Stage
by James Heflin | May 21, 2008 | Stage
Talking With, a play by Jane Martin, is a group of stories aimed at evoking a sense of the Everywoman. The cast for the show includes many members of the Town Players. The characters who inhabit the play include an elderly woman looking for some peace and quiet, a...
by Advocate staff | May 29, 2008 | Stage
Under the direction of Jodi Falk and Jennifer Polins, the Catalyst Dance Company performs in downtown Northampton this week in celebration of its 10th anniversary. The program takes place in Pulaski Park and features work choreographed by Jim Coleman, Therese...
by Kendra Thurlow | Jun 5, 2008 | Stage
If you've ever wondered if there was more to sorority life than pillow fights, sweater sets and cute frat boys, don't miss this week's installment of Funny Fridays. Ladies from ImprovBoston (pictured) trek west to perform RUSH, an improvised insiders'...
by James Heflin | Jun 12, 2008 | Stage
Broccoli is seldom accused of being sexy. But it is, of course, good for you. If you (or your kids) don't like eating your vegetables, the pep talk fun of Foodplay may be just the spoonful of sugar you need to chomp down the cruciferous stuff. The troupe employs...
by Kendra Thurlow | Jun 18, 2008 | Stage
Following the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1959, the Drepung Loseling Monastery, in the hills on the northern outskirts of Lhasa, was closed, along with nearly all of Tibet's 6,500 monasteries. Many were completely destroyed. Most of Loseling's monks were...
by Sarah Gibbons | Jun 19, 2008 | Stage
In 1965, the country was in the midst of a vicious war, had just endured the assassination of its beloved president, and was embarking on an era of free love and decadence. John Guare’s House of Blue Leaves (which first premiered off-Broadway in 1971) is set in...
by Kendra Thurlow | Jun 25, 2008 | Stage
"Sockdologizing" was a fashionable slang word in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it means stunning, forceful or decisive, as a blow. It's one of the last few words President Abraham Lincoln heard before he was shot.Lincoln and his wife, Mary, seated in...
by Sarah Gibbons | Jun 26, 2008 | Stage
Modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis, purchased the Jacob’s Pillow farm in 1930 in hopes of creating a pastoral setting for their dance company. But the Denishawn Company’s residence was to be short-lived—the couple separated a...
by Sam Kimball | Jul 3, 2008 | Stage
Abitter family feud, unrequited young love and suicide–not reality TV, but the classic story of Romeo and Juliet. The local Hampshire Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare Under the Stars 2008 summer season kicks off with a production of this enduring, popular...
by Ella Longpre | Jul 9, 2008 | Stage
Pregnant with connotations of Johnny Depp and stacks of illegally copied CDs, the word "pirate" lurks in the blogosphere and on our televisions. But rarely does one get to observe live-action swashbuckling. Enter The Mad Pirate and the Mermaid, in which an...
by Levon Kinney | Jul 10, 2008 | Stage
There’s a new circus in town. Circus Smirkus brings together talented children ages 14 to 19 from around the world. Audiences are treated to a dazzling array of acrobatics, juggling and madcap antics, with hilarious lessons in science, math, history and...
by Sam Kimball | Jul 23, 2008 | Stage
After 15 years apart, Ray and Una meet again. So begins David Harrowers' Olivier Award-winning play, Blackbird, the latest production by the Chester Theatre Company. Their relationship would have been unremarkable had Una not been 12 and Ray 40 at the time of...
by Sam Kimball | Jul 23, 2008 | Stage
John Hodgman has a secret. Fortunately, he isn’t very good at keeping it. This week, the comedian and writer performs a “completely secret” show at the Rendezvous in Turners Falls. Audiences may readily recognize him as the disgruntled PC in a recent...
by Andrew Varnon | Aug 7, 2008 | Stage
"It's really like the circus coming to town," says Steven Maler, artistic director of the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. To mount a three-night engagement of As You Like It in Forest Park Aug. 8-10, Maler's troupe will head west from Boston with...
by James Heflin | Aug 7, 2008 | Stage
Among the most absorbent of hip-hop performers, MC Mr. Napkins raps about common concerns with an earnestness that's far less dramatic than the braggadocio of most gangstas. When he takes on a cop, it's a cop who's stopped Mr. Napkins for not obeying...
by Tom Sturm | Aug 7, 2008 | Stage
Founding member and director Tony Simotes of Shakespeare & Company draws some fascinating parallels between the story of their current production, Othello, and the situation in present-day America. Othello, a Moorish mercenary who is chosen to lead the navy of...
by James Heflin | Aug 13, 2008 | Stage
Chester Theatre doesn't mess around when it comes to casting. Their actors tend to have extensive, impressive bios. That often makes a visit to what used to be called "the miniature theatre" worthwhile. In the case of Chester Theatre's current...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 13, 2008 | Stage
Ten thirty. That’s 10:30 a.m.—not a respectable hour for theater people. Still digesting my morning coffee, I’m sitting in Shakespeare & Company’s mainstage theater amid a respectable, if compact, crowd of theatergoers. It’s the...
by James Heflin | Aug 14, 2008 | Stage
The Double Edge Theatre farm in Ashfield seems like a rural kingdom. Its main buildings cluster together near the road, and its 105 acres stretch away into the hills. Bringing the troupe to Ashfield from its original Allston home (a move the group made in 1995) was an...
by Tom Sturm | Aug 14, 2008 | Stage
If only the Middle East could take a cue from these two travelling comedians: Azhar Usman (a Muslim) and Rabbi Bob Alper (a Jew) have combined their respective arsenals of yuks to battle a common enemy: boredom.Alper, who holds a doctorate from Princeton’s...
by Ella Longpre | Aug 21, 2008 | Stage
It's a pretty safe bet that sometime in your adult life, you will manage to kill a few houseplants through simple neglect. Though it's easy to forget to pour water over your roommate's African violets every morning, it's pretty hard for even the most...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 28, 2008 | Stage
By coincidence, both Pittsfield's Barrington Stage Company and the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge are currently running plays by that epitome of urbane wit and sexual skirmishing, Noel Coward. Both productions are attired in smoking jackets and evening...
by Kendra Thurlow | Sep 10, 2008 | Stage
If, like most people, you didn't get a chance to go to Beijing and witness the spectacular show of human strength, agility and showmanship that is the Olympics, have no fear, Cirque du Soleil offers a chance to see some other extraordinary physical feats (and you...
by Tom Sturm | Sep 11, 2008 | Stage
Well, let’s hope so, Baryshnikov, because the latest conception of Northampton’s two-woman dance company, Slipperyfish, appears to require some audience participation. The 24 Hour Dance consists of an evening wherein audience members and performers alike...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 18, 2008 | Stage
By the time I started writing in these pages 22 years ago, the Advocate was already a teenager and the glory days of Valley theater were already over. At least you might get that impression from talking with some of the people who were around back then, when Hamp was...
by Levon Kinney | Sep 18, 2008 | Stage
For those who enjoy a few drinks and some observational humor, the Second Sunday Comedy Series, hosted by Dave Yubruh (pictured), may just fill the void. The Route 63 Roadhouse offers up a hefty dose of comedy, drinks and pub food each month when the club features at...
by Kendra Thurlow | Sep 25, 2008 | Stage
Until the 16th century, ventriloquism (called gastromancy by the ancient Greeks) was closely associated with necromancy: the art of "throwing" one's voice so that it appeared to be coming from another location was often used to make people believe they...
by by Sarah Gibbons | Oct 2, 2008 | Stage
Interdisciplinary theater artist Djola Branner does not write plays. He creates what he refers to as "collage[s] of movement, text and melody." Branner co-founded the acclaimed Pomo Afro Homos (short for Postmodern African-American homosexuals), a prominent...
by Tom Sturm | Oct 9, 2008 | Stage
In an effort to rebuild the Shantigar Foundation’s once-magnificent theater barn, foundation members present two stagings of foundation creator Jean-Claude van Itallie’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead (or How Not to Do It Again). A longtime practitioner of...
by Ella Longpre | Oct 16, 2008 | Stage
When Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner appeared on screens last year, the film captured the desperate, epic drama of the book with vast landscapes and a vibrant score. This week, Sorab Wadia (pictured) performs a new adaptation of The Kite Runner: a quiet,...
by Kendra Thurlow | Oct 16, 2008 | Stage
Shakespeare's Macbeth is so steeped in superstition with its witches, visions, apparitions and prophecies that many thespians have been known to refuse to call the play by its name in fear of invoking a curse, instead referring to it as "The Scottish...
by James Heflin | Oct 23, 2008 | Stage
If an explosion of high romance is what you desire, where better to travel than 19th-century Spain? In Georges Bizet's most famous operatic work, Carmen, a gypsy woman stirs up passion and drama with her unapologetic and hedonistic embrace of life.Teatro Linco...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 23, 2008 | Stage
Starting this week, I'll be writing about theater in these pages on a regular basis. As befits this paper, I consider myself an advocate for the theater—someone who loves the stage, respects and admires the work of the individuals and companies who tread the...
by Kendra Thurlow | Oct 30, 2008 | Stage
In Ted Tiller's adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, the bulk of the action takes place at psychiatrist Dr. Seward's living quarters on the grounds of the Asylum for the Insane in 1930s England. At dinner one night the characters—Dr. Seward; Sybil,...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 30, 2008 | Stage
It's called the actor's nightmare. You find yourself onstage in a play you don't know, playing a part you didn't realize you'd been cast in and don't know the lines for.The actors in The Golden Lotus might well have felt they were in a...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 6, 2008 | Stage
Six black men—well, five men and a young boy—share the stage and interlocking lives in Daniel Beaty's Resurrection, the new play currently at Hartford Stage. Each of these sons of the 'hood is confronting the legacies of racism and poverty with...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 6, 2008 | Stage
Oscar Wilde's short story The Canterville Ghost, written in 1887, is a parody that turns the tables on the classic ghost story. Sir Simon de Canterville, who died mysteriously in 1584, just loves scaring the bejesus out of people. But when the Otises, a thoroughly...
by Tom Sturm | Nov 13, 2008 | Stage
The Leading Ladies (pictured) boast the status "the only outlet for musical theater on the Smith College campus," and are still going strong as they stage their 14th production this fall. Since 2002, they've put on such classics as Lucky Stiff and A...
by James Heflin | Nov 13, 2008 | Stage
A few years ago, as a dedicated listener to the NPR show This American Life, I experienced a giddy radio moment. Having procured my This American Life secret decoder ring, I awaited the voice of Fred Foy, Lone Ranger radio announcer. I unscrambled the secret message...
by James Heflin | Nov 13, 2008 | Stage
Howard Zinn, the people's historian, also wrote a play called Marx in Soho. The play is a one-man appearance by the original communist, who's been given an hour and a half to come back from the dead to defend his ideas against those who corrupted and distorted...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 20, 2008 | Stage
Many of us in the Valley theater community mourned the demise of StageWest 10 years ago, and many deplored the new artistic direction taken by its replacement, CityStage. Where StageWest maintained a repertory company for many years, mounted original productions and...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 20, 2008 | Stage
Three two-handers this week: a couple of elderly widowers looking back on their lifelong friendship; a Gothic spoof with two actors playing all the roles; an ancient epic retold in a collaboration between a storyteller and a musician. Let's begin with that last...
by by Sarah Gibbons | Nov 27, 2008 | Stage
No one wants to be a sucker. And Hollywood is obsessed with the more deceitful and gutsy among us, those who would make us suckers.The live show Hoodwinked! arrives at Springfield's CityStage this week to demonstrate the art of the con. The show stars four...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 27, 2008 | Stage
Lemon is a star of hip-hop performance poetry. Like most of his colleagues on the spoken-word stage, he came up through the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and honed his craft in the poetry slam scene. He was a member of the hip-hop theater ensemble Universes when they premiered...
by Kendra Thurlow | Dec 4, 2008 | Stage
Much like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Christmas Carol, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is a Christmas season must-see. This year, instead of just catching it on the boob tube, head down to West Springfield and watch...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 4, 2008 | Stage
'Tis the season. In the next few weeks, troupes all over the region will be rolling out their annual Christmas Carols and Nutcrackers. In Hartford, TheaterWorks is getting a jump on them all with The Seafarer, an unlikely bowl of Yuletide wassail from the most...
by Becca Liss | Dec 11, 2008 | Stage
In a time when access to healthcare is a pressing concern for many, it isn't out of place to wonder what we would do to get it. Moliere's play The Imaginary Invalid takes a comedic look at this question with a hypochondriac father who seeks to marry his...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 11, 2008 | Stage
It begins in 1963, with a woman bleeding to death in a hallway of Harlem Hospital, the victim of an attempted coat-hanger abortion. Bill Baird, a 31-year-old medical researcher, witnessed that horrible, unnecessary death. The experience, he now says, made him into an...
by Sarah Feldberg | Dec 18, 2008 | Stage
Images associated with ballet—lithe, tutu-clad dancers and elaborate, evocative set design—are distinctly rooted in Romantic artistic traditions, and some of the world's most iconic ballets are derived from definitive Romantic texts (The Nutcracker was...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 18, 2008 | Stage
A fixture of the holiday entertainment season is those perennial reruns of It's a Wonderful Life. The beloved movie has now found its way onto the stage, in not one but two quite different dramatizations. One of them fills the stage with 53 performers, and one...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 8, 2009 | Stage
For stage actors, the standard demarcation between professional and amateur is membership in Actors' Equity Association. While you can be paid for acting without being in Equity—and in some cases vice versa—the union is the accepted mark of those who...
by Kendra Thurlow | Dec 25, 2008 | Stage
Comedienne Suzanne Westernhoefer's first television appearance was on Sally, a talk show hosted by Sally Jessy Raphael, in 1991. She went on to become the first openly lesbian actress to appear on national TV with a performance on Late Night with David Letterman....
by Kendra Thurlow | Jan 8, 2009 | Stage
Although Kevin Bacon has been in an almost absurd number of movies—Mystic River, Hollow Man, The Woodsman, Wild Things, Sleepers, Murder in the First, Apollo 13, A Few Good Men, Flatliners and Tremors, to name a few—it's impossible to forget his...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 25, 2008 | Stage
"I think we're coming into a time when we need to rethink everything—the way we relate to each other, and the way we bring people together."That's Linda McInerney, director of a new production of that old favorite, A Christmas Carol, which...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 15, 2009 | Stage
Winter is at its height, the economy is in the gutter, and so are your spirits. It might be just the time to raise the latter with some truly silly entertainment. If so, a couple of musicals that opened last week could be just the ticket.Seeing Idols of the King at...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 1, 2009 | Stage
Conventional theater wisdom has it that you can only be a professional actor in New York or Los Angeles, or at least in a metropolis like Boston or Chicago. But if the mark of a professional is working regularly and getting paid for it, there are actors here in the...
by Alex Ross | Jan 15, 2009 | Stage
Grab your flannel shirt, cultivate that five o'clock shadow and get to West Springfield for what promises to be "an unabashedly sparkling romp in the woods." Playwrights Fred Alley and James Kaplan (the minds behind the hit Guys on Ice) return to bring...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 1, 2009 | Stage
I saw 73 plays this year, and covered 30 of them in these pages and on WFCR Public Radio. I also directed five shows and performed in three. Call it a passion, call it an obsession, it's what I love. As the year draws down, I've enjoyed looking back over those...
by Becca Liss | Jan 22, 2009 | Stage
In a country as big as the United States, the concept of nationalism can sometimes seem enormous, so it might be easier to resort to statism. Of course, the realities of being a Vermonter or a Bay Stater or a New Yorker are always far more complex than a pithy...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 29, 2009 | Stage
All of Andrea Hairston's plays are about the same thing. That's not a criticism. Over 30 years, her work with Chrysalis Theatre has formed an interconnected series of pieces that converge in recurring themes: violence, racism, women's strength, the...
