by Barbara Waldinger A particular advantage of living in the Berkshires is the opportunity to witness gifted artists of all types creating the magic of live performance.  On September seventeenth, Donald Margulies, considered to be one of America’s foremost living playwrights, was in attendance at the sold-out opening of his…

(Pittsfield, MA) By popular demand, Barrington Stage Company (BSC), the award-winning theatre in Downtown Pittsfield, MA, under the leadership of Artistic Director Alan Paul, has announced the 12th Annual 10X10 New Play Festival, part of the 2023 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival, will be extended through March 12. Added performances are…

by Macey Levin The unofficial kickoff for the Berkshire Theatre season is Barrington Stage Company’s 10×10 New Play Festival – 10 short plays by 10 different authors running approximately 10 minutes each. The opening has the 10×10 cast singing and dancing to a clever lyric by cast member Matt Neely…

by Jeannie Marlin Woods The WAM Theatre is a remarkable company in the Berkshires and in the country. With a devout mission to create “a place of groundbreaking theatrical stories, female empowerment, and transformative action,” the theater does just that. The company’s newest work, CADILLAC CREW, now playing at Shakespeare…

by Barbara Waldinger Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, now being staged at Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Playhouse, is known as a “problem play.”  Neither tragedy nor comedy, it lives somewhere in between, which is probably why it is rarely produced.  But this Lenox company ended up with more problems than…

by Macey Levin MaConnia Chesser is delivering a riveting performance in Shakespeare and Company’s one-woman play An Iliad by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare.  It was previously performed by Chesser at the Ancram Opera House where the director of this production, Jeffrey Mousseau, originally staged it and is that company’s…

by Macey Levin An isolated lighthouse sets the scene for  Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs at Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Playhouse in Lenox, Massachusetts.  James Warwick has directed a quirky and provocative production of one of the classics of The Theatre of  the Absurd. The plays of Jean Genet, Samuel…

by Barbara Waldinger Shakespeare & Company’s production of The Chairs has shaved off Ionesco’s sharp edges, anything unpleasant or uncomfortable, focusing instead on the relationship between an Old Man (Malcolm Ingram) and Old Woman (Barbara Sims) who have been married for seventy-five years.   The Old Woman begs her husband…