Arts
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 11, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two shows coming to this area have Mexican echoes. One is a children’s-story allegory of the current border crisis, the other a Mexican dramedy with an international range. Ropes, by Bárbara Colio, has been performed extensively in Spanish-speaking countries,...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 5, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Midsommar: Director’s Cut at Amherst Cinema // THURSDAY My favorite film of the summer is director Ari Aster’s sophomore film, “Midsommar,” a folk-horror movie in the vein of classic 1973 British horror flick, “The Wickerman.” Without spoiling too much, this is a...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 2, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Thinking back over the summer theater season just ended, images from memorable shows are passing before my mind’s eye, and ear — from striking moments in performances to sets and soundscapes. Here are some Valley snapshots. Chester Theatre Company celebrated its 30th...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 29, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
Smith College Museum of Art // TUESDAY-SATURDAY The Smith College Museum of Art has just opened a new exhibit on the late Japanese-Amercan poet and printmaker Munio Makuuch, who with his family spent much of World War II in an internment camp in Idaho for Japanese...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 20, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
It wasn’t intentional, but thinking back on the programs I’ve seen at Jacob’s Pillow this summer, and forward to one that’s on this week, I realized that every concert on my dance card this year is by African-American-led companies. Unintentional, perhaps, but not...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 13, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Shakespeare & Company’s name has threefold associations. It’s a theater that works in the company, as it were, of its eponym. It shares the name of the legendary bookshop on Paris’s Left Bank, lending an air of bohemian audacity and camaraderie to the enterprise...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 6, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Summertime is winding down, and so is the Valley’s theater season – but not quite yet. Chester Theatre Company opens its final show this week (see below), Double Edge Theatre continues the month-long run of its perambulating epic I Am the Baron (reviewed here), and...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 1, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Both of the longstanding children’s theaters that enliven the Valley’s summer schedule tickle the funnybone while feeding the imagination, but they go about it in quite different ways. Tom McCabe’s PaintBox Theatre specializes in twisted takes on treasured tales, with...
by Will Meyer | Aug 1, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured
Woodblock printmaker, sculptor, and quilter Eli Liebman and I went for a walk recently. Traversing the edge of North Street to the dike in Hadley, Liebman was fixated on the implied violence lurking beneath the surface of quaint, suburban life — from the colonial...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 30, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In the final week of this year’s Ko Festival of Performance, Sabrina Hamilton is looking forward to this weekend’s performance by the Ugandan musician-humanitarian Samite (see below) while musing on the season-so-far. Attendance is high and season subscriptions are...
