Editor

Parties

Spencertown Academy's Twilight in the Garden

On Friday, June 24, Madeline Hooper and Ian Hooper (left),  turned up at the Spencertown Academy's Twilight in the Garden benefit well prepared.  What they found, thanks to hosts Jerry Croghan and Louis Hedgecock's spacious barn and adjacent tent, was a waterproof "garden" party

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Arts

Larry Keigwin + Company: Sparkle and Sass

Review by Bess J.M. Hochstein Photos: Christopher Duggan courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow When putting together each summer’s Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Ella Baff ensures that the schedule includes something for everyone. This weekend’s pairing of Keigwin + Company in the Doris Duke Theater, while Ballet Genève

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Arts

Review: "A Streetcar Named Desire" at Williamstown Theatre Festival

A Streetcar Named Desire—the Pulitzer Prize winning 1947 Tennessee Williams play that became the classic 1951 movie with Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh—dates back to the era when some films were made in Technicolor and others in black-and-white.  Two summer's ago, Barrington Stage offered

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Arts

Ballet Genève's Romeo and Juliet -- A Somber, Spellbinding Success

Review by Bess J.M. Hochstein Photos: Christopher Duggan courtesy of Jacob's Pillow Those who think about performing arts programming could be forgiven for scratching their heads to find Romeo and Juliet on this season’s Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival schedule. After all, just two years ago

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Arts

"Spring Awakening" Team Returns to Powerhouse to Workshop a New Musical

by Scott Baldinger If you were in Los Angeles, busy working with Burt Bacharach on a new musical (Some Lovers), having just returned from a project in London (a new version of Alice in Wonderland for the National Theatre), how would you feel about having to be in Poughkeepsie the

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Food

Brick House Pub: A Nirvana for Hungry Beer Geeks

For the past few years, Leland Kent (right) and John Flynn (left) worked as bartenders at the no-frills Brick House Pub in the Great Barrington village of Housatonic. "We always talked about how we would make it better if we were in charge, how we'd serve

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Community

20 Questions for "Moonchildren" Director Karen Allen

Moonchildren, a play by Michael Weller set over the course of the 1965-66 school year in an unnamed college town, has been called "a masterwork by one of our great writers."  Actress (Raiders of the Lost Ark, White Irish Drinkers) and director Karen Allen, who mounted a

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Food

Eat, Plant, and Learn to Love Good Food at Katchkie Farm

By Betsy Miller Liz Neumark, CEO of Great Performances, a catering company based in New York City, had been catering for more than two decades when she took to joining CSAs, and gradually fell in love with locally-grown produce.  “For the first time in my life,” she says, “I

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Parties

Curtains Rise at Jacob's Pillow: Everybody Dance Now!

Cultural correspondent Bess J.M. Hochstein reports from Becket In a region rife with galas, there is perhaps none as widely anticipated as Jacob Pillow’s, which took place on Saturday, June 18. One might assume this is because the Pillow gala hews 100% true to the organization’s mission.

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Style

Gardens: A Gertrude Jekyll Legacy

by Betsy Miller Glebe House is an historic landmark in Woodbury, CT, “birthplace” of the Episcopal Church in the United States.  Meticulously restored to its 1750 heyday, it is also one of the first historic houses ever opened to the public as a museum. But, for gardeners, all that pales

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Parties

Reflections on Melville Opens at Arrowhead

Cultural correspondent Bess J.M. Hochstein reports from Pittsfield:  It may seem jarring to exhibit strikingly contemporary artwork in the rustic 1780s barn that houses the Berkshire Historical Society. It begins to make sense when you learn that the barn is part of Arrowhead, the Pittsfield farm where Herman Melville

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Arts

Impressions of a Revolutionary: Pissarro's People

by Robyn Perry A kind-looking man with a long flowing beard and piercing eyes, Camille Pissarro, father of French Impressionism, was not French at all.  He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family on the then-Danish colony of St. Thomas in the Caribbean, and remained a Danish citizen

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