The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera, two of today’s leading innovators on the classical musical scene, present the New England premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis’s seminal opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (1986) on June 17, 2022, at the Strand Theatre, a short distance from the house where Malcolm Little lived in his teenage years in Roxbury. This sprawling, genre-bending biographical opera unfolds the astonishing life of one of the most misunderstood men in history.

Bang on a Can and MASS MoCA present LOUD Weekend, a fully loaded eclectic super-mix of minimal, experimental, and electronic music over three days throughout the museum’s expansive campus. Phil Kline will be featured.  With Jim Jarmsuch he will be improvising on loud guitar,

"for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf " is having a brilliant re-incarnation. The stage is lit only by the abstract chiaroscuro photos projected on soft screen, like the hazy landscape. A quiet light  reveals Lady In Brown (Tendayi Kuumba)  as this  rhythmic dance poem begins.  “Dark phases of womanhood , of never having been a girl..”  Her movements are as powerful and sensuous as the words,  with a spiritual nod to African roots.  

I know.  Your first question will be “What’s with that name?”  Each of the three elements in the title reflects something of significance in the play.  It wouldn’t be my choice, but at least you can say that it represents the many layered nature of the narrative. 

Event to feature jazz in the park, brunches, and headline performersKarrin Allyson, Houston Person, Michael Benedict and Bopitude  

Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) is pleased to present Philip Malicoat: Large Works. On view June 10 - July 24, the exhibition is curated by two of the artist's granddaughters, Breon Dunigan and Robena Malicoat. The public is invited to an opening reception on Friday, June 10 from 6-8pm.   

The Dream music puppet program was inaugurated at HERE in 1998. The iconic puppet drama  Symphonie Fantastique premiered that year.  its creator, Basil Twist now leads the program.  Puppetopia, presenting new work, returned to the stage in the spring 2022.  Each of the shows represented a twist on conventional puppetry.

Despite the difficulty of casting Russian language opera, two are present in the American repertoire, “Eugene Onegin” and “Pique Dame” (“Queen of Spades” in English).  Although the former premiered 11 years earlier than the latter, they share the same DNA, including source material derived from Alexander Pushkin.

Steppenwolf Theatre’s new production of Seagull—adapted, translated and directed by Yasen Peyankov—is set in a large country house in the Russian countryside. The time is indeterminate and the dialog is modernized. But it’s still Chekhov, so everyone is miserable.

This summer, the MIT List Visual Arts Center debuts a site-specific installation by Azza El Siddique. The exhibition, which runs from June 30 to September 4, is the artist’s first solo museum presentation and marks the 25th exhibition in the List Projects series, which began in 2013.

Artist activist, Phil Sellers and his wife Gail were part of the team behind the Faerie Festival in North Adams. He passed away in July 2020. After a hiatus The Faerie Festival is revised in his honor on June 18 from 10 AM to 10 PM.

Adapted from an acclaimed translation by Robert Fagles, An Iliad refreshes Homer’s world classic and transforms the epic poem into a riveting account of the Trojan War, told in the present-time complete with nods to modern-day events.

The Portland Museum of Art, together with the leading independent architect selection firm Dovetail Design Strategists, announced today the launch of an international design competition for its campus unification and expansion.

SO-IL architects selected to design the first stand-alone building for the Williams College Museum of Art. New facility for teaching, collections, exhibitions and programs will transform the museum’s engagement with the campus, the Williamstown community and the Berkshires cultural region.

The Olivier Award-winning 50th anniversary production of Jesus Christ Superstar is playing in Miami. The production originated at London’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. At the center of the production is a very human Jesus.

Zoey’s PERFECT Wedding now playing at TheaterWorks in Hartford looks at what happens when the “perfect” part of the wedding doesn’t happen. Playwright Matthew López has combined humor (some farce, some slapstick) with an insightful understanding of our need for human connection and love.

Who could predict that such a musical would set performance records for both the West End (21 years) and Broadway (a mere 18 years)?  But innovation doesn’t put butts in seats.  So, what propelled “Cats” to immortal fame?

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this work by Madhuri Shekar and produced in partnership with the National Asian American Theater Company’s project. But I found it an engrossing, if not always totally motivated work.

Belfast Girls, the Irish Rep’s current play by Jaki McCarrick is a sure-fire winner. Though all of the play’s action takes place on the transport ship Inchinnan in 1848 bound for Australia, the majority of the two act, 12-scene play with one intermission, takes place in a small, cramped, and windowless 5-bunk bed cabin in the ship’s steerage, and to a lesser degree on the ship’s deck where the girls can be seen contemplating their future.  

Jean-Joseph de Mondonville’s Titon et l'Aurore returns to Versaille. It is a pastorale heroique opera in three acts with a prologue. Inspired by Madame De Pompadour, it was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris in January 1753.

Last but Not Least is an exhibition of sixteen new paintings.  Created in the last nine months of Todd McKie’s life, the paintings are as fresh and witty as ever. 

The Rodin exhibition explores changing perceptions of the sculptor’s work, beginning with the first acquisition made by an American institution—the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1893—and Rodin’s controversial debut at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in the same year. The exhibition examines the collecting frenzy of the early twentieth century, promoted by noted philanthropist Katherine Seney Simpson, avant-garde performer Loïe Fuller, and collector Alma de Bretteville Spreckels

From this play’s outset, it is clear that “Hadestown” will have a distinctive style.  Although the musical’s auteur, Anaïs Mitchell, comes from the folk world, she developed a unique musical amalgam for the show with elements from blues, jazz, and pop in addition to folk.  Her orchestration is as unexpected as it is brilliant in providing a magnificent background sound. 

Blithe Spirit is personal for me; it was my first involvement in live theater, when I joined the Cortez, Colorado, community theater many decades ago. I worked on the set, sold tickets and made new friends who were interested in the arts in that oil-boom town. Later I directed (William Inge’s Picnic) and acted (in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and a western melodrama, Deadwood Dick, or the Game of Gold). As a child and teen in Chicago, I had often gone to the theater with my Aunt Belle and also attended theater as a student at UIC. But Blithe Spirit was the first time I experienced the stage. And I still can repeat many of the lines.

Cabaret is one of the great musicals of the 1960s. Kander and Ebb (and book writer Joe Masterhoff) created a show that used a seedy, third-class nightclub as a metaphor for Germany slipping into the Nazi era.