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Actually at TheaterWorks
He Said She Said
By: - Jun 12th, 2019A major part of freshman orientation on many campus is about Title IX – sexual activity, consent, the school’s policies and the penalties that may result from violation of these.
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Georges Bizet’s Carmen
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Jun 10th, 2019Carmen is conducive to fresh, modernized productions, often with changes in time period, geography, and more. Here we have a traditional approach, including the original spoken dialogue, which mark it as an opera comique. This rendition confirms why the opera has stood the test of time.
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50th Anniversary of Stonewall
About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art
By: - Jun 09th, 2019About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a spontaneous rebellion by gay activists after a police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Curated by Jonathan David Katz, Ph.D., activist, art historian, writer and university professor, the exhibit features almost 500 works of art in every conceivable media.
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The Flamingo Kid at Hartford Stage
Delightful New Musical
By: - Jun 07th, 2019Darko Tresnjak is going out with a delightful, tuneful musical that will touch your heart. For his last show as artistic director at Hartford Stage he has directed the world premiere musical, The Flamingo Kid now through Saturday, June 15.
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Dr. John at "77"
Voodoo Hoodoo at MASS MoCA in 2002
By: - Jun 06th, 2019New Orleans master Dr. John has died. Perhaps he was 77 but like most aspects of the musician it is yet another factoid swathed in swamp gas. On June 1, 2002, with singer Jimmy Scott, he jammed the inner court yard of MASS MoCA. Over the years I covered him numerous times including his witch doctor Gris Gris phase in the late 1960s. He long ago earned a spot in the pantheon of America's greatest musical tradition.
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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
From Chicago’s Lookingglass to Princeton’s McCarter
By: - Jun 06th, 2019Last year was the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s landmark horror novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, which explains why we have been able to see four different versions of the Frankenstein story on stage in Chicago during this theater season. The final production of this series is Lookingglass Theatre’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written and directed by David Catlin. After August 4 it transfers for a three week run at Princeton's McCarter Theatre Center.
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Canadian Curator Claude Gosselin Turns 75
Founded Biennale de Montréal
By: - Jun 05th, 2019Today, June 5, friends will gather to celebrate the 75th birthday of the curator Calude Gosselin. Not having visited Montréal in some time we made plans for travel in the fall. That changed abruptly when we were bumped off a flight to the U.K. From the road we called Claude and told him we would arrive in a couple of hours. It was great to catch up. Since the 1980s he has curated major exhibitions including Les Cent jours d’art contemporain de Montréal and Biennale de Montréal. We covered many of those projects.
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First Nations at Art Gallery of Ontario
A Third of the Museum’s Gallery Space
By: - Jun 03rd, 2019During a recent road trip we visited museums in Montreal, Ottowa and Toronto. We noted different strategies to intergate First Nations artists into special exhibitions and permanent collection galleries. A third of the exhibition space of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto features First Nations artists. With an unfavorable comparison only a handful of American museums have a commitment to feature Native American art and culture.
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Experiments at the NY Opera Festival
A.M. Homes Writes Her First LIbretto
By: - Jun 03rd, 2019Experiments in Opera was co-founded in Brooklyn in 2010 by composers Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch and Jason Cady. They contributed Chunky in Heat to the New York Opera Festival. It was a wild, wacky and moving work.
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Veronica's Position
Raucous Rich Orloff Comedy at Island City Stage
By: - Jun 04th, 2019Veronica's Position is a meaty comedy with offering plenty to think about. Rich Orloff's comedy is an entertaining part backstage comedy, part problem play, part satire. It takes place at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 in Washington D.C. offering eerie resemblances to today's political climate.
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David Lang World Premiere at NY Philharmonic
A Take Off from Beethoven's Fidelio
By: - Jun 05th, 2019The world premiere of David Lang's prisoner of the state takes place in David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic. The 106 member orchestra will perform, but this can hardly be called a concert production. Instead the Hall has been transformed into a prison. Even the instrumentalists on stage are in prison. Costumes, chains and handcuffs were ordered from Bob Barker, the country's leading detention supplier.
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Ensemble Studio Theatre's 37th Marathon
One Acts Present Dilemmas in Series B
By: - Jun 04th, 2019Dilemmas in all their perplexity, humanity or otherwise, and bewilderment are presented in all five one act plays in Series B of the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s annual one act marathon.
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The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee
Bestiality Explored by Berkshire Theatre Group
By: - Jun 01st, 2019On his 50th birthday the architect Martin (David Adkins) is on the cusp of loss and gain. He is forgetting things like why he has entered a room. A lifelong friend Ross (Josh Aaron McCabe) is taping a TV interview. He is young to win the Pritzker Prize. But Martin is too distracted. Probing the problem Ross pushes Martin to admit to an affair. No biggie. But, it ensues, his beloved Sylvia is a goat. The late play by Edard Albee The Goat or Who is Silvia? won a Tony for best new play in 2002. Since then it has been regarded as controversial and problematic. We discover why in a tsunami production directed by Eric Hill for Berkshire Theatre Group.
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Arthur Miller's All My Sons
On Broadway at Roundabout Theatre
By: - Jun 04th, 2019The three main characters – Tracy Letts as Joe, Annette Bening as Kate and Benjamin Walker as Chris deserve the accolades they have received. Each has mined the character so that the subtext is revealed. Letts and Walker are totally believable as father and son
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MFA Addresses Recent Incident of Racism
An Open Letter from Director Matthew Teitelbaum
By: - Jun 03rd, 2019A group of 26 middle-school students with chaperones from the Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy visited the MFA on May 16, 2019. They were on a self-guided visit. Before leaving the Museum, the group filed a complaint with Member and Visitor Services that they were met with racism and verbal abuse from visitors and staff during the visit. In an open letter to the MFA Community its director Matthew Teitelbaum details the museum's response and plan of action.
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Deep Dirt on Annie Lennox
Installation of Detritus at MASS MoCA
By: - May 31st, 2019As an epic memento mori the 64-year-old British pop star has created “Annie Lenox: Now I Let You Go…” A huge mound of earth scattered with her memorabilia will be on view long term at MASS MoCA. The ambitious installation will be of great interest to her global fans.
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A Man for All Seasons Howie Levitz
Photographer, Piano Man and Raconteur
By: - May 30th, 2019In 1969 Howie and Dale Levitz moved to the Berkshires when he became head of the photography department at Williams College. After seven years they opened a photo store which had a smaller iteration on Holden Street in North Adams. He was the piano man with a vast command of songs. Howie loved to entertain with tales, anecdotes and jokes. He passed away over the Memorial Day weekend.
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Hold These Truths by Jeanne Sakata
Stunning Solo Show by Joel de la Fuente
By: - May 29th, 2019The one person, one act play "Hold These Truths" by Jeanne Sakata focuses on the true story of Gordon Hirabayashi. After Pearl Harbor he was among 120,000 Japanese Americans who were relocated to prison camps in the South West. He was charged with the crimes of violating curfew and refusing to report to a detention center. He fought the charges to the Supreme Court. He and two other dissenters lost their cases. Invoking war powers as supreme commander Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9006 was upheld as constitutional. Decades later Hirabayashi, by then a professor of sociology, was cleared of all charges. In 2012 Persident Barach Obama awarded him The Presidential Medal of Honor.
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TON Performs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Top Young Musicians under Leon Botstein Reveal Webern and Feldman
By: - May 28th, 2019The Orchestra Now (TON) is brave. In taking on two of the seminal composers of modern music, they tackled the presentation of developing ideas about sound as music, to which the 20th century composers have added new dimensions. Some composers took the sounds out of time. Anton Webern often composed suggesting different tempi measure to measure. While Morton Feldman did not go as far as John Cage, inviting musical artists to perform whatever, whenever, he often suspended his work out of time.
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Hamilton by Ishmael Reed
Full Production to Tag National Tour of Miranda's Version
By: - May 29th, 2019Nuyorican Poets Cafe and writer Ishmael Reed present The Haunting Of Lin Manuel Miranda through June 17th. Amid the flurry of enthusiasm for the Broadway show, Hamilton, Reed lays waste to the show's premises and assumptions, without deriding the talent or intentions of the remarkably gifted Miranda or his cast.
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A Cultural Trip Through Canada
Encountering First Nations Artworks
By: - May 23rd, 2019On the spot, fully packed and ready to travel, we decided on a car trip to Canadian locations: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara Falls, after we were denied boarding an airplane to Chicago. Our final destination was (not) to be Edinburgh, Scotland and London, England. Here's a cultural overview of our ersatz-trip, which turned out to be just great!
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The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan
Harrowing Launch of Shakespeare & Company Season
By: - May 27th, 2019The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan conveys how families are torn apart coping with and caring for elders with dementia. In a downward spiral Gladys Green, in another stunning performance by Annette Miller, is struggling to hold on. A small Greenwich Village vanity gallery gives her something to do. In a bold move Shakespeare & Company has launched its season with a slow and demanding drama.
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Ink by James Graham
Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater
By: - May 28th, 2019Ink is not just about Rupert Murdoch; it is actually more about Larry Lamb, the man he brought in from a northern England city where he had been editing a paper, to edit The Sun and overtake its rival.
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Mad Beat Hip & Gone by Steven Dietz
At Promethean Theatre
By: - May 28th, 2019The spirit and poetry of Jack Kerouac and his pal, Neal Cassady, permeate the Steven Dietz play, Mad Beat Hip & Gone, now being staged by Promethean Theatre at the Edge Off Broadway. There’s even a hint of the presence of a poet named Allen.
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Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi
By West Bay Opera
By: - May 28th, 2019Verdi was no doubt drawn to the bigger-than-life character of Falstaff. Lecherous and self-indulgent, he is one of the great comic characters from literature. The success of the production rides first on the able shoulders of Richard Zeller, a classic Falstaff. With the aid of costumery, makeup, and wig, he looks the part of the corpulent rogue.
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