Best Bites: All aboard the gummy express: Testing Northampton’s edible varieties
By ROBIN GOLDSTEIN For the Advocate I don’t know anything about weed gummies. I warned my editors about this. They shrugged and reminded me that I was a food columnist, so gummies were my territory. I nodded slowly. My gummy quest began with an educational visit to a...
Stagestruck: What I Did on My Summer Staycation
In the usual summer theater season, I’ll see dozens of plays and put hundreds of miles on the odometer. But in this most unusual summer, the car stayed mostly in the driveway and I stayed mostly in the house. I did get to over two dozen shows – or rather, they were...
Stagestruck: The Hills Are Live – UPDATE
Just as this piece was about to be filed last week, Barrington Stage and Berkshire Theatre Group, the first-in-the-country theaters to reopen with live performances, received another blow to their well-laid plans.
Stagestruck: Live Theater Returns, Drive-In Style
In a former life I was a musician – a singer-songwriter in the ’70s mold. One of my most memorable gigs was a drive-in concert. I flashed right back to that summer night when I heard Eggtooth Productions was planning to take a peck at the Covid shell with a drive-in performance, live and socially distanced, not in a field but on a rooftop.
Stagestruck: Curtain Up on Stage 3
While most theaters in our area remain closed, others are looking past Zoom for ways to offer in-person performances. Last week, as I was thinking about this tipping point between lockdown and relaunch, I got an unexpected invitation.
Stagestruck: In the Zoom Room, Part 2
Until the theaters open up again, a lot of hope, and a lot of creativity, reside in the Zoom Room. This week we can tune in to a play written for and about that now-ubiquitous cyber-stage, and an original video production that harks back to an era when live theater was still the predominant entertainment medium.
Stagestruck: In the Zoom Room, part 1
Phase Two of Massachusetts’ staged reopening started this week, lifting some restrictions on public activities such as dining, swimming and hairdressing (really??) but not on live performance. That no-no doesn’t lift till Phase Four, which won’t come along till late July at the earliest. Meanwhile, there’s Zoom.
Monte Belmonte Wines: Uncorked on Netflix
Written by Prentice Penny, Uncorked will, at the very least, teach you how to read a basic wine label. And it might touch that part of your heart that makes you miss your mama.
Stagestruck: Summer Stages – The prospects for live performance
The images flashing behind the glass wall of your TV or computer just can’t replace the permeable fourth wall of live performance. As summer approaches, theater folks are longing for the proverbial smell of the actors’ greasepaint and the roar of the in-person crowd. And some theaters are delivering.
A horrifying chapter from U.S. history: “Wilmington’s Lie” details white supremacist attack on African Americans in 1898
“Wilmington’s Lie” is one of the most disturbing and frightening books I’ve ever read. It should be required reading for whites who scoff at the idea of white privilege.
The virtual parlor room: Live-streamed shows organized by Signature Sounds net musicians $37,000
There are eight more shows scheduled at the moment between April 23 and May 21, including one with Northampton singer-songwriter Heather Maloney and another with Grammy winning singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien.
Sessions
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Lady Jane on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
This week’s Valley Advocate Sessions performer is folk-rock singer-songwriter Lady Jane, who combines melancholic melodies with lyrics that pull on your heart strings.
The V-Spot: Three-Way Nookie Rookie Needs Advice
“How do we get things started? How do you be a good threesome host? What are some rules we should set?”
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Cinemadope: A Woman’s World
For anyone who has grown up in the New England world of extended families, the world of Diane will be a familiar one, filled with old wounds and warm kitchens, but always with a reminder (if sometimes buried down a ways) of what makes it all so worthwhile.












