Staying in the game: Veteran actors and teachers Raye and Candace Birk are still involved with theater after decades of performance
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Looking for some talented older actors who can play a wide range of roles? Who have decades of experience in theater, film and television? Raye Birk and Candace Barrett Birk are at your service. The Florence couple, relatively new...
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 cruel year we’ve just been through. (I write “Zoom.”)
Itching for some theater, music? Here’s some ideas
It’s been a long year, but how’s this for a bit of uplifting news – shows are coming back, albeit slowly at first. Here is a roundup of some of the in-person and virtual events starting in May. Music Sunday, May 2 Karrin Allyson, Marty Jaffe and Valley Jazz Voices, 4...
A weed newbie?: Recreational marijuana is here to stay, but where should you start? A playbook for beginners
OK, so you’re new to this marijuana thing. You’ve driven by one — or two or three — dispensaries that are popping up like Pez dispensers in communities up and down the Pioneer Valley. You’re curious. You’ve got some stimulus money. Odds are you’re on the “older” side,...
The V-Spot with Yana Tallon-Hicks: How do I prepare for first-time sex?
By Yana Tallon-Hicks I recently began a new relationship and am something of a late bloomer (I’m in my mid-20s), so I have very little actual experience when it comes to physical intimacy with a partner. My boyfriend and I have discussed it a bit, and he’s very...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Let these dozen rosés meet your desires
Rosé is not a grape. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a party or restaurant and someone asks me, “Would you like a rosé?” That question is the functional equivalent of “would you like white wine?” The answer to both questions is “yes.” Follow up questions:...
Live at Last
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: My Year of Zoom
In the Year of Covid, Zoom was a blessing – a marvel of the age, allowing face-to-face contact and online performance. But it was also a curse – and I spent a lot of time cursing at it. Over the year, the drawbacks did constant battle with the benefits.
Cover story: Live at Last – Area theaters step back onstage
It’s been over a year since COVID-19 shut down theaters across the world, and performing artists are aching to get back onstage with a live audience. Now, a few theaters in the Valley and Berkshires are planning in-person summer performances, indoors and out.
Stagestruck: Sojourners in the Bardo
Imagine that you suddenly find yourself in a weird netherworld, suspended between the life you knew and an uncertain future. No, wait. You don’t have to imagine it – it’s the place we’ve all found ourselves in for the past year. In “The Waiting Room,” Silverthorne Theater seeks to enlist the audience in an act of collaboration with a key pandemic player.
Stagestruck: Letters to Kamala
The election of Kamala Harris as the first woman Vice President of the United States, as well as the first African American and the first of South Asian descent, is cause for celebration. But those “firsts” don’t sit quite comfortably with the three women of color in a new play, “Letters to Kamala.” These ladies are pissed.
Sessions
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They’re Kind Of A Big Deal: A few of the Valley’s homegrown rock stars
When he’s not aboard Iron Maiden’s private jet en route to a 50,000-plus stadium gig in South America or Europe, Anthrax guitarist Jonathan Donais says there’s no place he’d rather be than his Easthampton home and “triangle.”
The V-Spot: Women (and Men), Do Your Kegels
Stronger Kegel muscles give you super-charged bladder control. Oh, and better orgasms. Did we mention the orgasms?
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Stagestruck: The Dollar Princess – WAM Theatre premieres “Lady Randy”
nne Undeland, the playwright and star of Lady Randy, says she wanted to find a 19th-century woman to build a one-person show around. “It soon became clear that if I wanted name recognition, I had to find a woman who was associated with a famous man. Dammit!”










