Arts

Arts

Dan's Diary: The Best of All Possible Worlds

Every summer, Berkshire Theatre Festival mounts one or two important and historic plays that I have never seen or read, and I am always grateful to BTF for filling in the gaps in my education.  Nowadays, as large-cast musicals become prohibitively expensive to produce, we should rejoice whenever they are

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Arts

Still Some Tickets Left for Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock" Chatham Premiere

There was a time when lots of small towns across America had an old movie palace like the Crandell, a theater in Chatham that was built in 1926 as a venue for vaudeville and the silent picture show.   Since 1960, the year Psycho was the big hit, the Crandell has

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Arts

Dan's Diary: The Greatest Generation's Favorite Musical?

Though I'd argue with Time Magazine's contention that Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel is the greatest musical of the  20th century, Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, has given Carousel the kind of stunning production that only a great musical deserves. Boyd&

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Arts

Dan's Diary: Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up . . .

If you're a musical theater buff, you know that "Gray skies are gonna clear up/Put on a happy face" is a lyric from Bye Bye Birdie, which was the song in my head as I walked into the soggy parking lot after seeing TriArts'

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Arts

Dan's Diary: You Don't Have To Be Jewish . . .

To paraphrase the old Levy's Rye Bread ad from the 1960s, You Don't Have to Be Jewish To Like Golda's Balcony. You don't need to be a Zionist or a Socialist or a Feminist to appreciate the political and personal struggles of

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Arts

Dan's Diary: A Youthquake at Music Mountain

On Sunday afternoon, two teenage girls with apples-and-cream complexions who looked like they were dressed for their high school prom, opened the 80th season at the Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Falls Village. Madalyn Parnas, an 18-year-old violinist, and her sister Cicely, a 16-year-old cellist, who are known as

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Arts

Dan's Diary: Berkshire Playwrights Lab Champions New Drama

Although the Berkshires' four leading theater companies—Barrington Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare & Company, and Williamstown Theatre Festival—all produce new plays along with classics and crowd-pleasers, only the Berkshire Playwrights Lab is devoted exclusively to new work by both established and emerging playwrights. To kick off its

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Arts

The 4th Annual Berkshire International FIlm Festival Will Be Boffo: May 14 - 17

Kelley Vickery is feeling guilty because she is praying for more rain next weekend. The founder of the Berkshire International Film Festival knows that more people will buy tickets for the 70 films she will be screening from May 14 - 17 in Great Barrington if the sun isn'

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Arts

Dan's Diary: Jarvis Rockwell—The Son Also Rises

When I innocently walked into the gallery at 73 Main Street in North Adams on Saturday morning, I was drawn by an enormous, stepped pyramid covered with thousands of plastic action figures and small rubber dolls.  I was captivated and charmed, because this work of art had an anthropological quality

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Arts

From Pittsfield to Pougkeepsie: The Evolution of "The Burnt Part Boys"

Four years ago, Julie Boyd and William Finn announced that they would start a Musical Theater Lab in Pittsfield, which would make its home at Barrington Stage Company's Stage 2. They said it would be an incubator for new musicals, and it got off to a brilliant start

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Arts

Norman Rockwell Museum Turns Back Time

The Norman Rockwell Museum has turned the clock back to 1960. "It was a very significant moment in Norman Rockwell's life," says Corry Kanzenberg, the musuem's curator/archival collections, who has overseen the reinstallation of Rockwell's studio on the museum's

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Arts

Professor Karen Allen Directs "Moonchildren" at Simon's Rock

Karen Allen—the actress who played opposite John Belushi in Animal House, Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark,  and Joanne Woodward and John Malkovich in The Glass Menagerie directed by Paul Newman—has become famous in Great Barrington for her eponymous Railroad Street store that sells Allen'

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