Barrington Stage Company announces that Founding Artistic Director Julianne Boyd will be honored with The Berkshire Nonprofit Awards Lifetime Achievement Award from The Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires, in partnership with The Berkshire Eagle on May 23.

With his highly successful “Vietgone,” playwright Qui Nguyen, told the beginning of his family’s immigrant story, following the fall of Saigon in the Vietnam War.  His equally thoughtful and humorous sequel, “Poor Yella Rednecks,” continues the family’s saga.  Amusingly, he writes himself in as a character in the play and facetiously disavows to the audience that its characters are real.

BMOP continues its extended 25th Anniversary celebrations with a trip to Carnegie Hall. Featuring three works originally commissioned, premiered, and recorded by BMOP, "Play It Again" provides the capstone to the first 25 years of BMOP's mission. Andrew Norman's Play, Lei Liang's A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, and Lisa Bielawa's In medias res all receive their New York premieres on the historic Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage in Carnegie Hall.

Tosca has been one of the most performed operas in the world for over a century.  There is a good reason for that.  Beautiful music delights from curtain rise to fall, starting with the resounding orchestral chords of the Scarpia theme, and punctuated by memorable arias and powerful ensembles.  Opera San José offers a beautifully staged and performed rendering that sears with passion.

Mezze Hospitality Group will open Bluebird & Co., its forthcoming restaurant celebrating the outdoors, in Hancock, MA, near the base of Jiminy Peak. Bluebird & Co. is the group’s first new restaurant since selling allium, in Great Barrington, Mass., almost five years ago

Some may quibble, but I would see this production of Sweeney Todd anytime. It is changing my mind about the show.

Death of Classical, the brilliant music series conceived and curated by Andrew Ousley, was embedded in a Town Hall celebration of Minimalism.  It was a spiritual lift of a special order, lighting the path to classical music’s future in neon reds and greens. The lush curtains draped at the back of the stage were bathed alternately in greens and blues and purples. 

Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts near Ft. Lauderdale has mounted an entertaining and energetic production of "Pippin." The 1972 musical is timely more than 50 years after it premiered on Broadway. PPTOPA's production takes place during the 1960's. Setting the show during that time period makes sense.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC) announces full casting for the world premiere of Mark St. Germain’s new play The Happiest Man on Earth (May 24-June 17) and a new production of the legendary Kander & Ebb musical Cabaret (June 14-July 8).

Now 82, at long last the Native American artist, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, is the subject of a retrospective at a major New York Museum. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from April 19 to August 13, 202

Aside from their earth tones, this footwear has nothing to do with Frank Lloyd Wright. As a branding strategy, it is an extremely strange choice for a contemporary sports shoe design.

The Winter’s Tale can be a confusing play. Written late in Shakespeare’s career, it is usually grouped with The Tempest, Pericles, and Cymbeline, as one of the “romance” plays.

Hoosic River Watershed Association (HooRWA) invites poets and musicians in the Hoosic River Watershed to find inspiration and craft a poem, song, or instrumental piece about and for the Hoosic River and/or its tributaries.

The 2023 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) New Play Award goes to "the ripple, the wave that carried me home." The 2023 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award goes to Madison Fiedler for her play, "Spay." ATCA also presents citations to Suzan-Lori Parks for her play, "Sally & Tom," and Rebecca Gilman for her piece, "Swing State."

The Metropolitan Opera’s heavily promoted Champion is concluding its run in New York. The first opera by Terrence Blanchard, which succeeds his Fire in My Bones at the Met, has a weaker score than its successor.  One feels that Blanchard as composer of film scores (he is well-known as a colleague of Spike Lee), may have succumbed to the notion that music should lie under the visual track.  

Flynn has made hundreds, perhaps thousands of drawings over the last 50 years. Choosing just 50 (really 61) drawings is nearly an impossible task. William Flynn is an artist that spends days drawing. He finds ways to express the beauty in mundane objects; an old baseball mitt, ski boots, a bicycle that was run over and flattened, cars at junkyards, an old arm chair, pop-up books, whirly-gigs.

Live from the Edge by Universes has moments that will reach you emotionally. But the question remains, “What is it?” – Theater? A performance piece? A poetry slam?  They describe themselves as a theater company, but I would describe it as being closer to a performance piece/poetry slam than theater.

Fat Ham turns Shakespeare’s Hamlet upside down without minimizing the issues the original raises or the brilliance. The play by James IJames won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it is easy to see why.

Yes, there are some funny moments and some touching ones, but overall, it is hard to become engaged with the characters. Except for Janice, they appear only in short scenes that allow for little depth of character.

The Season opens May 26 with Ken Ludwig's Dear Jack, Dear Louise, with David Gow and Zoya Martin, outdoors in The Roman Garden Theatre.

This exhibition in North Adams ends on May 29 and so we also introduce the Old Stone Mill Center in Adams, MA, on Rt. 8, outside of downtown, direction to S. Adams. Both are worth a visit!

As a painter Jeff Weaver is a man for all seasons. Some of the most engaging works are winter scenes. It’s the Gloucester that tourists never see. He creates meticulous paintings of weathered, storm battered, Gloucester commercial and residential landmarks. The works document vintage images of a working port and fishing community undergoing a change to an economy based on tourism and a glut of generic condos.

 Hosted by MacArthur Genius-Award-winning playwright, director, and performance artist Taylor Mac, BSC’s Gala will transport attendees to the pre-war Berlin Kit Kat Club for an evening of pleasure featuring a cabaret lineup that will include burlesque artist Gypsy Layne Cabaret & Co.

The new comedy "Tracy Jones" is running at the Ft. Lauderdale-area's Island City Stage as the last leg of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. "Tracy Jones," by Stephen Kaplan, is about a lonely woman who throws a party for every other woman in her state also named Tracy Jones. The play highlights loneliness and the human need for connection. .

An example of Department of Play’s approach was recently on display at Northeastern University’s Gallery 360’s exhibition At Play. The collective views its mission as fostering group discovery and involvement in the thoughtful (playful?) envisioning of an evolving urban environment.