“I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.”– Harold Pinter, taken from his 2005 Nobel Prize Lecture

The Boston Symphony Orchestra announces Tanglewood’s first-ever fall/winter/spring schedule of performances and activities to take place on the grounds of the famed music festival, October 2019 through June 2020.

Actor shines as Wiesenthal in GableStage production of one-character play. Tom Dugan's piece is laser focused, touching and funny. The play centers on the end of the humanitarian's "career" bringing former Nazis to justice.

LeKae, a black woman, plays the white boy Huck, and the viewer happily suspends disbelief, as she thoroughly convinces playing the role of the youth as he breaks away from the constraints of convention. They reproduce the escape from the fictitious town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, rafting down the Mississippi, wide-eyed and reveling in the beauty of the world and of freedom.

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As the final production of the 25th season, artistic director, Julianne Boyd, is directing the world premiere of a timely social justice play American Underground by Brent Askari. It postulates a future when all American Muslims are treated as enemies of the state.

Seeing Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce on stage together in The Height of the Storm by Florian Zeller is watching master craftsmen work. I wouldn’t care what the play was about; I want to marvel at their skills.

Peter Brook andMarie-Hélène Estienne’s Why is playing at the Theater for A New Audience. The co-director-writer Brook’s work spans a century. Yet, as he starts this work, we are surprised and delighted by the answer to the question of the play’s title. The question is tucked away in a little box, on a little scrap of paper, like a note launched in a bottle on an ocean. It has landed at last in Brooklyn.

Boston Lyric Opera’s season opener Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” brings inventive staging and design to their production. It promotes a carnival-like atmosphere that invigorates the storyline and engages the audience.

The only Jewish family in a rural Texas town struggles with issues of illness and faith. How can the Jewish Yaweh allow the young and innocent to die of cancer while Jesus Christ offers cure and redemptio. Written and directed by Mark Harelik What the Jews Believe asks questions for which there are no answers.

With poetic irony, visitors to Ouelett’s one man exhibition at Real Eyes Gallery in Adams literally walk past his subject matter. To verify the veracity of his depictions one need but stand and gawk about on Park Street.

Isn’t Free Fall supposed to be an adaptation of Strindberg’s masterpiece Miss Julie? Many adaptations of plays update the timeline and shift the locale to one that is familiar to the audience, but playwright Megan Cohen adds a new plot layer of climate change and turns the original play’s dark humor and sharp edges into farce.

Joseph Keckler takes on the subject of singing in opera with a unique flare for the dramatic, for humor and deep delve. He is a masterful monologuist. In Let Me Die, he goes to the center of the operatic volcano, the death song. Here divas have been challenged since Monteverdi to blast out their pain in dying with vocal chords wide open and lungs at full mast. Yet they are fading away. Neither singer nor composer has ever been much disturbed by the odd idea that someone is going to a breathless state with lungs belting

West Palm Beach-based MNM Theatre Comapny delves deeper into Man of La Mancha. This production isn't just a showcase for great singers singing glorious songs. Director Bruce Linser emphacizes the darkness of the prison scenes. MNM's mounting features strong acting, singing.

Coleen MacPherson and her talented company bring 21 poems of the Polish poet Wslsawa Symborska to the stage. Symborska, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996, provides a 'script' which is both lyrical and amusing. The collaborative vision of Open Heart Surgery was born in Toronto in 2014, but this all female ensemble is international in both personnel and its vision.

Joshua Roman on cello and Conor Hanick at the piano performed a wild, raucous Alfred Schnittke Sonata bracketed by two transcendental works by Arvo Pärt. Andrew Ousley speaking at the outset as we waited for the artists to descend into the arched naves, suggested that we refrain from applauding at the end of each work. Instead we might absorb the afterglow of the music and let it seep further in. No one was tempted to break the silence with an inadvertent clap.

The New York Philharmonic performed the New York premiere of Bernard Hermann’s Psycho score, accompanying a huge projection of the film. Richard Kaufman, a veteran conductor of film and television productions, conducted. David Geffen Hall was filled with a hip audience of film buffs, who cheered when the classic image of the Bates Motel first appeared on the screen.

The rich are different from us. As a symbol of ultimate decadence Maurizio Cattelan created "America" a sold gold toilet. I lined up to take a pee in it at the Guggenheim Museum. Now it has gone missing.

Hairspray is receiving an exuberant production by Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre in Indianapolis.The musical, based on John Waters' film, reminds us that we can each do our part to right wrongs. This production runs through Oct. 6.

I have been working on sculptural surfaces for my paintings for 6 months. In addition to the resulting surface tension, the work has become more lyrical, sprinkled with recognizable imagery. Vines, galaxies, probes, suns, microbial animals and plants divide the surface and define the space.

Howards End, the stunning new production by Remy Bumppo Theatre, weaves together strands of three families. The wealthy and elite Wilcoxes—father, sons and daughter—the Schlegel sisters, who belong to the intellectual gentry, and poverty-stricken Leonard Bast and his wife. The script by Douglas Post, adapted from E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel, is directed by Nick Sandys.

HERE and Opera on Tap are presenting Kamala Sankaram's Looking at You, an opera which takes a provocative approach to the end of privacy. We wittingly and unwittingly allow cyber companies to strip us. Rob Handel's brilliant libretto is in the tradition of Experiments in Opera productions. Its narrative arc and apt language combine with thick orchestration using whatever style brings us face to face with issues in a story.

The visiting artist CenterSeries brings professional artists to campus for residencies at Williams College that culminate in performances at the ’62 Center. The Series kicks off with the return of Dancers from New York City Ballet on Friday, October 18th. Also returning to Williams is the SITI Company. Founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki, SITI will perform a “spellbinding modern update” of The Bacchae by Aaron Poochigian, on Saturday, November 2nd. (Los Angeles Times).

The Clark Art Institute will air the complete 2019–20 season of ten live performances from The Metropolitan Opera, held on select Saturdays beginning in October 12 and concluding in May 2020, in high definition from the Clark’s state-of-the-art auditorium. A special holiday encore presentation of The Magic Flute will be held on Sunday, December 8.

Special concerts do not happen too often in one's lifetime. Fortunately, the double bill of Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals paired with Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, fit the bill as one of the most exciting musical shows that I have witnessed.