New life for Iron Horse: Parlor Room buys longtime entertainment venue, plans to reopen early next year
By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL Staff Writer At long last, the Iron Horse Music Hall has a new owner, and music could be emanating from the venerable Center Street location as soon as February. The Parlor Room, a nearby music venue run by a nonprofit, announced last month...
Marty Nathan: ‘Clean energy doesn’t come out of smokestack’
Polluted air means worse asthma for any community. Though Springfield’s air has been cleaned up significantly over the decades, Hampden County still gained an F rating for levels of the respiratory toxin ozone this year.
Happenings in the Valley
Our online calendar has listings from organizations across the country hosting virtual events, but we’ve chosen to highlight some from local venues and groups.
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.
Sessions
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Two Lyrical, Soulful Spitters: A Q&A with Springfield hip-hop artists T’Swan and Fabeyon
Rappers T’Swan and Fabeyon are hoping to mold a hip-hop music scene in their hometown of Springfield.
The V-Spot: Bugged About Body Hair
Dear Yana, As of last year, I love my body hair. I especially like my pubic hair because I can style it, usually depending on my mood: totally unshaven, as a strip, but rarely fully shaven. However, I’ve noticed that when I have the chance to get intimate with...
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Stagestruck: Mashups in Makeup
How’s this for genre mashups: Brontë gothic in which two of the characters are animals. Wildean romcom in which all the actors are women. Golden Age Spain in which a woman lives as a man. Multidisciplinary invention in which diversity seeks community. Renaissance...











