“Out” and About in Pittsfield
Everyone knows that the city of Hudson is the unofficial gay capital of our region, and now the city of Pittsfield wants to be a contender. This weekend, in an unintended harmonic convergence, Pittsfield is hosting a de facto GLBT festival in three acts (which was dubbed the Out in the Berkshires Weekend after the three events were separately planned.) It could be just the thing to spur a new wave of visitors, businesses, and homesteaders to gentrifying, artist-friendly Pittsfield.
Act I, October 10 @ 3:30 p.m. For the first time in its 28-year history, the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus will gives a recital in the Berkshires at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church as a fundraiser for the Gay/Straight Alliances at Taconic and Pittsfield High Schools. The chorus will perform songs from its hit show Boys Just Wanna Have Fun: Totally 80s. Advance tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults, and are being sold at the high schools, the church, and the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts. Tickets will be $15 at the door.
Act II: October 10 @ 6 p.m - 12:30 a.m. Quite Queer on 10/10 is both a concert and dance party conceived by 25-year-old Pittsfield native Timothy Kushi, who has rented out the Elk’s Lodge for the evening (which is across the street from Barrington Stage Company.) “Gay people in the Berkshires complain that they have to go Albany or Northampton for nightlife so I decided to make something happen here,” says Kushi, who works for the Moscow Ballet‘s office in Pittsfield. “I want to make this city a better place for me to live and, hopefully, a better place for other people to live too.” Kushi has trolled for bands that are unequivocally queer, though his only agenda is about having a good time. “Quite Queer is a social event, not a political one,” he says. He expects the four acts he’s booked—MKNG FRNDZ, Jen Urban and the Box, The G-Spots from Worcester, and Max Steele and the Party Ice from Brooklyn (video clip above)—to play from 6 - 10 p.m. with dancing to follow until 1 a.m. with “last call” at 12:30 a.m. There will be a cash bar. Tickets are available in advance for $10 at Rebel Sound Records, Dottie’s Coffee Lounge, Lichtenstein Center for the Arts. Tickets will be $12 at the door.
Act III, October 12 @ 3 and 7 p.m. Along with more than 100 other theater companies across the country on October 12, Barrington Stage Company will present two readings of the The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later (An Epilogue), which is a follow-up to the powerful 2000 play about the hate-crime murder of a gay college student named Matthew Shepherd in Laramie, Wyoming. The cast includes BSC stalwarts such as Tandy Cronyn, Mark H. Dold, Christopher Innvar and Debra Jo Rupp, as well as Pittsfield’s cultural development director Megan Whilden and Enrico Spada of Shakespeare & Company. Tickets are $15 and $10 for students.
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