Peer into hidden spaces, with guides sharing tales of ghosts that dwell here and the Shakers' participation in the Spiritualist Movement.

An invitation to a close encounter with very special music.  Paul Schoenfield’s runaway classical hit, Café Music for piano trio, sets the tone for a celebratory re-opening. Combining elements of classical, jazz, klezmer and whimsy, Café Music is caffeine-fueled and irresistible.

While focused on a group of migrants this is the story of all of us. It conveys an America rooted in exclusion, violence and intolerance. This is a stunning new musical for all Americans.

Steel Magnolias is staged by the Cherry Creek Theater in Denver, Colorado. This comic tragedy comes alive in a beauty parlor, whose window frames look out on the talk of the town parading by. In the South, men sit under a pecan tree and talk about affairs as if they all had PhDs from Harvard.  The women hunker down to have their hair and nails done.

Tim Youd has been at work on his 100 Novels Project for about 10 years. The Jungle is #71 and he just finished retyping Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, on a early Remington typewriter at the Arts Club on Ontario Street. Anderson lived nearby (at the corner of what is now Wabash and Superior) when he was writing the book (a short story cycle), published in 1919.

Eclipse Mill Artists Annual Exhibition, Reconnections 2021, will present the work of 24 artist residents of the North Adams complex. The Annual is a long standing tradition for the artists loft building.

Arnie Reisman, a Martha Vineyard resident died suddenly. He was 79. Starting as editor of the Brandeis University Justice he was later editor of the weekly Boston After Dark/ Phoenix. He was a prolific documentary filmmaker and playwright as well as publisher of several books of poetry. With his wife Paula Lyons, he was also a panelist on NPR’s Says You!, the long-running comedy quiz show. His documentary The Powder and the Glory was the basis of the Broadway show War Paint.

Israeli filmmaker Hagai Levi decided he wanted to do a more modern updated version of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 seminal film “Scenes from a Marriage” that originally starred Liv Ullman, Erland Joseph, Bibi Andersson, Jan Malmsjo, and Gunnel Lindblom.  However, writer/adaptor/director Levi trimmed several characters for his 2021 version.

A. R. Gurney’s Sylvia had a 1995 production in New York featuring Charles Kimbrough, Blythe Danner and Sarah Jessica Parker.  It is one of Gurney’s most frequently produced plays.  A husband in mid-life crisis would prefer the compansionship of a dog to a mistress.

On Saturday, October 16, Heather Bruegl, Director of Education at Forge Project, discusses the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, the indigenous people who once lived on these lands.

Island City Stage's first-ever production was of Tom Jacobson's play, The Twentieth Century Way. To kick off its 10th anniversary season, Island City Stage is reviving The Twentieth Century Way. The play focuses on two out-of-work actors in 1914 who hired themselves out to the Long Beach, Calif. Police Department to entrap "social vagrants (homosexuals)".

Blue grass and Appalachian music usually isn’t my thing, but my toes were tapping while enjoying the play-with- music, The Porch at Windy Hill now at Ivoryton Playhouse through Sunday, Oct. 17.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) announces The Helbing Mentorship Program. Under the program, LGBTQIA+ arts writers will work with leading theater critics to imrpove their craft and publish their work. The year-long program, which will begin in September 2022, includes a $5,000 grant.

Duncan MacMillan’s award-winning, 60-minute, one-person play, “Every Brilliant Thing,” centers on a list reflective of obsessive compulsion.  The narrator/protagonist itemizes everything worth living for.  Remarkably, he starts the list at age seven. 

Italian American Artists Grapple with Christopher Columbus's Legacy at MAD Museum. The Museum of Arts and Design will host 4 NYC artists of Italian heritage for a discussion about the colonial legacy of Christopher Columbus and his importance to the Italian American community. 

The Metropolitan Opera got a public relations boost when they mounted Terrence Blanchard’s ""Fire Shut up in My Bones" as their season opener. An unusually packed theater sweetened the Met's premiere. No question "Fire" is a wonderful piece of orchestral work. Elements of black folk music like gospel, jazz, and stepping, fit seamlessly into the overall scheme.

Slow Burn Theatre Company in Ft. Lauderdale has mounted a sizzling production of the musical theater show, "Songs for a New World." The production runs through Oct. 24 in the intimate Amaturo Theater within the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. This plotless hybrid of musical and song cycle features musical numbers connected by a theme. The composer and lyricist is Jason Robert Brown, of "Parade," and "The Bridges of Madison County" fame.

In “The Claim,” Serge hails from Congo.  Now in the U.K., he seeks asylum.  In this farcical three-hander, the immigrant is interrogated by two British bureaucrats – a male who we’ll call A, and a female, who we’ll call B.

San Francisco Opera’s current production maximizes the values of the piece through excellent casting, fine musical direction by Eun Sun Kim, and the addition of what amounts to another character, the stunning scenic design by Alexander V. Nichols, under the purview of Director Matthew Ozawa.

It turned into a shocking success, the opening of the Dreigroschenoper (Three Penny Opera) in November 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. Now, almost 100 years later, Bertolt Brecht's work with the music by Kurt Weill, is back at its original showing, now called the Berliner Ensemble at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin.

A special concert will cap this weekend on Sunday, Oct. 24, when pianist Ted Rosenthal performs his unique interpretations of George Gershwin compositions. Highlighted by his innovative treatment of the legendary Rhapsody in Blue, Ted’s repertoire for this first “tea time jazz special,” is collectively known as Rhapsody in Gershwin.

During the era of KIng Cotton North Adams thrived by processing bales shipped north from plantations. The Eclipse Mill produced thread which was woven across the street in the Delftree Mill. Until 1938 the mills employed child labor. During a single visit Lewis Hine created nine photographs outside the mill. These images as well as vintage views of the Eclipse Mill comprise a special exhibition. They flank the entrance ramp to the vast artist/ loft complex. The community based project is an aesthetic, historic and humanistic accomplishment.

You might consider a review of the songs of Rodgers & Hammerstein to be “old hat;” why bother seeing a show with songs that are so familiar to all of us. See it because Ruggiero and the cast take these songs and bring a newness to them with sometimes subtle twists that carry them in the 21st century.

Marking Lives COVID-19 is a community art project conceived by Concord-based artist Elizabeth Awalt to commemorate the American lives lost to COVID. This exhibition is a realization of the collaborative social media project. It includes North Adams artist Sarah Sutro.

The virtual screening of Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision- a walk-through installation performance celebrating the lives of Women of Color will premier on November 5th at 8pm. Set inside a historic Women’s Club mansion in Pittsfield MA, each of the 21 rooms represented a stage or theme of initiation in the lives of Black, Indigenous and Immigrant Women of Color.