Colonial Theatre

This week Jacob's Pillow cancelled its coming season. Can Tanglewood be far behind? Today Williamstown Theatre Festival pulled back from selling tickets with a note for further review of seasonal plans. Berkshire Theatre Group announces the launch of its season on August 1. We have yet to hear updates from Shakespeare & Company, Barrngton Stage Company or other regional theatres. As non essential business Berkshire museums are closed with no time line for resumed programming.

The Gambler, country music star Kenny Rogers, has passed at 81. In September, 2012 he made a rare Berkshire appearance at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. This is how we covered him at the time.

Gershwin Alone by Hershey Felder has been performed on Broadway and toured globally. Too briefly this remarkable musical seance is at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. Felder is actor/ entertainer, musicologist and biographer switching from schtick to instructive. With a "that's not all folks" surprise the ninety minute performance was followed by an eclectic engagement with the audience. That included a couple of sing alongs from The Great American Songbook.

Berkshire Theatre Group and its Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield is producing the world premiere of Rock and Roll Man: The Alan Freed Story. The jukebox musical, rumored to be headed to Broadway, has a book by Gary Kupper, Larry Marshak and Rose Caiola with original music and lyrics by Gary Kupper. A cast of nineteen performs some 47 musical interludes. The music was fun but the long and often slow production needs a lot of work.

The 2019 program of Bwerkshire Theatre Group will occur at The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield and on the Fitzpatrick Mainstage as well as Unicorn in Stockbridge. The season starts with previews of The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee on May 24 in Stockbridge.

Combining mystery, surprise and old-fashioned storytelling in a compelling evening of theater, Proof, by David Auburn has won both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize. It is presented at Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vermont.

Upcoming events at the Colonial include, The Airplane Family & Friends with Live Dead ‘69 (10/27), $10 Music Garage: Subtleties (11/9), Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) Touring Company (11/11), $5 Comedy Garage: Rojo Perez (at the Garage in the Colonial Theatre lobby 11/16), Ain't Wastin' Time: A Berkshire Tribute to Gregg Allman with Rev Tor's Steal Your Peach Band & Friends (11/30) and A Christmas Carol (12/9 through 12/22).

From 9 AM to noon there was an ordely and peaceful demonstration in front of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. Pickets came and went with between 40 and 80 individuals linuing the sidewalk at any given time. Most passing cars honked their support. There was a media presence. While museum director, Van Shields, remained hunkered down in the bunker, board president Elizabeth "Buzz" Hayes McGraw delivered her boilplate message to a TV crew from Albany.

Berkshire Theatre Group announces additions to the fall and winter seasons, as well as casting for the Fall production of David Auburn’s Lost Lake at The Unicorn Theatre. Therde wlll also be a number of unique musical events at its Colonial Theatre in downtiown Pittsfield.

When ethical concerns and second guessing of its "reboot" plans surfaced the Berkshire Museum has spent money it doesn't have for expensive PR and marketing. Heavy hitters have been hired to deflect tough questions from the media and flack the museum's strategy to sell 40 works of art and change its mandate.

With their 1969 debut album the Allman Brothers, based in Macon, Georgia, launched the unique genre of Southern rock. On tour they were an immediate hit as an opening act at the Boston Tea Party. They were invited back for a later gig. The band opted to hang out rather than travel to home and back. They melded into the then emerging Boston music scene. Legendary lead guitarist, Duane Allman, died at 24 in I971. Now Gregg, the lead vocalist and keyboard player, has passed at 69 following several years of failing health.

The Berkshire-based professional theatre company celebrates its eighth year with two Main Stage productions, a thought-provoking series of play readings, and several exciting new collaborations and initiatives 2.017 season explores a broad range of perspectives around issues affecting women and girls.

BTG is expanding its 2017 summer festival offerings, including The Music Man and the Million Dollar Quartet, Arsenic and Old Lace, as well as two productions by playwrights, Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo (Zoo story) and David Auburn's Lost Lake.

Recently The Colonial Thatre in Pittsfield was the site for a packed gathering as a part of the national Women's March in protest of the extremist threats of President Donald Trump. The Colonial Theatre will be a part of the national Four Freedom's Rally on Saturday, January 28. Kate Maguire, the artistic director of the Berkshire Theatre Group, which includes the Colonial has taken a stand in activist resistance.

There has been extensive media coverage of the First Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. The winners of The Berkies have been announced. There will be an awards celebration 5 pm on November 13 at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret in Pittsfield. In this first round of awards Barrington Stage Company and Shakespeare & Company dominated in most categories. The smash hit Pirates of Penzance ran the table. The Larry Murray Award, named for the founder, will be the only suprise of the gathering of critics, media and theater mavens.

A lot of theatre this season is feeding us heavy duty, pc, brain food. But for pure fun release and esape the best show in the Berkshires, Little Shop of Horrors, is presenting a hilarious musical comedy about a man eating plant which is chewing the scenery and devouring audiences at the Colonial Theatre.

The Berkshire Theatre Group announces a full schedule of musicals, plays and performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield as well as its two stages in Stockbridge. The program includes events from June through October. As usual a musical, Little Shop of Horrors, opens at the Colonial just after the July 4th holiday weekend which launches high season in the Berkshires.

In some of the most exciting and insightful productions and performances of the year there was a notable cross pollination and invention as vernacular street cultures and indigenous art forms conflated into high art. Classic works were not just revived but reinvented from the insight out. The best works of 2016 raised the bar through risk taking and challenging audiences. These rare experiences tend to make the majority of what we experience ordinary and enervating. In an era signified by ubiquitous standing ovations what is truly worthy of special recognition?

Music at The Colonial Theatre includes, legendary reggae band, The Wailers (part of the 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival); Grammy Award-winning pop/rock singer, songwriter, musician, Richard Marx; Grammy Award-winning Walking In Memphis singer, Marc Cohn and “the godfather of British blues,” John Mayall.

Regarding Boston Theatre it is broke and time to fix it. This fall as one shoe after another dropped the Boston Theatre Community seemed to collapse like a house of cards. In 2004 through a partnership between Druker Development, Boston Center for the Arts and the Huntington Theatre Company the multi-stage Calderwood Pavilion was created in the South End. Is it possible that Huntington can swing a similar development to save, renovate and expand its antiquated facility? That's just a part of dramatic changes for the city.

A Confederacy of Dunces was published in 1980 eleven years after John Kennedy Toole's suicide. Recently the creative team- adapter Jeffrey Hatcher, director David Esbjornson, and actor Nick Offerman- met with the media to discuss the production for Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. The comedy will run from November 11 through December 13.

Strauss's early operatic masterpiece follows its Greek model closely to reveal the neurosis at the heart of modern life. Andris Nelsons led a white-hot BSO performance of a lurid, fin-de-siecle masterpiece. The cast, led by Christine Goerke, Jane Henschel and Gun-Brit Barkmin, was stellar.

If bad luck comes in threes what's next for the Boston theatre community. Today we have reported on the break up of a 33-year-old relationship between the Huntington Theatre Company and Boston University. Now we report news the Emerson College, the owner of the 115-year-old Colonial Theatre has plans to convert it into a student center. These developments were predicted several years ago by then NEA chair Rocco Landesman. As he suggests, here in the Berkshires, there are too many arts organizations pursuing the same limited potential donors.

The terrific husband and wife team of Kate Baldwin and Graham Rowat star in a revival of the 1950s musical Bells are Ringing. It brings star power to the Colonial in Pittsfield to July 26.

Now in his final weeks as director of the Clark Art Institute Michael Conforti hosted a media event promoting a blockbuster season for Northern Berkshire County. There were presentations by Joe Thompson for Mass MoCA, Tina Olsen for the Williams College Museum of Art, and Mandy Greenfield for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Notably absent from the media event were North Adams based arts presenters Downstreet, The Eclipse Mill Gallery, The Rudd Museum of Art and the fall annual Williamstown Film Festival.