Barrington Stage Co. schedules a special 2 day only ticket deal.
Buy one full price ticket to any Barrington Stage Co. Mainstage or Stage 2 performance and receive a second ticket for just $15.*
This special offer is available for two days only: May 26 and May 27, 2009. Tickets may only be purchased by calling the Box Office directly at (413) 236.8888. The Box Office will be open from 10am-6pm both days. Call now to reserve your tickets while this offer lasts!
Spinning
I hold my two-year-old son
under his arms and start to twirl.
His feet sway away from me
and the day becomes a blur.
Everything I own is flying into space:
yard toys, sandbox, tools,
garage and house,
and, finally, the years of my life.
When we stop, my son is a grown man,
and I am very old. We stagger
back into each other’s arms
one last time, two lost friends
heavy with drink,
remembering the good old days.
American Life in Poetry: Column 217.
BY Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006 – American literature is rich with poems about the passage of time, and the inevitability of change, and how these affect us. Here is a poem by Kevin Griffith, who lives in Ohio, in which the years accelerate by their passing.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2006 by Kevin Griffith, whose most recent book of poetry is “Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange,” Pearl Editions, 2007. Poem reprinted from “Mid-American Review,” Vol. 26, no. 2, 2006, by permission of Kevin Griffith and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Berkshire Theatre Festival is proud to announce BTF PLAYS! Summertime Classes, theatre education classes that will meet during the summer vacation. Administered by BTF PLAYS!, Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Year-Round Education Program, BTF PLAYS! Summertime classes will meet Monday through Friday from 9:00am to Noon on the campus of BTF in Stockbridge, MA.
There are three sessions of classes for different age groups: Session One meets July 13-17, 2009 for ages 7-9, Session Two meets July 20-24, 2009 for ages 10-12, and Session Three meets August 3-7, 2009 for ages 11-14. The cost is $180 per session. Students in the program will focus on storytelling, improvisation games, movement, ensemble building exercised, and performance. The goal of the program is to increase student confidence and creativity while providing basic knowledge in the theatrical arts and narrative storytelling. No previous theatrical training is required.
Registration for the class is required and space is limited. Contact Allison Rachele Bayles, Administrative Director of Education, at 413-298-5536 ext. 19 or asr@berkshiretheatre.org for registration information or with questions about the program.
Updating previous posts about the 2009 Williamstown Theatre Festival (WTF) schedule, Artistic Director Nicholas Martin has announced casting for the Main Stage season, which runs July 1 to August 23 at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance in Williamstown, MA.
As previously announced, the season will open with Children by A.R. Gurney, directed by Tony Award nominee John Tillinger (Loot) in a co-production with Westport Country Playhouse. Children plays from July 1-12.
The cast includes Mary Bacon (Rock ‘n’ Roll, Arcadia), Katie Finneran (Tony Award – Noises Off, Mauritius), Judith Light (Wit, “Ugly Betty,” “Who’s The Boss”) and James Waterston (Buffalo Gal, As You Like It).
The design team for Children includes set designer James Noone, costume designer Jane Greenwood, lighting designer Rui Rita and sound designer Scott Killian. The production stage manager is Gregory T. Livoti.
Next up is True West by Sam Shepard. Former Boris Sagal Directing Fellow Daniel Goldstein (Walmartopia, Godspell) directs this production which will play from July 15 – 26.
The cast includes Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, He’s Just Not That Into You, The Understudy) – replacing previously announced Rob Corddry who had to leave the project due to scheduling conflicts on a film—former WTF Apprentice Nate Corddry (“Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” Showtime’s “United States of Tara”), Stephen Kunken (Rock ‘n’ Roll, Proof), and Debra Jo Rupp (A Flea in Her Ear, “That 70’s Show”).
The design team for True West includes set designer Neil Patel, costume designer Linda Cho, lighting designer Ben Stanton, sound designer Darron L. West and fight direction by Thomas Schall. The production stage manager is Paul Smith.
True West, a modern classic, is an explosive exploration of family rivalry as two very different brothers attempt to sell Hollywood their version of the great American Western.
Next is The Torch-Bearers by George Kelly. Tony-nominated stage and screen actor Dylan Baker (November, Mauritius, Revolutionary Road) adapts and directs this production which will play from July 29- August 9.
The cast includes Becky Ann Baker (All My Sons, Assassins), Yusef Bulos (Fiddler on the Roof), John Doherty (Yale MFA), Katie Finneran (Tony Award – Noises Off, Mauritius), Phillip Goodwin (Tartuffe, The Pink Panther), Jessica Hecht (Julius Caesar, After the Fall), Edward Herrmann (Emmy Award, “The Practice,” “Gilmore Girls”), Dana Ivey (Five Time Tony Nominee – Butley, The Rivals), Lizbeth MacKay (All My Sons, Crimes of the Heart), Marian Seldes (Tony Award – A Delicate Balance, Deathtrap), and James Waterston (Buffalo Gal, As You Like It).
The design team for The Torch-Bearers includes set designer David Korins, costume designer Ilona Somogyi, lighting designer Rui Rita, sound designer Alex Neumann and music by Michael Garin. The production stage manager is Gregory T. Livoti.
The Torch-Bearers is a side-splitting 1920s farce in which a troupe of amateur actors rehearse and perform a show-stopping new play—or try to with all their might. Their stage is riddled with comedic drama, suspense, and good old-fashioned witty mayhem.
Closing the season is Quartermaine’s Terms by Simon Gray. Tony-nominated director Maria Aitken (Broadway and West End’s award-winning production of The 39 Steps) directs this production which will play in Williamstown from August 12-23.
The cast includes Jayne Atkinson (Two time Tony Nominee – The Rainmaker, Enchanted April, Blithe Spirit), Jeremy Beck (Betrayed, She Loves Me), Morgan Hallett (Translations, Long Day’s Journey into Night), John Horton (A Touch of the Poet, Amadeus), Simon Jones (Blithe Spirit, The Real Thing), Stephen Kunken (Rock ‘n’ Roll, Frost/Nixon), and Jefferson Mays (Tony Award – I Am My Own Wife, Journey’s End). The previously announced Mary Beth Hurt will not appear due to scheduling conflicts.
The design team for Quartermaine’s Terms includes set designer Derek McLane, costume designer Martin Pakledinaz, lighting designer Kevin Adams, sound designer Drew Levy. The production stage manager is Stephen M. Kaus.
Quartermaine’s Terms, a charming and heart-felt 1960s comedy, follows an endearingly eccentric group of English teachers in Cambridge whose insatiable quest for knowledge has masked their secret longings for passion, romance, and true happiness.
Casting information will be announced shortly for the 2009 Nikos Stage season which includes Knickerbocker by Jonathan Marc Sherman, directed by Nicholas Martin (July 8-19); What is the Cause of Thunder? by Noah Haidle, directed by Justin Waldman (July 22-August 2); and Caroline in Jersey by Melinda Lopez, directed by Amanda Charlton (August 5-16).
Ticketing information for the 2009 Season at Williamstown Theatre Festival can be obtained online at www.wtfestival.org or by calling 413-597-3400.
An exhibition that explores the influence of Arthur Dove, the modernist American painter, on the abstract expressionism of Georgia O’Keefe highlighted the schedule at The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA from June 7 through September 7, 2009. Entitled Dove/O’Keefe; Circles of Influence, the exhibition did feature 60 major oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and pastels spanning 1910 to the early 1940s.
From the start of her career, O’Keeffe credited a reproduction of a Dove pastel as her introduction to modernism. Dove’s use of sensual, abstract forms to evoke the flowing rhythms and patterns of nature had already put him at the forefront of the American modernist movement by the time O’Keeffe entered the scene around 1916.
Among the seminal works on view were O’Keeffe’s Dark Abstraction (1924) and Jack-in-The Pulpit No. VI (1930), and Dove’s Moon (1935) and Fog Horns (1929). Georgia O’Keeffe, Jack-in-Pulpit – No. 2 1930. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O’Keeffe. Images courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The New England Tour of Shakespeare returns home to Shakespeare and Co. in Lenox, MA for a residency of 19 performances of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre May 21 through June 7, 2009. More details of Shakespeare and Co.’s 2009 schedule.
Shakespeare & Company’s non-Equity production of Romeo and Juliet includes a 90-minute cut featuring a seven-member cast, each cast member taking on multiple roles. The focus is on a clear and powerful delivery of Shakespeare’s text. The production is modeled after Shakespeare’s own touring shows, which took to the countryside when the plague shook London and closed down the theatres.
The actors are Paul D’Agostino, Ben Brinton, Kaitlin Henderson, Alyssa Hughlett, Kelley Johnston, Sean Kazarian, Daniel Kurtz. Johnston, Kurtz, D’Agostino and Henderson also will appear in Toad of Toad Hall at the Rose Footprint Theatre this summer, directed by Director in Residence Irina Brook. Veterans of the New England Tour, Hughlett, Kurtz and D’Agostino also appeared in last year’s wildly popular touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hughlett also appeared in S&Co.’s world premiere of The Canterville Ghost last fall, and Brinton played last summer in the world premiere of The Mad Pirate and the Mermaid at S&Co. The costumes are designed by Govane Lohbauer, with sound design by Jonathan Croy, and set construction and design by Ian Guzzone. Original music composed and performed by Marc Scipione.