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Festival stresses regional theater's importance in developing plays. Audiences learn they become "artists" during the process. Palm Beach Dramaworks' New Year/New Plays Festival launches with panel, staged readings.

From 1968 to 2000, first on WBCN and then for the last five years with WZLX, Charles Laquidara was one of the most beloved, outspoken, and controversial DJ’s during a golden era of counter culture in Boston. At his prime he was one of America's most influential, top rated DJ's. We dicussed his unique career during two lengthy calls to his home in Maui.

Ellen Reid has an unusual knack for drawing the colors of emotion from an orchestral ensemble and the human voice. Aware of this talent, the composer chooses to present a story with an emotional rather than a narrative arc. The rolling premiere of her new opera, Prism, is presented at LaMama in New York.

Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) with Billy Ecskstine bandmates, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey, was an innovator of bop during the 1940s. There is evidence of his early playing on Dial and Savoy, three minute, 78 rpm recordings. Through addiction and incarceration his career languished in the 1950s. From 1962 to 1976 he lived primarily in Copenhagen. With his wife and manager Maxine, the author of a detailed biography, he staged a comback in 1976. That was capped by an Oscar nominated performance in the Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight (Warner Bros, 1986).

Lope de Vega is considered Spain’s second most important author, following only Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. De Vega is said to have written 500 plays, 3000 sonnets, seven novels and novellas.

Julia Bullock is a young soprano who is designing a career to her personal specifications. Peter Sellars was attracted to her voice and performance after a Julliard college appearance as the young Vixen in Leoš Janá?ek’s Cunning Little Vixen. He lured her to Teatro Real in Madrid to perform in Henry Purcell’s “The Indian Queen.” She has performed in his work in San Francisco, and this summer took on the role of Kitty in “Dr. Atomic” at the Santa Fe Opera. She is now Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Toscanini is the subject of Maestro, now playing at the Duke Theater in New York through February 6. Eve Wolf has staged Toscanini’s late life, mixing in live music that he often performed, now played by a quartet and pianist on stage. Director Donald T. Sanders has woven these elements together to provide the texture of Toscanini’s life.

Playwright Will Eno seems to want us to sympathize with these four people but none of them are fully drawn characters.

Why do women make self-defeating decisions when virtually certain of the dark consequences? These are among the questions explored in Sarah Treem’s entertaining and sometimes surprising When We Were Young and Unafraid.

Angelika Jansen was lucky enough to experience many aspects of the '100 jahre bauhaus' (100 Years of Bauhaus) celebrations, from January 16-24, as she writes in her following article. Architecture and culture in the 20th Century were greatly influenced by works and activities of many members of an 'institution' that only lasted 24 years - and the Bauhaus impact lives on.

Communication is the theme of SongStudio. Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Master classes with Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala provided assurances for the future of the song.

There will be four plays by Shakespeare. Contemporary plays include Pulitzer Prize finalist The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Tony Award nominated play The Children by Lucy Kirkwood; Pulitzer Prize winner Topdog/Underdog by MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient Suzan-Lori Parks; and Time Stands Still by Obie Award winner Donald Margulies.

The conductor Cornelius Meister is a fast-rising star in Europe. Having just finished a lengthy run at the helm of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, he is now the music director o the State Opera and the State Orchestra in the German city of Stuttgart. On January 30, Mr. Meister will make his debut at the Met. His task: conducting one of Mozart's finest and darkest operas: the deliciously twisted Don Giovanni. This week, Superconductor found time to sit down with the maestro to talk all things dramma giocoso.

Threads of Strindberg's Creditors are woven into later hostile relationship dramas from Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler to Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Indeed, Strindberg publicly accused Ibsen of basing Hedda on Tekla

As a junior at Boston University, John Sdoucous, worked with George Wein promoting the Newport Jazz Festival launched in 1954. By 1968 he was booking Summerthing for the City of Boston. He got Janis Joplin on stage at Harvard Stadium in 1969 and launched Concerts on the Common in 1970. He continues to book concerts and festivals all over America. For Sdoucos it all started in Boston.

Andrew Ousley’s remarkable concert cocktail evenings at The Crypt presented Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. This most famous of Messiaen’s works had a moving performance in a setting that resonated with crystal liturgy.

During a 1972 tour the Stones connecting from Toronto got diverted to Warwick, Rhode Island. Waiting for a limo to Boston Garden Keith clocked a photographer who got too close. Cops busted him as well as Mick who chimed in. After hours of delay Mayor Kevin White told 14,000 fans that the Stones were busted but "I got them out." That's not really true. The Stones went on stage at 1 AM for one of the great concerts in Boston rock history. Decades later attorney Martin Kaplan relates what really happened that night.

A Band of Actors theater company has joined the South Florida theatrical scene. The Delray Beach-based troupe is performing an absurdist play in the vein of Beckett titled Momo & Toto (Together Forever in Perpetuity). Troupe to focus on experimental work, shy away from traditional, naturalistic "kitchen sink" dramas.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC) will feature four world premieres including the new musical from BSC’s Musical Theatre Lab, Fall Springs by Niko Tsakalakos and Peter Sinn Nachtrieb; America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of The American Negro by Stacey Rose; American Underground by Brent Askari; and Ragtag Theatre’s Hansel and Gretel, commissioned by BSC.

Barbara Hannigan, one of the world’s leading sopranos, conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in a thrilling performance of Strauss, Haydn, Debussy, Sibelius and Bartok. The orchestra responded with music-making worthy of concert halls across the globe.

Although Moby-Dick adheres to the continuous melody mode, many striking set pieces punctuate the score. Much beauty also derives from the orchestral interludes which reflect smooth seas as well as storm with equal competence. But the most striking pieces are the many rousing choruses.

The pipeline in Dominique Morisseau’s play is the school-to-prison path followed too often by young people from disadvantaged backgrounds because of harsh school and police policies.

The Lucas Hnath sequel to Ibsen A Doll's House-Part 2 was a hit on Broadway. The door slammer is making the rounds of regional theatre. This production runs at TheaterWorks in Connecticut through February 24.

Through March 10, the Clark Art Institute is presenting a compact exhibition Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape. Curated by Alexis Goodin is installed in about a third of the museum’s special exhibition space. It allows us to compare and contrast the twin towers of British landscape painting: Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) and John Constable, (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837).

Kudos to Barrington Stage Company for bringing theatre back to the Berkshires in the dead of winter. Yesterday we enjoyed a matinee of the eighth annual, 10X10 New Play Festival. It runs February 14 - March 10, 2019 at BSC’s St. Germain Stage.