The local logophile, an erudite Easthamptonite: Veteran Merriam-Webster editor Peter Sokolowski is the public face of the country’s oldest dictionary
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer When Peter Sokolowski started work as an editor at Merriam-Webster 30 years ago, about 80 people worked at the venerable dictionary company in Springfield, including about 45 editors. But based on how quiet the offices were, it might have...
Stagestruck: Deck Us All
Tidings of comfort and joy, along with seasonal satires, are filling the area’s theaters. This month, I count at least three “Christmas Carols” and a “Nutcracker,” along with original takes on evergreen Hollywood movies and more family-friendly events.
Stagestruck: Bright Half Life
Tanya Barfield’s brief two-character play “Bright Half Life,” at Silverthorne Theater, looks at the span of a relationship through a kaleidoscopic lens – not as an arc but in an ever-changing firmament of fleeting moments.
Stagestruck: Singin’ in the Storm
K and E Theater Group’s current production of he musical “Cabaret” at the Northampton Center for the Arts features a superb ensemble who adroitly capture both the show’s infectious vitality and its painful trajectory.
Stagestruck: Identity Crises
Two comedies now playing in the Valley turn on mix-ups and plot twists. “Don’t Dress for Dinner” is a sex farce set in the French countryside. “he Pirates of Penzance” is an operetta set in the hometown of “Arrr!”
Stagestruck: Ah, Wilderness! – race-blind or race-conscious?
Hartford Stage, like so many other theaters across the country, is having a reckoning with the upheavals of the past year-plus and has come to a tardy recognition that Black lives matter, on the stage as on the street.
Back from the Edge – Gateway City Arts almost died last year. Now it’s being reborn.
The 19th-century mill building on Holyoke’s Race Street that’s now home to Gateway City Arts almost died last year, a victim of the pandemic. But it’s now coming back to life. And for artist and co-owner Vitek Kruta, the whole building has become his canvas.
Stagestruck: An Absurdity of Chairs
An ancient couple, known only as Old Man and Old Woman, are living in bleak isolation in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic time in which all of civilization – or at least Paris – has been destroyed. They are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the survivors, an assortment of guests they’ve invited to hear a mysterious “message” from the Old Man that will save the world, or “what’s left of it.”
Stagestruck: Tricky Treats
A Halloween basket of goodies in the area this weekend and next – from ghost stories imagined and real, to plays witchy and weird, plus a one-night Happening.
Stagestruck: Voices on the Wind
WAM Theatre’s press kit includes advice on how to approach reporting on their production of “Kamloopa.” A statement by the playwright, Kim Senklip Harvey, a member of the Syilx and Tsilhqot’in Nation centered in British Columbia, outlines “Protocols for entering the Indigenous Artistic Ceremony” – not only in general but for this play specifically. Top of the list: “Indigenous protocol is to be respected. Period.”
Stagestruck: Taking Off
Mrs. Joe Bradshaw – née Shirley Valentine – is talking to the wall in her working-class Liverpool kitchen. She’s bored, lonely, dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Her kids are grown and gone, and her husband – well, she might as well be talking to the wall.
Sessions
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Staff Picks: Midsommar, Bread & Puppet, Weege & The Wondertwins, and Country Music
Amherst Cinema will be screening a special director’s cut of Midsommar on Thursday with an added 20 minutes.
The V-Spot: Am I in a Healthy Open Relationship?
“The thing is, even though I was the person to suggest an open relationship, I’ve had yet to ‘take advantage’ of our arrangement, if you know what I mean.”
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Stagestruck: “Culture is my food!”
This year’s through-theme at the Ko Festival of Performance, which opened last weekend in Amherst, is “Habitat (human)” – a topic that also runs through two more offerings this weekend: How I Learned to Drive, from Ghost Light Theater in Holyoke, and Moving Water, a work in progress at Serious Play Theatre Ensemble in Northampton. All three offer rich cultural nourishment.
