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Recently, WBCN: The American Revolution had its first public screening at DC Independent Film Festival. It was judged Winner Best Documentary 2019. Bill Lichtenstein launched the project in 2009. There was at the time no archive dedicated to the legendary alternative rock station. Now there is as the film conflates talking heads, images, sound tracks and vintage footage. More than a radio station, WBCN provided the sound track and social media platform for the coming of age of 250,000 college students during an era of war, protest, and a dynamic counterculture.

Man of La Mancha acted and sung with all the passion it can arouse, is revived by the Compass Rose Theater in Annapolis, Maryland. It is a treat. While its score may be Broadway- lite, a reminder that there is hope for humans who dream is a welcome.

Hairspray challenges prejudices against women who lack an idealized body type and pushes for racial integration and acceptance of non-binary genders. It slyly and adroitly conveys its message even to conservative audiences through an entertaining package of sympathetic characters and shared enjoyment.

Ashes is touring the world and landed at the adventuresome theater HERE in New York. Billed as a puppet show, yet so much more, Ashes tells the tale of a pyromaniac in 1970s Norway as the story is being woven by Gaute Helvoli. In his novel Before I Burn, the author strives to tell the story of arson in his own town at the time he was a very young child. Parallels between his story, typed on a scrim and intermittently woven into Dag, the arson's story, are Biblical in dimension. Fathers and sons are the subject.

True West, Roundabout Theatre’s staging of the Sam Shepard play, stars two fine actors—Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano. It’s a play that descends from brotherly rivalry to rage and chaos, amidst a dozen toasters and piles of toast. And then Mom arrives home from vacation to her little tract house east of LA and her sons turn into little boys—briefly.

Mother Road by Octavio Solis is produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival and plays in repertory at its August Bowmer Theatre in Ashland, Oregon through October 26, 2019. The tone of Mother Road successfully drifts between realism and dream state, between drama and comedy.

Crossing Delancey is heartwarming and life-affirming at the Levis JCC Sandler Center Theater at the J. The stage version of this well-known story is the source material for the 1988 movie starring Amy Irving. The play is faithful to the film, but different. Cast members and behind-the-scenes folks excel in their work on the production in Boca Raton.

In Lauren Yee’s tense and scintillating comedy/drama, Cambodian Rock Band, lead character Chum had escaped Cambodia during the height of the atrocities and resettled in Massachusetts. It is produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival and plays in repertory through October 27, 2019.

Sean O’Casey’s play, The Shadow of a Gunman, now on stage at Irish Repertory Theatre, tricks us into thinking this might be a comedy about drunken and verbose Irishmen.

The Warhol exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art leads you through the commercial illustrations, personal drawings, paintings, prints, photos, silkscreens, films, videos, music production, his Factory years and more. The last galleries show his giant Mao painting, works in collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the 35-foot mural titled Camouflage Last Supper 1986, a rendition of the Last Supper under camouflage print.

Boston Lyric Opera’s production and interpretation of Benjamin Britten’s contemporary tragic opera “The Rape of Lucretia” is once again an example of a willingness and commitment to perform dramatically intense and socially relevant subject matter.

n Friday, June 28, at 7 p.m., Earth, Wind & Fire returns to Tanglewood, bringing its U.S. tour to the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Earth, Wind & Fire are a music institution. Over a five-decade history, they have sold out concerts all around the globe, scored eight number one hits, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.

Baruch Performing Arts Center presented a Thoreau song cycle by Gregory Spears and Virginia Woolf's Diaries by Dominic Argento. Spears, a phenom among contemporary composers, loves Henry David Thoreau, but found his poetry less than thrilling. Diving into his prose, he decided to take up the more difficult challenge of setting prose to music.

La Jolla Playhouse presents a new musical about Diana and Charles who as heir to the British throne, at 70, is still waiting. For global fans she was a fairybook princess in real life.

“The Judas Kiss”, written by playwright Hare, is deftly directed by Boston Court’s co-artistic director Michael Michetti, and, boldly explores Hare’s raison d’etre for his roman a clef story. Act One of the play is set in the Cadogan Hotel in London, in 1895.

There is always anticipation and suspense when MASS MoCA opens another year long exhibition in its vast Building Five. The current installation is Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass by cartoonist, conceptual artist Trenton Doyle Hancock. This time it seems that the generally dead serious curators just want to have fun. It is a show for children of all ages.

Several years ago The Fenway Motor Inn, morphed into the boutique, rock themed, Verb Hotel. David Bieber was commissioned to provide vintage memorabelia from his vast archive. Since then, with a small staff, he has been unpacking and cataloguing the collection. He also worked with the late Stephen Mindich to archive The Phoenix material at Northeastern University. Bieber discusses an era in the counterculture of Boston when there was a community of music makers, promo men, writers and DJs. Rent was cheap compared to now and we were living large on other people's money.

Pompano Beach-based Outre Theatre Company presents an uneven production of Geoffrey Nauffts' tearjerker, Next Fall. Outre artistic director Skye Whitcomb stages the production with sensitivity. Cast members sometimes speak too softly to be understood and their productions are sometimes too one-dimensional.

Chimpanzee is a delightful and superlatively moving account of memories and dreams re-captured in captivity by a primate. Nick Lehane has created this compelling portrait. From the moment lighting director Marika Kent takes us from blackness into the light on the Chimpanzee, graceful light gestures, and some searing white light suggest the chimp's changing moods as does the soundscape by Kate Marvin.

The New Federal Theater and Castillo Theater are presenting Looking for Leroy, a fascinating and enthralling exploration of the work of Leroi Jones aka Amira Baraka. Written with a masterful combination of character detail and theoretical exploration, Larry Muhammad has created a forceful, touching and provocative work.

The production mounted at the Met thirty years ago is to be replaced, under the injunction: if it's not broken, break it. Sonja Friseli's Aida is perfect and satisfies audience members of all ages and all hues. Why should a new one be created? If you are having financial troubles, spend more in the wrong place?

The strengths of the Regional Theatre Movement include 'extraordinary artistry,' 'so many phenomenal writers' and 'so much wonderful new work.' Challenges facing theaters today include competition from other entertainment options, high ticket costs and minimal government funding. The panel comprised Theatre Communications Group Executive Director Teresa Eyring and Florida Professional Theatres Association Executive Director Sherron Long. The discussion was part of Palm Beach Dramaworks' Dramalogue series.

“GLORY: A Life Among Legends” is a testament to “the power of art, to the power of commitment, to the power of education, and how taken together they can change a culture.”

The vast archive of some 600,000 objects was a primary source for the Bill Lichtenstein film WBCN: The American Revolution. When in college David Bieber became a campus correspondent for Billboard Magazine. In graduate school at Boston University he wrote a thesis on the impact of WBCN and the growing counterculture media on changing the mainstream of Top 40 radio and the straight press. He became music director of WBUR and went on to work for WBCN and the Boston Phoenix. He provides an insightful overview of an era of social and poltical change for the vast college/ youth market in Boston.

The Aspect Foundation is committed to making the concert experience memorable. By offering food and drink before the concert and during intermission, and selecting unusual and glistening venues, audience members are swept into their commitment to first-rate music-making. Evenings Aspect presents are unforgettable. Go to one and you will be hooked.