Front Page
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Everybody's Talking World Premiere
Harry Nilsson Based Musical at San Diego Repertory Theatre
By: - Jun 09th, 2015“Everybody’s Talkin’” is more of a free-flowing musical tribute than a traditional book musical. There isn’t one line of scripted dialogue spoken by the performers. It’s just the genius of Harry Nilsson who was a poet/philosopher and a reluctant troubadour performer, whose songs lend themselves to the inspired arrangements by Gunderson and the staging by Velasco that propel the show along.
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After All The Terrible Things I Do At Calderwood
Self-Loathing and Acceptance Emotionally Wrestle
By: - Jun 05th, 2015What makes ordinary people do terrible things? Daniel, a young, gay aspiring writer, seeks a fresh start and a new job at the local bookstore that he loved as a child. When he meets Linda, the Filipina-American bookshop owner, they discover a connection that goes deeper than a love of literature. Artistic Director Peter DuBois directs the New England premiere of A. Rey Pamatmat’s at times gripping and intimate new play about changing attitudes, forgiveness and second chances.
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Collages by Raeford Liles
Publishing the Greek Pots Series
By: - Jun 05th, 2015I have known and much appreciated the witty and whimsical artist Raeford Liles since the 1960s. He was represented by the East Hampton Gallery when I worked there. Some years ago the artist returned to Birmingham, Alabama where he grew up. Now in assisted living his family has been working to catalog, archive and preserve decades of his work. From this extensive project has emerged the publication of a series of digital prints from his inspired Greek Pots series.
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Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative
Economic Impact of Making Films in the Berkshires
By: - Jun 05th, 2015The Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative (BFMC) has released an economic impact study to examine the effects of a film shoot on the economy of rural communities. The study, “When Movie Making Comes to Town: An Economic Impact Analysis and Strategies for Development†was authored by Rick Feldman of InCommN, LLC, who was one of the developers of IMPLAN, a widely used economic impact analysis software program.
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The Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon
Existential Questions Dramatic and Personal
By: - Jun 05th, 2015The Ensemble Studio Theatre just won a 2015 Drama Desk Award its commitment to producing new works by American playwrights since 1968. This year's 35th Marathon of Short Plays shows why the award is so deserved.
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PBS Fall Schedule
From Walt Disney to Julie Waters in Indian Summers
By: - Jun 04th, 2015Yes Downton Abbey returns in January. PBS premieres the Civil War drama Mercy Street on September 27. Come fall PBS yet again will roll out an entertaining cornucopia of programming.
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Gerard Malanga on Andy Warhol's Mother Julia
Insights to Mother and Son Collaborations at WCMA
By: - Jun 04th, 2015The major exhibition this summer at the Williams College Museum of Art is "Warhol by the Book" through August 16, 2015. Of the 500 works on view some of the most intriguing material entails collaborations involving Warhol's graphic design and his mother Julia's calligraphy. We spoke about Julia with former Warhol associate the poet Gerard Malanga who knew her well.
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Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
Tenn Annual Festival September 24 to 27
By: - Jun 03rd, 2015The 10th anniversary Festival will take place in various venues in the seaside village of Provincetown from Thursday, September 24 through Sunday, September 27, 2015. The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival was founded in 2006 in the birthplace of American Modern Theater where Williams worked on many of his major plays during the 1940s. The TW Festival is the nation’s largest performing arts festival dedicated to celebrating and expanding the understanding of America’s great playwright.
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Fugard Theatre's A Human Being Died that Night
Truth and Reconciliation at the BAM Fisher
By: - Jun 03rd, 2015Both Plato and Aristotle wrote about the catharsis of tragedy in drama. South Africa with some success took the idea and tried to find truth and healing post apartheid. In large measure they succeeded. This wonderful play, conceived by Eric Abraham and written by Nicholas Wright, suggests why in a personal and incredibly moving adaptation of a true story.
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The Monteverdi Trilogy at Boston Early Music Festival
Biennial festival puts on more concerts than you could possibly attend.
By: - Jun 02nd, 2015Since its founding in 1981, the Boston Early Music Festival has become one of the leading cultural organizations in Boston, a city not lacking in them. Its biennial festival draws performing groups and audiences from all over the globe. Its focus is on a historically informed Baroque opera - this year it is doing three! All three of Monteverdi's surviving operas in one week. What bliss.
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Tina Olsen Talks About Warhol at Williams
Making Books
By: - Jun 01st, 2015Warhol by the Book at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is on view through August 16, 2015. Creating books was a vital part of Warhol's career’s. It is the first in depth presentation of a relatively unexplored aspect of his work. Taking over the top level galleries of the museum there are 500 works on view featuring some 300 from the Williams collection and many works from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. We spoke about the project with MCMA director, Tina Olsen.
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Carnegie is Busting Out All Over
The Iconic Hall Has Brought Music to Every Corner of New York
By: - Jun 01st, 2015Throughout the five boroughs of New York, Carnegie Hall has presented live music to audiences of every age nd every hue. Community colleges, town halls, libraries and churches have opened their doors to music makers. Catching up at the seaason's end we heard Julia Bullock and Renate Rohling at St. Michael's Church in Manhattan and the Whistling Wolvves in the extraorinarily inviting Weill Music Room in Carnegie's new wing.
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Stickwork: Interweaving Myth and Reality
Temporal and Mystical Public Art at Peabody Essex Museum
By: - Jun 01st, 2015Enigmatically, sculptor Patrick Dougherty bends, weaves and flexes saplings into architectural sculptures that dynamically relate to the landscape and built environment. Over the last 30 years, he has created more than 250 works throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Constructed from saplings collected by area volunteers, "What the Birds Know" provides a wonderful and viscerally accessible counterpoint to the highly finished wood-frame early 18th Century Crowninshield-Bentley House. This is the first time PEM has commissioned an outdoor sculptural installation. And the bar has been set very high.
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The How and the Why at S&Co.
Going With the Flow
By: - May 31st, 2015After a brutal winter on ever level Shakespeare & Company has launched the season with an intense and absorbing two hander The How and the Way by dramatist Sarah Treem. It stages a tense meeting between two brilliant women and scientists. A seething graduate student Rachel (Bridget Sacarino) has just learned the identify of her birth mother Zelda (Rod Randolph) a renowned scholar. By coincidence and one of many impossibilities the women are remarkably alike and even share the same field of evolutionary biology. If you can get beyond that unlikely twist of fate and other absurd literary devices this is an absorbing evening of tense and spellbinding theatre with superb performances by two fine actresses.
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Art and Poetry at Gallery 51
Stephen and Wilma Rifkin, Ellen Joffe-Halpern, Annie Raskin
By: - May 29th, 2015Two Natures Talking: Poetry and Visual Arts at Gallery 51 of MCLA in North Adams brings together the paintings of Wilma Rifkin with the poems they inspire by her husband Stephen. The exhibition which has been curated by Julia Morgan-Leamon also pairs the visuals of Ellen Joffe-Halpern and poems by Annie Raskin.
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A.R.Gurney's What I Did Last Summer
Jim Simpson Directs at the Signature
By: - May 28th, 2015What I Did Last Summer is A.R. Gurney's latest play and a delight. How could it be a dream summer at the beach when Dad is off fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, Mom is lonely, Elsie is trying to lose weight and Charlie is trying to become a man without a model around? Yet it is as directe by Jim Simpson
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Arms and the Man at Old Globe
First Class Shavian Production
By: - May 27th, 2015“Arms and the Manâ€, crisply directed by Jessica Stone is blessed with cast of talented and seasoned performers who when they find themselves on a stage in a sharply and insightfully written farce/satire, know exactly how to handle their characters and the situations.
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Raven Theatre
Adapted by Christopher Hampton from Novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
By: - May 26th, 2015The script and production are the same as earlier versions in most every way, with the addition of a few Russian place names and two characters with Russian accents. The playbill doesn't mention the era and geographic setting (or any of the scene locations) that AstonRep has chosen.
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Lauren Olitski: Painting From Nature
Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts, May 28 - June 28, 2015
By: - May 26th, 2015Lauren Olitski is known for the vibrant and exciting surfaces and bold colors of her abstract acrylic paintings. In this body of work, her masterful infusion of organic elements (garnet, pumice, and molding paste) into the plastic, inorganic acrylic gels and paints gives her work a rare visceral authenticity.
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Boston CyberArts Reaches into the Public Domain
From Desktop to Laptop to Public Art
By: - May 26th, 2015Making digital art even more accessible, Boston Cyberarts is fostering major public art installations. This is art with virtually no boundaries. Founder George Fifield is the "godfather" of new art forms being computer-generated. Cyberarts is a 21st Century entity bringing new mediums to the masses.
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Hokusai Makes Waves at the MFA
230 Works by Japanese Master on View to August 9
By: - May 25th, 2015Because of the activity of the 19th century collector William Sturgis Bigelow the Museum of Fine Arts has some 30,000 Japanese prints. He donated 80% of these treasures. Through August 8 the MFA is showing 230 works by the Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The centerpiece is his iconic color woodblock print “Under the Wave off Kanagawa,†“a.k.a. “The Great Wave.†It is from "Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji" which the artist produced while in his 70s. He later added ten more because of the success of the series.
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Zombie Formalism
Responding to Banality in Contemporary Art
By: - May 23rd, 2015Martin Mugar coined the term Zombie Formalism. That bounder, Walter Robinson, a known grifter and blowhard has claimed it as his own. Here our man Mugar bares his soul and makes a case. This is more heavy lifting in the realm of art criticism. Like how about that lead with Heidegger. Not exactly bedtime reading for most of us.
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Queen Latifah Triumphs in HBO's Bessie
Portrays Legendary and Tragic Empress of the Blues
By: - May 23rd, 2015As blues giant Bessie Smith in HBO's "Bessie" Queen Latifah gives the finest performance of her career. The drama is based on a 1972 book by Chris Albertson. During the 1920s she was the Empress of the Blues but during the great depression which followed in the 1930s, as she compellingly sang, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out."
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Playwright Lillian Hellman
Reflections on Two Chicago Productions
By: - May 23rd, 2015Last week I saw two masterpieces of 20th century theater by Lillian Hellman, the great playwright and left wing political activist. (I‘m a fan on both counts.) The two shows were extremely different in production values but demonstrated the power of performance.
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Charles Giuliano's Shards of a Life
Beyond Gonzo
By: - May 22nd, 2015The book of poetry Shards of a Life by Charles Giuliano will be launched with a reading and book signing at Edith Wharton's The Mount. The free reception will will occur on Friday, June 5 from 5:30 to 7:30. The critical essay "Beyond Gonzo" was written as the introduction for the book by J.M. Robert Henriquez
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