New York Times

On a miserable January day the media gathered for lunch on stage at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. Artistic director Julianne Boyd announced programming for the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage. There are still slots to fill on the Mark St. Germain second stage. Once that is complete Boyd will move on to schedule the cabaret largely based on who is available for the 99 seat basement venue. The company will again collaborate with the Berkshire Museum to present a youth oriented production.

Splendidly portrayed by Karen MacDonald, Molly Ivins was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal from deep in the heart of Texas,. She had a rapier wit that made her one of America’s highest-regarded political satirists and beloved rabble-rousers. Red Hot Patriot weaves personal anecdotes with Molly’s humor and wisdom, celebrating her courage and tenacity. This is especially true even when a complacent America wasn’t listening. She was a personable monument to First Amendment rights and virtues. This is a terrific play about an American original.

In the November issue of Art in America there was a story "Richard Bellamy. Interview by Billy Kluver and Julie Martin, introduction by Judith E. Stein." It was a sidebar of Stein's research on the Bellamy an eccentric, brilliant and complex art dealer. We spoke about that research as well as work with the little understood or appreciated movement of Figurative Expressionism.

“Festival 2015 delivers a remarkable range of dance from ballet to tap, music from classical to jazz, brand new works commissioned by the Pillow, and the most astonishing performers in the world,” comments Ella Baff, Executive and Artistic Director of Jacob’s Pillow. “We start the season with Ira Glass’s Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host and the re-opening of the Jacob’s Pillow Archives as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of public access and a major expansion of its home, Blake’s Barn. We end with a celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Martha Graham Dance Company, a world premiere by Mats Ek, and the up and coming company MADboots Dance. Quite a range indeed.”

In one act and 90 minutes Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Ayad Akhtar has compressed an explosive take on medieval Islam and its square peg in a round hole of the conundrum of contemporary American society. How does an ambitious individual of Muslim heritage assimilate and succeed in our corporate culture? Not really according to the compelling play Disgraced.

In 2013 Shakespeare & Company produced a star studded gala Broadway in the Berkshires. With On the Town from Barrngton Stage and Williamstown Theater Festival's Elephant Man both currently enjoying rave reviews it seems more like The Berkshires on Broadway. Now WTF's Fool For Love is headed for the Great White Way next year.

Jay Milder came of age during the Second Generation of the New York School as one of the seminal Figurative Expressionist painters and one of the SoHo loft pioneers. Today Milder's influence on painting is widespread and he has been cited as influence of both Neo-Expressionism in the United States and the graffiti art movement in Brazil.

Yesterday's lively press conference at Mass MoCA, announcing the $54.4 million Confluence Campaign, was preempted by a news leak of an embargoed press release by Geoff Edgers of the Washington Post. While that story provided a tantalizing overview the press conference covered many of the complex and exciting details. This updates our prior reports with more to follow.

During the recent Williamstown Film Festival Diane Pearlman and Berkshire Film & Media Collaborative hosted a lunch at the Williams Inn. It featured independent film star, Lilli Taylor, and her husband, Nick Flynn, a poet, essayist and author of three books of memoirs. Williams College professor, Jim Shepard, led the dialogue.

In May of 2000 we were shocked to learn that the leading realist artist Gregory Gillespie hung himself. In hindsight there were clues to his state of mind.

Completing a $145 million renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute repoened this summer. The occasion was launched with a stunning range of special exhibitions. During a recent opening of Magna Carta we asked the museum's fast moving director, Michael Conforti, for an overview of the season and when we might expect to see Treasures from the Prado?

Twelve days after breaking news the New York Times has reported on $25.4 million in Commonwealth funding for the $50 million renovation of the final phase of build out for Mass MoCA. While damning the museum with faint praise the Times drags up an eight year old controversy of a botched installation by Christoph Buchel. The reporter probed far and wide for on and off the record smears of the museum and its critical reputation.

While the play has relevance to today’s veterans dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and sometimes resulting addictions, the material is dated. Too much information has been spread about war, its effects on families and society, to make these characters’ shock seem real.

Companhia Urbana de Dança thrilled the audience last year and this week was equally well received in a return to Jacob's Pillow. The company of eight men and one woman combines the street smarts of break dancing and hip hop moves with the choreography of the classically trained Sonia Destri Lie. The two part program of hour long works contrasted joy and tragedy in a world permiere of "You. We…ALL BLACK" and the uppeat celebration of "Na Pista."

WAM Theatre will present the reading on Sunday, August 17 at 3:00 p.m. at No. Six Depot Roastery and Café, 6 Depot Street in West Stockbridge, MA. Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England is the fourth presentation in the new Fresh Takes play reading series, which offers new and reimagined works that tell women’s stories. The series has proven popular with audiences and the first three readings sold out.

Honoring his many contributions The Mark St. Germain Stage was named for him by Pittsfield's Barrington Stage Company. A number of his best known works- Freud's Last Sessions, Best of Enemies, Dr. Ruth- have premiered for the company of artistic director, Julianne Boyd. This week the latest Dancing Lessons will open. In what has become an annual ritual we met at Dottie's in Pittsfield for breakfast to discuss this new work as well as the challenges of a life in theatre.

Though Longing Lasts Longer had a limited run in June, it is being brought back, to Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre this coming October and November. For the past number decades, Penny Arcade, who worked with Warhol at the tender age of 15, has been taking her act around the world. And wherever she performs people line up to hear what she has to say.

Hubbard Hall Opera Theater presents Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Mozart's Marriage of Figaro with orchestra August 13 through 24. “We are so excited to be able to offer this kind of cultural opportunity to the people who live in this area,” says artistic director, Alix Jones. “The talent is really something you would come across in a metropolitan city, and you get it here, at a most unassuming location, at a fraction of the price!”

Decades ago the sculptor Kahlin Gibran and his wife Jean purchased a shell in Boston's ethnically mixed South End. A meticulous craftsman the home evolved as a museum of his work and collection. Together they wrote a definitive 1974 biography "Kahlil Gibran, His Life and World." Now Jean has published "Love Made Visible: Scenes from a Mostly Happy Marriage" about a complex relationship with her late husband.

When Pop Art dominated the art world and mass-media a group of New York expressionists said no thanks. The primal, raucous, and confrontational approach to painting exhibited by the group’s members kept the emotional impact of Figurative Expressionism alive. However, aesthetic tradition was less important than the moral obligation of depicting the reality that the artists perceived. This put the Rhino Horn artists at odds with many of the mainstream artists that had turned away from expressionism and humanist art.

Dance Theatre of Harlem, led by Artistic Director Virginia Johnson, performs Donald Byrd’s smooth yet power-packed contemporary ballet Contested Space, which features a plethora of solos and duets. past-carry-forward, created for DTH by Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis, conveys the spirit and significance of the Harlem Renaissance.

Popular contemporary company Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival for the first time since 2010, bringing a sensational mixed-bill program. Directed by Glenn Edgerton, the 18-member company performs the dramatic Mediterranean-inspired Gnawa, choreographed by Nacho Duato, and Jiří Kylián’s vivid Falling Angels, a stark all-female work danced to “Drumming” by contemporary composer Steve Reich.

During our visit to Crystal Springs Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas we met with museum spokesperson Diane Carol. Fending off questions of media controversy regarding aggressive acquisitions she emphasized that the museum is free and serves a region that lacks resources of its quality. As she pointed out since opening in 11/11/11 some 1.3 million visitors have viewed "Kindred Spirits" by Asher B. Durand which formerly hung in the New York Public Library.

After extensive renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute reopens this summer. Much is being made of how its Tadeo Ando designed low lying horizontal line and large reflecting pool embrace nature and the background rolling mountain range. The paradigm for architecture set into natural surroundings, however, is the Moshe Safdie design for Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas. It is nestled into a ravine with a series of pontoon "bridges." The museum which opened on 11/11/11 has some 500,000 annual visitors for its controversial collection of American art.

A bold company with a strong Jacob’s Pillow history including five engagements since 2005, Trey McIntyre Project will make its final appearance as a fulltime dance ensemble June 25-29 in the Ted Shawn Theatre. In addition there are a number of free events as the season commences in Becket