Arts
Stagestruck: Postcards from the Cape, #3
Every year, in my annual pilgrimage to Cape Cod, I make sure to catch whatever is playing at Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet, which describes itself as “a theater by the sea that’s right on the edge” and lives up to that billing. This year’s reduced schedule...
Stagestruck: Postcards from the Cape, #2
Here’s my second e-postcard from Cape Cod, following yesterday’s report on WHAT theater’s Nat Turner in Jerusalem. Up the Cape now, to Provincetown, where the play Tennessee Williams wrote in that town is being revived. Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie in 1943, when...
Stagestruck: Postcards from the Cape, #1
Every summer I spend a week on Cape Cod, enjoying the beach and, of course, the theater. This year I saw four shows at three Outer Cape theaters, two of which I haven’t visited in a while. The Provincetown Theater is reviving a classic that was written there; in...
Stagestruck: A Valley Half-Dozen
It’s August, and the summer theater season is winding down. No, wait. It’s not. Five Berkshire stages are running to the end of the month, and in the Valley, no fewer than six live-in-person productions will be vying for our attention this weekend alone. Here’s a...
Stagestruck: Burnett-ing Down the House
Going in, I knew next to nothing about the material in last week’s mainstage show at Jacob’s Pillow, Life Encounters, Archie Burnett’s personal history of house dance. But I was surprised to see that I knew one of the dancers. Not personally, unfortunately, but I’ve...
Stagestruck: The ‘Art’ of Friendship
Serge has just purchased an ultra-abstract painting for an outrageous sum and is excited to show it off to his good friend Marc – who looks it over and offers his assessment: “You paid two hundred grand for this shit?” You see, it’s a large white canvas – all white,...
Stagestruck: Two Great Ladies on Noah’s Ark
My partner is a literature professor, specializing in women writers. She has noted a principle in both scholarship and fiction that she calls the Noah’s Ark Approach: If you want to get attention for your female subject, pair her with a famous man (think Girl with a...
Stagestruck: The Weather, the Union, and Othello
I had a theater-going “double feature” planned for last weekend – two outdoor shows in a row with adventurous Berkshire-based companies. But those plans were disturbed by two irresistible forces: Nature and Actors’ Equity Association. At Shakespeare & Company in...
Stagestruck: A Shaky Shakespeare
Shakespeare & Company’s King Lear, the first show to open on its Lenox campus in a year and a half, marks another return of live theater after the long intermission. It’s also the inaugural production in the troupe’s new outdoor amphitheater, a handsome addition...
Stagestruck: Dancing on a Soggy Pillow
2020 was devastating for performing arts across the region and the world, perhaps none more so than for Jacob’s Pillow, the 79-year-old dance mecca in the Berkshires. Not only did the pandemic kill last year’s entire season, but in November the Doris Duke Theatre, the...
Stagestruck with Chris Rohmann: Curtain (or tent pole) Up! as summer theaters reopen
Sometimes in the course of the past year I despaired of ever again hearing that mantra of curtain speeches in the cyber-era: “Please silence your cellphones.” But in late June it happened, as three western Mass companies greeted live audiences with live performances,...
Stagestruck: Earnest and Chester
Last week, Barrington Stage Company’s Julianne Boyd greeted the audience for her troupe’s opening production, staged in a socially distanced tent at the edge of Pittsfield, with these long-awaited words: “I want to welcome you to live theater.” This week, introducing...
Stagestruck: And We’re Back!
Sometimes in the course of the past year I despaired of ever again hearing that mantra of curtain speeches in the cyber-era: “Please silence your cell phones” – or of hearing the words spoken by Julianne Boyd on Barrington Stage Company’s opening night: “I want to...
Stagestruck: Through the Portal
Down a pebbled path flanked by tall grasses in an orchard hung with ripening fruit, we come to an archway fashioned of bent branches: The Portal. There, our Guides invite us to hang a slip of paper on which we’ve written something we wish to leave behind, after the...
Stagestruck: My Year of Zoom
The Year of Covid shut down live theater and just about every other in-person interaction, in the arts as elsewhere. In their place: the Year of Zoom. In the circumstances, Zoom was a blessing – a marvel of the age, allowing face-to-face contact and online...
Cover story: Live at Last – Area theaters step back onstage
Sheryl Stoodley is standing in the middle of the Workroom, the performance space in the Northampton Community Arts Trust building curated by A.P.E.@Hawley. In time, it will become a fully equipped studio theater, but for now it’s an enormous unfinished cube, more like...
Stagestruck: Sojourners in the Bardo
Imagine, if you will, that you suddenly find yourself in a weird netherworld, suspended between the life you knew and an uncertain future. You’re stuck in a confined space that is both familiar and strange; you’re communicating with others via a small glass window,...
Stagestruck: Letters to Kamala
The election of Kamala Harris as the first woman Vice President of the United States, not to mention the first African American and the first of South Asian descent, is certainly cause for celebration – as well as thoughts of “It’s about time.” But those “firsts”...
Stagestruck: A ‘Caesar’ for Our Time
The publicity teaser asks, “Why Julius Caesar now?” And why, for that matter, put an all-female cast into Shakespeare’s most male-centered tragedy? The short answer to the second question is that the show comes from Smith College, and the longer one embraces the first...
Stagestruck: Treading Water – Theaters strive to stay afloat, as two go under
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,...
Stagestruck: “Stagehand” Redux
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...
Stagestruck: Unseen, but Audible
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...
Stagestruck: Torch Songs
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...
Stagestruck: But Is It Theater? – The Year in Zoom
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...
Stagestruck: A Woke Thanksgiving
“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...
Stagestruck: Halloween & Other Horror Shows
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...
Stagestruck: Immersion By Proxy
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...
Stagestruck: Roe in the Balance
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...
Stagestruck: We’re All Improvisers Now
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...
Happenings in the Valley
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...
Stagestruck: What I Did on My Summer Staycation
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...
Stagestruck: The Hills Are Live – UPDATE
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...
Stagestruck: Live Theater Returns, Drive-In Style
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...
Stagestruck: Curtain Up on Stage 3
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...
Stagestruck: In the Zoom Room, Part 2
“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...
Stagestruck: In the Zoom Room, part 1
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...
Stagestruck: Summer Stages – The prospects for live performance
“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...
The virtual parlor room: Live-streamed shows organized by Signature Sounds net musicians $37,000
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...
Stagestruck: Bridging the Social Distance
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...
Cinemadope: Alone Together
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...
Stagestruck: Ghost Lights in the Darkness
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...
Stagestruck: State of Plays
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...
Stagestruck: One-Pitch Wonder
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...
Stagestruck: Plain Jane
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...
Spring Arts Preview 2020
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...
Stagestruck: Facts & Fancies
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...
Stagestruck: Peter Pan, Meet Lizzie Borden
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...
Stagestruck: The Shape of Silence
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...
Staff Picks: Hawthorn, KidsBestFest, Ruth Garbus, and a staged Smith play reading
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...
Stagestruck: Filling in the Blank
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...
Stagestruck: Stand Tall, Mi Gente!
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...
Staff Picks: Eleanor Levine, Left Hand Backwards, Hellen Fremont, and a movement workshop for tired activists
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...
Love Letter to a Nightmare
“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...
Staff Picks: LAVA Center Opening, Silver Chord Bowl, Vermont Crankie Fest, and Sierra Grille show
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...
A flame in the midst of winter: Amherst Winter Fest theme this year is ‘fire and ice’
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...
Cinemadope: The Short List
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...
Swimming in drag theater
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...
Cinemadope: Child’s Work
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,...
Stagestruck on the Road: Witches in Berkeley
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...E-Edition
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