at the Prototype Festival.  It premiered in Reykjavik in 2014.  Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurdsson adapted a much lauded poem by Canadian a. rawlings. In evocative, erotic and riotous words. rawlings shows us the night zone between sleep and dreams.  Shakespeare dwelt there often – to sleep perchance to dream.  Wide Slumber is a large work.

Southeast Florida's Island City Stage will present the world premiere production of Compensation. The play is about a young woman who becomes a surrogate for a gay couple. The production will open Feb. 5, with two weekends of live performances. A week later, the company will present Compensation virtually.

Pasta

Network for New Music gives us a delightful composer portrait of Pulitzer-prize winner Richard Wernick, a native Bostonian. He has studied at Tanglewood, and with Leonard Bernstein. Can you imagine a "Sunken Synagogue" replacing the Ys' cathedral of Debussy?

Undaunted by the constraints of COVID, the Prototype Festival launched its 7th annual event on January 8th. Modulation opened the week of new, streaming works. While the trailer and prologue look like the Hollywood Hills striped with waving geological lines, the three florescent doorways invite entrance to an interior. The inventive work, made up of 13 parts, is divided into three acts, Isolation, Fear and Identity.

The exhibition comprises a mix of both studio paintings as well as self portraits dating to the 80s and 90s.  The studio paintings reflect Schwartz’s long history of using her space as her subject matter.

During the Covid pandemic artists continue to work. Exhibitions, however, have been cancelled. To meet a need Michael McGrath an entrepreneur and designer has created Blue Heron Gallery Online. The Berkshire based site will offer online exhibitions as well as options for a range of services from PDF and print catalogues to promotional and marketing strategies. Visitors to the exhibition have easy access to make "go to cart" purchases. The gallery will launch with an exhibition by Galen Cheney from January 13 through February 12.

Thinking Cap Theatre in Southeast Florida is launching a virtual series in which participants will read plays and then discuss them with artists. The first installment, "Race on the American Stage" kicks off this month. Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview and the multi Tony-nominated Slave Play are among the featured works.

After a long and successful career as a sculptor in the tradition of constructivist abstraction Christopher Sproat withdrew from the mainstream art world. On his property in Putney Vermont he has created Black Box a private museum. This legacy project is open to the public by appointment.

Change is going to come some day soon.

Initially when she married Frank Stella, the critic Barbara Rose embraced minimalism and formalism. She curated, promoted and wrote about an emerging generation of abstract artists, formalists, and women artists starting with Helen Frankenthaler. She could be quirky, wielding power that attracted friends and enemies. We never met or even spoke but she invited me to write for The Arts Newspaper (London and New York) for which she was an editor. She has died at 84.

Moliere in the Park, with their streaming team Andy Carluccio and Liminal Entertainment Technologies, LLC are presenting Christina Anderson’s pen/man/ship free through January 4th.  It is a powerful play set on a boat passage that reverses the more familiar journey of black Africans.