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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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

The French born Jérôme Brunet started shooting concerts in 1994. This book of just under 200 images in black and white resulted in part from a kickstarer campaign that raised $30,000. There is a mix of celebrity rockers and less well known blues artists. Images include U2, The Who, Cream, Stones, Pink Floyd, Yes, Slash, Tom Petty, Carlos Santana, Van Morrison, Steve Miller, and Bruce Springsteen. Some of the killer shots were of B.B. King one of which is on the cover of a compelling book.

“A Doll’s House, Part 2”, premiered in 2017- garnering 8 Tony Nominations – is a perfect example of how an iconic classic play coupled with talent, and a sense of curiosity from an original thinking playwright can become a fresh, smart, new work, that’s been dazzling audiences wherever it performs. (Lucas Hnath’s 2016 play “The Christians”, received a Tony nomination for his insightful story of a Pastor who questions his belief in God and The Bible).

Playwright Lindsey Ferrentino apparently felt the urge to inform audiences just how disparate are families and their need to share their ubiquitous stories with the world at large. Television has been the delivery system that best gets the comedy job done. Sitcoms have mastered the medium for more than 70 years. . But I’m not quite sure that Ferrentino’s comedy play “The Year to Come” is the vehicle to bridge so many gaps facing our ever changing society.

Steppenwolf Theatre is staging La Ruta, an important world premiere play by Isaac Gomez, based on his own research on the women of Cuidad Juarez, played by an eight-member all-female Latinx cast. Sandra Marquez’ careful direction recreates the work and home lives of these women—and the dangers they live with—in a powerful, emotional way.

A Time for Hawking is a brisk-moving, well-explicated educational primer in the form of an involving comedy/drama. The playwright, Bruce Coughran, who also directs, has selected three contrasting characters whose real lives would intersect in significant ways. He has deftly integrated a panoply of scientific and philosophical milestones into their conversation.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is celebrating its 60th Anniversary. An improbable start at the same time the civil rights movement was heating up has led to the company's pre-eminent position in dance. Audiences are of all hues and all ages. This year has concluded at their City Center home in New York.

During a 1972 week in Copenhagen I had an aquavit infused, acid trip lunch with bop, tenor sax player, Dexter Gordon. He had lived in Europe for a decade and was relatively unknown in the States. Four years later he returned with a well staged comeback. He signed with Columbia, was featured in major festivals, and toured relentlessly. He performed an Oscar nominated role as the lead of the 1986 film “Round Midnight” by French director, Bertrand Travernier. The publication of “Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Times of Dexter Gordon” (University of California Press, 2018) by his wife Maxine Gordon jogged memories of close encounters with a consummate hipster.

This is list is based on shows I saw in 2018 – they may have opened officially in December 2017 and some current shows I’m not seeing until January. (Specifically Ferryman and To Kill a Mockingbird).

Saxophonist & composer Lucas Pino has released a title that even in the creative jazz world needs some explanation. “That’s a Computer,” released in the fall of 2018 with his 10-piece jazz band No Net Nonet, takes its title from a comment made by one of Pino’s’ professors at the Julliard School.

For those that loved Clueless, the 1995 cult movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd, watched the TV series (1996-99) based on the film, and perhaps read all twenty-one of the Cher young adult books, well, Clueless is back on stage, Off Broadway.

I discovered Brecht many decades ago, when I was just becoming a theater lover. I’m not sure I had ever heard of Bertolt Brecht when I saw what has become one of my favorite plays—The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui—at the renowned Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. It was 1968 (I had to look that up), one of the first years of the Guthrie’s existence.

Caleb Teicher is no stranger to Jacob's Pillow. This summer he will perform More Forever, which had its world premiere at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this weekend. It is a glorious piece developed in collaboration with pianist, composer and actor Conrad Tao.