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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Recently I had a chance to revisit the most spectacular theater experience I’ve ever had. It took place on a weekend in February 2007. Over the course of two days, I experienced all nine hours of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard’s trilogy on 19th century Russian intellectuals and revolutionaries.

Writing to his 'possums" New York critic Fast Eddy was gobsmacked by the PBS documentary of author Louisa May Alcott. "This beautifully acted documentary (Elizabeth Marvel Plays The Mature Louisa) brings back Louisa, her times, her family and her good friends - both gods in my pantheon -  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)."

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.

The Vienna State Opera has recently  streamed their live production of Hans Henze’s The Sea Betrayed, a title translated with the approval of Yukio Mishima, the famed author of the novel on which the opera is based.  The opera premiered in Berlin in May of 1990.  Audiences in this country were not initially attracted when it was produced the following year by the San Francisco opera. The War Memorial Opera House was half empty. The opera is a masterpiece.

Socially-distanced, mask-clad audience members are taking in 'Seven Deadly Sins,' a production of short plays in Miami Beach. Miami New Drama is staging 'Seven Deadly Sins' live and in person, with COVID safety protocols. 'Seven Deadly Sins' runs through Jan. 17 on Miami Beach's Lincoln Road, an outdoor shopping and dining promenade.

Broadway soprano Rebecca Luker died on Wednesday, Dec. 23 at a Manhattan hospital from A.L.S. Luker received Tony Award nominations for her work in Show Boat, The Music Man, and Mary Poppins. Luker announced in February that doctors diagnosed her with A.L.S. Her last appearance came in June via Zoom.

Home alone for the holidays. Decorating and cooking for two.

David Bowie's Lazarus. As luck will have it, the London Production, filmed in 2017, is available for streaming from January 8 - January 10.

Previously, Denzel Washington produced and co-starred (with Viola Davis) in August Wilson's "Fences." Now he has produced Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" with the late Chadwick Boseman. Washington plans to film the other eight plays in Wilson's iconic Pittsburgh or Century Cycle. For the decade of the 1920s Wilson took a side trip to Chicago and a recording session with the Mother of the Blues the great Ma Rainey. The best news is that the new release is available to stream on Netflix. The production is destined for a bundle of nominations during awards season.

Ann Reinking died in her sleep at age 71. The late Broadway star's extensive work in musical theater included playing Roxie Hart in 'Chicago.' She performed on Broadway for three decades.

Holiday greetings from Allyn Burrows the artistic director of Shakespeare & Company. With hope for a New Year and a lively summer season.

A year like no other, let me wish you a warm home, enough to eat, company however virtual and safety from this deadly virus with the good fortune to come through this plague sometime in 2021 or 2022. Thank you for connecting globally on ZOOM, FaceBook + Messenger video calls.  Erica H. Adams is a photographer, artist and activist who lives on Cape Cod. We regularly enjoy her social media posts that keep us amused and connected.