Theater Matters with Jarice Hanson: Valley theater companies and audiences grow: Attracting new audiences has become an art in itself
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate In this next year, theater goers from Hartford to the Berkshires are going to have more entertainment choices than they’ve had in many years because attracting new audiences has become an art in itself. Older, more established...
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.
The solar divide
When it’s right in front of you, like the nine decaying cherry trees on Northampton’s Warfield Place that the city of Northampton recently removed in order to rebuild the road and sidewalk, residents lose their minds. Some likened the tree-cutting “violence” to napalm...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Not perverted, just Italian
When disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed his poor behavior on being Italian, I cringed. To quote Lady Gaga, “I’m Italian-American.” Aren’t there enough negative Italian stereotypes to deal with besides lecherous pervert? We’re supposed to talk with our...
The V-Spot with Yana Tallon-Hicks: Is My Sex Life Dead? Or Is There Hope Yet?
Dear Yana, From your perspective as a sex educator and relational therapist, what are your thoughts about how to know if two people have sexually grown apart due to outgrowing one another sexually or whether a relational sexual reboot is just needed? I guess...
Sessions
Check out our most recent performances in the playlist below, or click here to dig into interviews and related material!No Results Found
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Valley Advocate Sessions Podcast – Blame Cadence
Blame Cadence is a one-woman chorus of looped soulful a cappella pop.
The V-Spot: Finding a Less-Intense Vibrator
” ‘I’m just too sensitive,’ I ‘d think to myself as my clitoris recoiled from the slightest brush of a cutesy lil’ pink plastic vibe like a dental filling biting down on a ball of tinfoil.”
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Cinemadope: Show and tell — films and filmmaking
Since its inception in 2007, the Ashfield Film Festival has become an annual gathering point for film lovers of the Valley.
