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A great day trip that enlightens and enriches the soul is as close as Berkshire county, home of Hancock Shaker Village. Spending a day learning about the Shakers, sharing dinner and thought with Peter Jennings son, Chris Jennings, and attending a concert with members of WILCO and transplanted local troubadour, Johnny Irion, can turn any day into sunshine.

For the past few years the annual appearance of Dorrance Dance has been a highlight of the Jacob’s Pillow season. This time the tap company featured an all star, world premiere of the playful All Good Things Come to an End . The second half of the program featured a recent piece Myelination (2017). It was yet again a glorious evening of tap dancing.

The Damned by Ivo van Hove, based on the screenplay of Luchino Visconti, tears through the Park Avenue Armory. The stage is in four parts, if you don’t include a scene which goes out onto the Park Avenue where a shocked dog walker sees the mad Sophie von Essenbeck running wildly in search of her son.

Performances of American Players Theatre (APT). More coverage of the ATCA conference in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Spring Green is an arts center in nearby south central Wisconsin that’s easily accessible to Chicagoans interested in theater and the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. In a long weekend, you can see classic theater at the American Players Theatre (APT) on a hilltop in Spring Green and tour Taliesin, the home, studio and school built, rebuilt and rebuilt again by Frank Lloyd Wright, his apprentices and family.

American Players Theatre (APT), a highly respected outdoor repertory company, hosted the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) to several top-flight theatrical performances and well-organized extracurricular activities during ATCA’s annual conference at Spring Green, Wisconsin, in July, 2018.

American Players Theatre is nestled amid the beauty of southwest Wisconsin's countryside. The American Theatre Critics Association gathers in hills of rural Wisconsin for theatergoing and discussion. This year's APT line-up features strong acting, design work. American Players Theatre focuses on the classics.

Valpolicella, a wine from the Verona area, in the Veneto appellation, exhibits summer drinking potential when chilled for twenty minutes. Like Peosecco and Rose wine, Valpolicella, a red wine, has a soft and fruity profile, one that loves the summer desire, as well as year round.

On a Clear Day You Can See is running at the Irish Repertory Theater. Charlotte Moore adapts and directs this musical in an intimate production. The story has been pared down and shaped to display the lush score of Burton Lane. The cast has been reduced to 11 and the chamber orchestra four instrumentalists multi-tasking on cello, harp, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, violin and viola. The result is delightful theater.

A forty year retrospective by Charles Giuliano "Heads and Tales" opens Thursday, July 26 at MCLA Gallery 51 in North Adams, Massachusetts. It will be a part of the monthly Downstreet celebration, The artist will give a talk at the gallery on Wednesday, August 8 from 6 to 7 PM. The exhibition, curated by gallery director Arthur Debow, surveys 40 images of jazz and rock musicians from the Rolling Stones, to Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, Yoko Ono and Frank Sinatra.

With the current production “Queens”, the La Jolla Playhouse mounts a powerful drama about the plight of both legal and illegal immigrants, and their desperate drive to remain in the United States, in order to make a better life for themselves and their separated families, some of whom remain back in the countries they fled.

“The Wedding Singer,” the stage musical is based on the Adam Sandler movie of the same name that debuted in 1988. The current ‘Wedding Singer’ stage musical now on the Palm Canyon Theatre stage has been updated with a total of 20 musical numbers; some of which are new. The PCT show also retained some the original songs written in 2006.

As in typical French farce fashion there are misunderstandings, sexual innuendo, doors which lead to near collisions and misidentifications. The play is set in the late 1800s during what is called “La Belle Epoque.” It involves upper middle class people; infidelity or the appearance of it plays a major role.

Silent Night by Kevin Puts with libretto by Mark Campbell is being presented at the Glimmerglass Festival. Tomer Zvulen directs this complex tale revealing each subtle turn in the story of a 24 hour truce during the First World War. Nicole Paiement conducts to bring forth all the subtlety and beauty of Puts’ score. Puts is both a fabulously gifted entertainer and a deep musical thinker. The music paints the scenes. The singers capture the tone in gorgeous melodies and often appropriately harsh recitative.

In the beginning, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, was all about the healing waters. In 1880, the area’s numerous naturally flowing springs were credited with restoring the sight of a woman who had been blind for years.

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, the Alan Jay Lerner/Burton Lane musical, is getting a delightful production at the Irish Rep under the skilled hand of director (and adaptor) Charlotte Moore.

For the past decade there has been a tradition of at least one Afircan American themed production each season. This time its a benign and charming comedy Artney Jackson by James Anthony Tyler. Arguably there is progress that the well crafted and superbly acted play is a step back from polemical social and political agendas.

Ibsen premiered The Doll's House in 1879. That was two years after Leo Tolstoy published Anna Karenina another tale of a society woman who abandoned her marriage and children. We know of Anna's tragic end but the fate of Nora is left uncertain. With A Doll's House Part 2 Lucas Hnath provides entertaining but improbable answers. The award winning Broadway hit is having a run at Barrington Stage Company with Laila Robins in the role which won a Tony for Laurie Metcalf. Christopher Innvar plays Torvald.

The week of performances by the Belgian based company Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui/ Eastman featured a single work Fractus V (2015). In the spirit of intersectionality which informs the cutting edge of performance art it conflates the dance and musical traditions of its diverse members.

Gettin’ Home: An Odyssey Through the ‘60s by Steve Nelson adds to a growing interest and understanding of the couner culture, arts and media of Boston in the 1960s. Rather well along in this memoir he became the manager of the rock club The Boston Tea Party. He promoted a mix of British bands, groups from San Francisco, blues legends and local bands. The saga begins with a summer in Peru with a group from Cornell. He arrived in Cambridge for three years at Harvard Law School and a post grad one. Staying in school had the advantage of staying out of Vietnam. Unlike many Nelson remembers a lot about the 1960s often with stunning detail.

Shakespeare demonstrates how an earnest effort to self impose structure and separation from the world is counter to our real natures. Fun and folly ensue in this perfect setting as we watch love conquer all. Through August 18 Love's Labor's Lost at the Mount.

It helps if you have read or seen other productions of Macbeth. Without that background the radical deconstruction ot the iconic play directed by Obie winner, Melia Bensussen, won't make sense.

The ICA has a major problem not just with East Boston artists, but with most local Boston-area artists, and it's due primarily to 3 factors -- mistaken policies, mistaken attitude, and mistaken curatorial direction. The author is an artist.

In Professor Valerie Joyce’s visits to schools, she asks students to name African-American women they know of from before 1865. Even among black female students, the responses quickly falter – Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, maybe Sally Hemings. With 250 years of history in the United States before the Civil War, this whole segment of our population is virtually silent, unknown.

A couple of weeks ago, theater leaders from across the country authored a statement asking colleagues to reexamine their casting policies in light of recent incidents in which white actors were cast to portray people of color. Since that time, nearly 800 theater artists have signed and there is a working group actively discussing next steps so that we can end this pervasive practice. Because, as managing director of Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Chad Bauman signed the petition, he withdrew from publishing this commentary in American Theatre Magazine. It is reposted from his blog with Bauman's permission.