Barbara Waldinger, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Theatre, Director, and Theatre Critic, is helming the OLLI Players’ staged reading of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (a 1930s novel and play adapted in 2017 by Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen). Theperformance, scheduled for Sunday afternoon, April 19 th , at…
The OLLI Players are holding auditions for a reading of IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE, adapted from Sinclair Lewis’s novel and play. This full-length script relates the rise of a dictator in America in the 1930s and its impact on society at national, local, and individual levels. Reading Date: 4/19/26 (Sunday…
2025 was an exciting and innovative season—a mix of new plays and classics, chock full of exceptional performances, directors and designers. Barbara Waldinger’s Top Ten Plays For first rate ensemble performances: Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, directed by Robert Egan. Dorset Theatre Festival The Piano Lesson by August…
by Barbara Waldinger Sometimes a performer leaves such an indelible impression in the interpretation of a character that it’s hard to accept another actor in the role.  That seemed to be the case for the dual roles of Ethel and Norman Thayer in Ernest Thompson’s ON GOLDEN POND. How…
OLLI PLAYERS, a group that performs at Berkshire Community College, is seeking two African-American actors, a female and a male, for a reading of two short plays on the afternoon of October 19th. Mum Bett’s Minute is about the case that won Mum Bett (Elizabeth Freeman) her freedom in Massachusetts;…
by Barbara Waldinger What could be better, when producing a play about conflicts within a family, than casting three superb actors (in a cast of five) who are a family? That is the case with the Dorset Theatre Festival in Vermont, currently running OTHER DESERT CITIES by Jon Robin Baitz.…
by Barbara Waldinger To celebrate their tenth anniversary, the Berkshire Opera Festival has selected one of the most beloved, most frequently produced operas in the Verdi canon: LA TRAVIATA. According to Maestro Brian Garman, Conductor, Artistic Director and Co-founder of the company, Berkshire audiences have often requested this masterpiece, and now the BOF has delivered…
by Barbara Waldinger From the moment we notice the set (designed by Luke Cantarella) of Rajiv Joseph’s KING JAMES at Barrington Stage Company’s St. Germain Stage, it is clear that we are in the presence of a well-oiled production that has had the time to mature and grow. And this…
