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For the first time in its 88-year history, the Jacob’s Pillow Board of Trustees and Executive Leadership have made the decision to cancel the 2020 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, previously scheduled for June 24-August 30 along with its annual gala scheduled for June 20.

During a time of confinement we reach out to family and friends by phone and e mail. From France my artist friend, Rafael Mahdavi, wrote a wonderful detailed note. He also sent a remarkable new work that inspired this piece. Art represents hope and salvation through the darkest moments of human condition.

A native of Toronto, Matthew Teitelbaum, departed Boston in 1993 to take a curatorial position at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In this interview he was acting director of the Institute of Contemporary Art. Then 37, it provides insights of his curatorial vision and process. He went on to be director of the AGO. In 2015 he returned to Boston as director of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Stravinsky composed La History del Soldado, a multi media piece, in 1914. Using speech, mime and dance accompanied by a seven piece band, we hear ragtime, tango, and other modern musical idioms combined in a series of highly infectious instrumental movements. Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra performed the piece, with an updated libretto they commissioned. It is delightful to hear, even long distance.

Gallery NAGA, with a lease from Church of the Covenant, was organized as a cooperative in 1977. In 1982 Arthur Dion was hired as director and soon became sole owner. With a commitment to painting and studio furniture it prevails on what was formerly Boston's gallery row. Now director emeritus Dion stepped away from daily management. As part of compiling an oral history of contemporary art in Boston, Dion shared insights of his remarkable career.

In a time of pandemic the early bird scores the toilet paper. When the quality of life is measured in sheets.

The Tony Awards show will go on, albeit at a later date, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The CBS broadcast was slated for June 7 this year. Officials have not announced a replacement date.

Prolific playwright Terrence McNally loses his battle with coronavirus. McNally was an American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee. The prolific writer also won five Tony Awards.

Many organizations are offering wonderful streaming. Reports suggest that music with videos is doing better than sound only. Atlanta Opera, led by Tomer Zvulun, may be providing the most useful help.

The Gambler, country music star Kenny Rogers, has passed at 81. In September, 2012 he made a rare Berkshire appearance at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. This is how we covered him at the time.

The theater is pitch black. A mysterious figure wrapped in a robe writes on a screen in black ink which drips on the illuminated board. “I which have bled for so long are beginning to heal. Black tears no longer course down his cheeks, inspiring the horrific feeling in others that these are their own bloodied tears." These are Oedipus' words as interpreted by Henry Bauchau, author of "Oedipus on the Road," which inspired "Anywhere." This is an unusual portrait of Oedipus' harrowing final journey.

I was joking with one of my daughters this morning about masks. She works in law enforcement, and was sharing a few stories about people who have called 911 about running low on toilet paper, and people who have come to her station to complain about a spouse who won't take this "virus thing" seriously. She wears a department-issued N95 mask, but she asked me if I knew where she could get a mask to protect her from stupid

Artists without faces. Or what do you hang your hat on? Jean Gabin, Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz and John Currin.

The libretto by Donald Sturrock is based on a book by Roald Dahl. Three farmers, Bunce, Boggis and Bean want revenge on Mr. Fox for taking their chickens, their geese and their cider. They are frustrated by Mr. Fox’s clever tactics. Gil Rose brings the music and story to life in this masterful recording which won the 2020 Grammy for Best Opera Recording.

A Chorus Line's focus on the unheralded is particularly timely when many must make sacrifices. The Wick Theatre's wonderful production is postponed but hopes company officials hope to resume the production soon. Triple threat performers shine in this production.

We begin as the guests at a black debutante ball in New Orleans. White staircase, be-gowned young women, stiffly poised young-men stand on the threshold of their presentation to society. Step by step we see the painstaking bows and courtesies of a society steeped in the mores of color and class that are expressions of the history of that city.

Kosmos Inverse is the world below and the world way out there. We have a powerful feeling of infinity as we are being cast into a carnaval space. The central sphere resmbles a mop. Depending on the lights, it can be colored red and green and purple. Pigs, an elephant who strongly resembles Mo Willems’, two classic rubber dolls, and a busty woman bounce before us.

A day late and a dollar short, NY critic, Edward Rubin, is notorious for blowing off deadlines. By now the September, 2019 14th Annual Tennessee Williams Theater Festival is a faded memory. Arguably a rose pressed between the pages of a book. But here in loving detail Rubin posts a definitively detailed, documentary account of an historic event. It also serves as a preview of what to expect this September. By then, hopefully, the virus will have passed and we will enjoy the last gasp of summer with magnificent theatre and high jinks by the sea.

With a sexy (for the late sixties) ad campaign depicting all four characters in bed, a headline that read “Consider the Possibilities” – some newspapers would not run this ad – and a titillating R-rated story which dealt with infidelity and wife swapping, the movie—the number 5 moneymaking hit of the year—rang up some 31 million dollars at the box office.

An energetic national equity touring production of Mean Girls is playing in Ft. Lauderdale through March 15. Fires rage across the stage as Regina George bulldozes over the meek. The production features strong work from the cast to the technical folks. Mean Girls the Musical is based on the 2004 film of the same name, both written by Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live.

Recently, on Turner Classic Movies, I saw Ingmar Bergman’s iconic 1957 film Seventh Seal. That was before the death of the actor Max Von Sydow or the widening global pandemic. Yet again there is the contrast of art and artifice. Art is a means of navigating the collape of the American Empire in real time and vivid color. When this passes what will be left of our arts, culture and way of life? How will we pick up the pieces of a new order? Will the elections of 2020 be yet another cancellation? Is this Apocalypse Now?

Against a backdrop of black and white, perpetrator and victim, playwright Kate Cortesi offers a provocative and stimulating world premiere play, Love, which humanizes the parties involved and explores the complexities of relationships that many depictions often simplify to the point of distortion.

Metropolis is a Grammy-nominated Ensemble founded by Andrew Cyr, who encourages artists to realize their bliss. The group was not named for the Fritz Lang film, but the temptation to take on this silent great must have been tantalizing. The live, electronic score by Ricardo Romaneiro was brilliant and brilliantly realized by the musicians. Cyr conducts.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Network for New Music (NNM), an adventuresome Philadelphia group, gathered at The Discovery Center at the Hidden Reservoir in Fairmont Park.. The long pathway to the building’s main entrance leads visitors to a striking view of the center’s reservoir, a pristine, 37-acre body of water that was closed to the public for nearly 50 years. The Center provided a concert hall for music related to ecology.

This evening, part of the Rise Up Year devoted to music that inspires and uplifts, two gentleman, a bass player and a violist, composed pieces celebrating women. Women composers, Missy Mazzoli, Gabriela Lena Frank and Joan Tower were performed with gusto.