Arts
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 23, 2021 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
A year ago this week, I filed my review of a new play, The Pitch, which had just opened at the Majestic Theater in West Springfield. Two weeks later, Covid-19 closed the production (the run will resume once the theater is able to reopen its doors). The following week,...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 16, 2021 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
One of the most adventurous endeavors in the past Year of Zoom has been Stagehand, a live immersive piece from Eggtooth Productions first seen last fall. Another iteration launches this weekend and next, with a new framing concept and novel ticketing options. As...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 17, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
There’s an old story from the early days of television, when the flickering screen was competing for audiences with radio drama. A young boy, asked which he preferred, radio or TV, answered without hesitation, “Radio. Because the pictures are better.” I was reminded...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 9, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
MIFA, the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, is a Holyoke-based venture that’s working to restore the city’s venerable Victory Theatre as a regional performance venue while also forging partnerships with the Latinx community. MIFA and the...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 2, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Does theater, by definition, require an audience’s physical presence in a shared space with live actors? Is viewing the video record of a live performance different in a fundamental way from being there? What are we to make of the new online performances in this time...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 19, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
“Thanksgiving is such a lovely holiday. Do we have to talk about genocide during this beautiful American holiday?” That’s the kind of pushback often directed at reassessments that put “the first Thanksgiving” in its true historical context, says Talya Kingston. She’s...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 28, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
It’s the time of year for werewolves and witches, costumes and candy – and, in this especially bloodcurdling season, tricks and Trump – so this weekend, area theaters are offering an autumn harvest of howls and horror. Here’s a rundown (alliteration-free). From UMass...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 22, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
As you approach the theater, you find a note pinned to the stage door. It’s from the director, who says he’s been delayed and you’re to check in with the cast and make sure everything is ready for rehearsal. Then you open the door, and step back in time. You’re in...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 14, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
It wasn’t planned this way, but the timing couldn’t be more apt. Just as the U.S. Senate is poised to confirm a “pro-life” justice to the Supreme Court, where abortion rights hang in the balance, WAM Theatre is poised to launch a play about Roe v. Wade. Lisa Loomer’s...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 8, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Last March, when the theaters shut down and the proverbial ghost lights went on, we thought we might be back onstage by now. I, for one, thought the play I was scheduled to direct would be opening this weekend. But as the spring scramble of online make-do’s turned...
by Brenda Nelson | Oct 8, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
The COVID-19 crisis and need to avoid crowds have canceled many planned events in the area, but alternatives are being arranged for online viewing, and in some cases, participation. Our online calendar has listings from organizations across the country hosting virtual...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 11, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In the usual summer theater season, I’ll see dozens of plays and put hundreds of miles on the odometer. But in this most unusual summer, the car stayed mostly in the driveway and I stayed mostly in the house. I did get to over two dozen shows – or rather, they were...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 7, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
August 13 update: Just as this piece was about to be filed last week, Barrington Stage Company and Berkshire Theatre Group, the first-in-the-country theaters to reopen with live performances, received another blow to their well-laid plans. Following on from the...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 4, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In a former life I was a musician – a singer-songwriter in the ’70s mold. One of my most memorable gigs was a drive-in concert, opening for James Taylor’s sister Kate and her band. It took place/was held in a large field in suburban New Jersey, where a raised stage...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 4, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
While most theaters in our area remain closed, some for the rest of the year – and some at risk of closing for good – others are looking past Zoom and toward Stage 3 of Massachusetts’ phased reopening, beginning next week, for ways to offer in-person performances. As...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 23, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
“A nasty side effect of the pandemic is that performing artists, like so many others, are suddenly in the position of rethinking our careers,” Kyle Boatwright told me the other day. “We still don’t know when we’ll see a stage again, and we’ve been cornered into making...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 16, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck, Uncategorized
Phase Two of Massachusetts’ staged reopening started this week, lifting some restrictions on public activities such as dining, swimming and hairdressing (really??) but not on live performance. That no-no doesn’t lift till Phase Four, which won’t come along till late...
by Chris Rohmann | May 11, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
“I’ve never missed uncomfortable theatre seats (and airplane seats, for that matter) more in my life,” Angela Combest wrote me recently. She’s the publicist for Chester Theatre Company, which, like almost every other theater in the region, has canceled its summer...
by Steve Pfarrer | Apr 30, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, News
Kris Delmhorst, holding an acoustic guitar in her lap, wore a hopeful smile as she sat recently in a room in her Shelburne Falls home and stared into a video camera. “I’m here,” she said. “Are you here? I think we’re here together, people … thank you for coming.” Like...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 13, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
With campuses closed and classrooms empty, teachers are applying long-distance work-arounds to complete their spring courses, gathering their students in Zoom rooms and juggling assignments on Moodle. Teachers of acting, directing, and other hands-on theater skills...
by Jack Brown | Apr 8, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starting to miss the world. Out of work and holed up in the house — half the week in a kind of monkish solitude, the other half with three increasingly stir-crazy kids — is exactly the opposite of what anyone wants out of...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 1, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
A ghost light is the single lamp that’s left burning onstage when the theater is dark, the audience has gone home and the cast and crew have called it a night. It’s the light that’s on when all the other lights are off. Ghost lights are shining 24/7 all over the...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 13, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Stage, Stagestruck
Yesterday morning I filed my column for next week’s Advocate, previewing upcoming screenings in Amherst Cinema’s National Theatre Live series. Yesterday afternoon I cancelled it when the cinema announced it’s closing until at least April 17th. There won’t be a...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 3, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In baseball parlance, having “a cup of coffee” refers to a player who is called up from the minors for a brief stint with the major-league team – staying just long enough to have a figurative cuppa. Stan Freeman’s The Pitch is about a fictional ballplayer who barely...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 27, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Jane Eyre may be the most-adapted of 19th-century English novels, and that’s saying something, in a field shared with Austen and Dickens. The Wikipedia entry for Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 gothic masterpiece lists over 50 film, radio and TV versions, together with dozens...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 26, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
Spring is in the air. Sort of. In some ways, after a snowy start, it has felt that winter didn’t come at all. But with clocks about to change to Daylight Savings (on Sunday, March 8!) it’s time to come out of our shells and check out a good show or museum. Here is an...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 25, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In these fake-news days, when fiction rules the cybersphere and truth is called a lie (and vice versa), the lifespan of a fact can be the length of a tweet (if it’s not stillborn). The play now running at TheaterWorks in Hartford (through March 8) can’t help but be...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 23, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two of the shows coming up on three Five College stages this week and next are family-friendly journeys into Neverland’s backstory. The other is a rock musical about a sensational axe murder. First up is Finding Neverland, the musical based on the 2004 film. It was...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 18, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In 1981, Ota Shogo had a vision: “A broken faucet center stage. A thin line of water from the spout. The sound of water. A variety of people come by, approach, touch the water, and pass on. In this composition, silence breathes as living human time, not as form.” From...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 13, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Staff Picks
Shea Lobby Series Presents: Sweet Lightning, Wallace Field, and Hawthorn // SUNDAY Boston-based duo Hawthorn, made up by Heather Scott and Taylor Holland, blend their voices expertly in arrangements that tackle themes of maternity, divorce, parenting, and healing from...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 12, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Brian Stanton, an aspiring actor, is doing a class exercise based on Oedipus Rex, and he freezes. The story of the Greek king who’s tragically ignorant of his real parents strikes too close to home. Brian, like Oedipus, was adopted, and like Oedipus he’s both eager...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 10, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
The name of the Performance Project’s youth program, First Generation, comes from its entrance requirement. All the participants identify as being a “first” in their family – the first to grow up in this country, to graduate high school or go to college, to be...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 6, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Left Hand Backwards, Lobotomobile, The Freqs, and Sciencefight at 13th Floor Music Lounge // SATURDAY Palmer-based punk and metal group Left Hand Backwards celebrates its 10th anniversary as a band this Saturday in Florence at the 13th Floor Music Lounge. Joining them...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 4, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
“I secretly believe that I am a goddess with very brief moments of incarnation,” Jennifer Johnson declares, robed in a long white shift, a pair of ram’s horns set on her head. She’s portraying – or perhaps channeling – Leonora Carrington, the free-spirited...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 30, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
LAVA Center Grand Opening Weekend // FRIDAY to SUNDAY Greenfield welcomes a new performing space on Main Street this weekend. The LAVA Center, part black box theater, part art gallery, is opening with three days of activities to reflect the center’s community-oriented...
by Chris Goudreau | Jan 30, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
Hundreds of small flickering candles lighting paths to a live ice carving demo at sunset and a fire juggling event with acrobatics and a unicycle are just some of the things in store for this year’s Luminaria, which kicks off the week of Winter Fest Amherst on Feb. 1...
by Jack Brown | Jan 27, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Featured, Film
Ever since I was first introduced to the tiny hot dog, I have been an appetizer man. Those delectable little morsels — a bite or two at most — can contain a density of flavor that many full meals can only wish to attain. And while many are served ahead of an...
by Chris Goudreau | Jan 16, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
An Amherst theater company named Queer & Now will be combining drag performances, lip syncing to contemporary pop music, as well as dance, theater, and mythology from around the world this weekend at Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield. Queer...
by Jack Brown | Jan 14, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Ask most Americans when slavery ended, and you’ll likely hear something about the Civil War and Abe Lincoln. Ask them about the rest of the world, and you may be met by a blank stare. But the truth is that it continues on in our modern era, and that many of us,...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 14, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
With all the talk of “witch hunts” flying around these days, it probably wasn’t quite a coincidence that two shows I saw recently in Berkeley, Calif., are on that very topic. Not the trumped-up political kind of witch hunt, though, but real ones born of historical...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jan 9, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
The first full moon of the new decade — the Wolf Moon — will start to howl at approximately 2:21 p.m. on Friday, January 10. Just so happens it’s also my birthday, maybe you’ll hear me howling at her from a distance wearing a crystal crown to welcome my 36th year on...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 7, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
You’d think things would slow down after the hectic holidays, but no. The Cratchits are still picking at the Christmas leftovers and the Sugar Plum Fairy has barely taken off her toe shoes, when January blows onstage full of New Year promise. This month I’m looking...
by Connolly Ryan | Jan 3, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured
First Snow, Best Snow By Connolly Ryan You remember the first time it snowed on your world? To your little body and giant eyes, the snowflakes looked like extraterrestrial Ferris-wheels and gyroscopic carousels spinning ever so slowly and quickly at the...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 19, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Books, music and a birthday at Federal St. Books // SATURDAY There are few better things to celebrate than the re-opening of a bookstore, and such a celebration comes to us this weekend when Federal St. Books has its grand reopening under the ownership of Hillary...
by Chris Goudreau | Dec 18, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured
Northampton’s annual First Night will ring in the new decade with 12 hours of performances from local musicians and bands, theater ensembles, comedy troupes, alongside salsa dancing, yo-yo tricks, and fireworks on New Year’s Eve the downtown portion of the city. The...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 17, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Every year in this column I make an equity survey of area theaters – not Equity the actors’ union, but the representation of women and people of color. And every year the outlook, once deeply depressing, gets a little better. Of the 45 full productions I saw this year...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 14, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
The past, as they say, is prologue. We look back to ground our present and see ahead more clearly. And in these murky times, that’s more necessary than ever. At least, that’s the impression I drew from the sheer number of shows I saw this year that have their roots in...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 5, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Mad Habits, Ananda Luna, and The Hanged Man at Majestic Saloon // SUNDAY This Sunday at Majestic Saloon in Northampton will feature the musical stylings of progressive folk quartet Mad Habits, experimental and world fusion artist Ananda Luna as well as Bella’s Bartok...
by Steve Pfarrer | Dec 4, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News
Time travel has been a perennial theme for fiction writers for over 200 years, as well as a theme from ancient myths, dating back far longer, from countries all over the world. It’s also an idea — or at least the notion of moving into the future is — that’s been...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 3, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Last week I previewed some area productions of those holiday stalwarts A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker. But it’s not all ghosts and sugarplums this Yuletide. Here are some alternatives for your seasonal theatergoing, tracking north to south, then making a curve...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 27, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured
It’s winter again. Or almost anyway. As the days grow shorter, it’s no coincidence that religious holidays emphasize light-up decorations and light in and of itself. At the same time, arts organizations also put an effort into bringing some light into our lives with...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 26, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Charles Dickens’ classic tale of the mean old miser who gets the Scrooge scared out of him by midnight spirits is likely the second-most often retold Christmas story, after the one about Jesus. The Russian fairy tale about the little girl and the nutcracker is...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 22, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
StompBoxTrio blends together jazz, soul, funk, and rock for a style all their own. Check out the band’s performance in the video below. Interview with StompBoxTrio:
by Advocate Staff | Nov 21, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
The Leafies You Gave Me Album Release Concert // SATURDAY Writer by day, surrealist operatic musical powerhouse by night Chris Goudreau is one of the core members of The Leafies You Gave Me, a 10-piece music and drama group that prides itself on putting on a...
by Jack Brown | Nov 19, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
The mob movie is the shadowy reflection of the American Dream. Stories of success despite humble beginnings, of hardscrabble times and strong work ethics, of family bonds and the desire for a better life — all the usual tropes apply. What makes it work so well in the...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 19, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Nilaja Sun is, quite simply, the most exciting solo performer I’ve ever seen. She’s a small, wiry woman whose expansive presence fills a stage. Drawing on an astonishing talent for physical and vocal mimicry, her pieces are fully formed plays that bring to life a...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 14, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Ona Canoa EP Release Show at the Shea Theater // SATURDAY Advocate Sessions alumni and folk trio Ona Canoa will be releasing their first record this Saturday, a debut extended play (EP) titled “Good Dream.” With that milestone in the bag, they’ll be celebrating the...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 12, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
This weekend and next, Valley colleges present a fall cornucopia of performances – a culture clash at Amherst, a gamer fantasy at Mount Holyoke, and the Valley premiere of a national dance piece at Smith. First up is Peace in the Home, this Thursday to Saturday...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 7, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Lilith of the Valley: Sea of Change // SATURDAY “Lilith of the Valley,” a music series celebrating female artists, musicians, and business owners in the Pioneer Valley (presented by PRIA Music Marketing), returns for its sixth series this Saturday at Bishop’s Lounge...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 5, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Sometimes, in your darkest fantasies, when you’re struggling to process the latest outrage from this trumped-up president — you might just entertain visions of the regicides that feature in two Valley productions. One of them is about presidential assassins, the other...
