Summer of loves: Polyamory in the Valley isn’t what you think
By Melissa Karen Sances For the Valley Advocate “You know what goes on behind closed doors in a polyamorous household?” Fox asks, and I lean in closer. We’re on the phone and he is 800 miles away, so I am leaning toward — nothing. I am on the precipice of something, I...
Stagestruck: From Silver Screen to Holiday Stage
Two shows based on classic holiday movies are brightening area stages this season. In Pittsfield, Berkshire Theatre Group offers the stage adaptation of the 1954 blockbuster “White Christmas,” and Hartford Stage Company has moved “It’s a Wonderful Life” into an old-time radio studio.
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.”
Sessions
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Lightning strikes: Valley psych folk band Sweet Lightning makes its music video debut
The lush pastoral sounds of acoustic guitar, flute, fiddle, and upright bass echoed in slow motion through the Pushkin Gallery in Greenfield.
The V-Spot: My BF Hangs with my Ex-BFF
“I don’t tell my boyfriend not to see her or contact her, because that would be toxic, but it does make me very uncomfortable for them to hang out together.”
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Stagestruck: Hot Topics – Summer theaters reflect the times
Hamlet, we recall, reminded the players visiting Elsinore that the theater’s job is to reflect “the very age and body of the time.” Times being what they are, it’s no surprise that quite a number of shows this summer do just that. The schedule in the Valley and...











