by Chris Rohmann | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I often write in these pages about theater at the Five Colleges, all of which have robust degree programs and busy production seasons. But I don’t pay as much attention to the Valley’s other academic theaters as they deserve, and I’m going to partially correct that...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 21, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
These are precarious days, observes Peter Schumann, founder and director of Bread & Puppet Theater. The social order, the democratic contract and the earth itself are tottering from unprecedented stresses. Bread & Puppet’s Diagonal Life: Theory and Praxis,...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 17, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
It’s the Bard’s birthday next week, and three shows on area stages are celebrating it. (Shakespeare’s actual birthdate is unknown, but it was sometime around April 23, 1564, and since he died on April 23, 1616, that symmetry has become traditional.) This weekend and...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 10, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two plays coming to area campuses this week and next have starkly different, but equally pessimistic takes on life and death. Death of a Salesman, at Springfield College, finds tragedy in an ordinary life, while The Tattooed Man Tells All, at Smith College, draws...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 9, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
There’s a new theater company in the Valley, with a kick-ass name and no less a purpose than helping to “undo established hierarchical structures and their attendant damage.” It’s called Strident Theatre, and its vociferous founder is actor/director/playwright Susanna...