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During the recent NY conference of American Theatre Critics Association Charles Weldon was a lively participant on a panel focused on diversity. He was Artistic Director of The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) since 2005. He joined the Negro Ensemble Company in 1970 and acted in many of its classic plays including "A Soldier's Play," "The Great McDaddy," "The Offering," "The Brownsville Raid" and the Company's Broadway production of "The River Niger."

Organized with the Louvre Museum in Paris, where it appeared with more works, the Met show presents some 150 paintings, prints and drawings in a dozen large galleries. Major works did not travel to New York resulting in an inadequate view of a major 19th century artist. It remains on view through January 6.

The Builder’s Association re-invented Henry James’ Turn of the Screw for today. Strange Window takes its title from a story James heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury. A woman was so fearful of strange figures who appeared in the windows of her home that she moved to protect her children.

J’nai Bridges told us stories at her concert in the Weill Hall of Carnegie. The program began with a spiritual arranged by Bridges and her stunning partner on piano, Mark Markham. Spirituals and lullabies bracketed the program.

Stage Door Theatre's mounting of The Wiz is uneven. The production largely lacks magic and sound is a problem. However, the production improves in the second act, with strong singing and acting. Actress Nayomi Braaf makes a refreshingly bright-eyed, optimistic Annie.

Although it is the first full biography of Bauhaus master, Josef Albers, it has been worth the wait. Charles Darwent has writen a meticulous, insightful, absorbing and masterful book. Best know for the 2,300 surving works from "Homage to the Square" he is regarded as among the foremost abstract artists and teachers of the 20th century.

For their last program before the annual dive into holiday season concerts, Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic gave their audience something unique: a song cycle created from the work of two composers and featuring the voice of Matthais Goerne, the German lieder specialist who sings Wotan on van Zweden's new recording of Wagner's Ring.

The Cabot in Beverly, Mass. is gearing up for its Centennial in 2020. It escaped the wrecker's ball a few years ago and is now in the midst of renovation, Toward that end there was a gala, all star benefit tribute to a 1920s icon Bessie Smith The Empress of the Blues. It was a night to remember and indicator of the next chapter of a venerable venue.

As expected from any Stoppard work, Arcadia is highly literate and entertaining. It is also full of passionate characters, crammed with information, and plays like a grand detective story as the moderns unravel the mysteries of the past while entwining themselves in amusing interactions

We are in a neutral country, anywhere in the world where crimes are committed and people are punished. The question that pervades the quiet space of The Prisoner by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne concerns appropriate retribution.

Now 90, in 2012 Sheila Jordan was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. With fellow singer and educator, Jay Clayton, they conducted a workshop. Last night they, and nine singers, performed during a pot luck gig at The Firehouse in swinging downtown Adams, Mass.

Amahl and the Night Visitors was commissioned as a Christmas television special a half century ago. The composer, Gian Carlo Menotti, would appear often at its live presentations. He often pointed out that this is a story of a boy who has problems with his mother. He would ask members of the audience to raise their hands if they did. Most of the audience held their hands up high. That is not the only reason to enjoy this Christmas classic to which OnSite Opera has brought a new vision for today.

Recent IRS filing reveals that when former Berkshire Museum director, Van Shields, abruptly departed he was given $92,000 in two payments. The second is due in January. There are also figures for the costly legal battles that resulted in selling 22 works of art to raise $53.25 million. From July 1 to Dec. 31, 2017, the museum incurred $1.6 million in legal costs. In April it paid off the full $1,852,426 outstanding balance on a $2 million line of credit.

During the busy summer season in the Berkshires we eat and run. Winter is for more elaborate, experimental meals. On every level it means putting more spice in your life. Since Labor Day we have been having fun experimenting in the kitchen.

Renowned performer Sally Struthers stars and shines as Miss Hannigan in regional production of Annie. The cast excels in a touching, but not overly cute mounting. Annie plays Boca Raton's The Wick Theatre through Dec. 23.

The Head and The Load by William Kentridge was prepared at Mass MOCA and arrives full-blown at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. We come, if not to know, to appreciate the contributions of hundreds of thousands of Africans to the Western effort in World War I. Who knew that African men were forced into service?

Sideshow Theatre accomplishes a lot on a small stage in its world premiere production of HeLa by J. Nicole Brooks at the Greenhouse Theater Center. The scenes in HeLa go back and forth in time from 1951 to 1981-84 and finally 2001 when Suhaila, now an aerospace engineer, visits her Aunt Bird, who is suffering from cancer.

Nathan Irving “Nat’ Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) passed at 91 some time ago. Why then, in the waning moments of 2018, write a review of a book written some 32 years ago? Reading a memoir by a legendary radical journalist and jazz critic resonated with my own memories of growing up as a Boston Boy.

Apple Boys bring the Barbershop Quartet into the 21st century. This musical form my have started as early as Beaumarchais in Barber of Seville in the 18th century. Both black and white musicians claim ownership. Every culture which discovered “harmony” in combined voices has used the four singer form.

The extraordinary history of the Second World War casts a long shadow on any art music written in Europe in the 1930s and '40s. This week, the New York Philharmonic paired two of these works in a program of extraordinary intensity under music director Jaap van Zweden: a program that seemed to ask the following. Can art music, created under the shadow of extraordinary political and human event, somehow manage to transcend its origins and remain relevant to the audiences of today?

Handel’s Israel in Egypt was performed at Carnegie Hall by MasterVoices under Ted Sperling’s baton. The Oratorio planned for Easter and Passover is often presented at Christmas and Hanukkah.

Lauren M. Gunderson has been the most produced playwright in America for the last two years, and her work has won several awards, including the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics New Play Award for I and You. Gunderson’s conceit about four women ready for revolution is clever, and in act one, a bit too mannered, even coyly cute. But act two becomes more serious.

Chelsea Opera is an enterprising company, now over fifteen years old. They presented two one-act operas by composer Tom Cipullo, a master of drama and the placement of notes in the voice. The setting in Christ and St. Stephen’s Church worked perfectly as staged by Dean Anthony, a singer who has spent the last decade successfully directing. A golden glow surrounds the now 68-year-old Josephine Baker who is being interviewed in her dressing room.

Dennis Krausnick was a leader of Shakespeare & Compan, in Lenox, since its inception. In 1976 he was awarded an M.F.A. in Acting from New York University. It was at N.Y.U. where he met Tina Packer. They married in 1998. In 1978 Dennis helped found Shakespeare & Company with Tina and Kristin Linklater.

Actor Brian Dennehy is currently presenting a Master Class in acting with his one-man presentation of two One Acts: Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie” and Samuel Beckett’s obtuse “Krapp’s Last Tape”.