A highly selective preview of cultural events taking place this weekend in the greater Berkshire region, including a play reading; a Nordic folk duo; a guitar quartet; a cabaret legend; 17th century Dutch painting; and a whole lot more.
Danielle Davenport
WAM THEATRE’S READING of ‘REALLY’ at NO. SIX DEPOT
(WEST STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – “Really” by Jackie Sibblies Drury will be read at No. Six Depot Roastery and Café on Sunday, May 7, at 3:30pm, as part of the WAM Theatre 2017 Fresh Takes Play Reading Series. Time Out New York called the play “an unnerving study of art as pollution, distraction from a world fast evolving beyond aesthetics.”
The cast includes Danielle Davenport (Playwrights Horizons’ Men on Boats), Ariel Bock (Shakespeare & Company’s Ugly Lies the Bone) and David Bertoldi (Shakespeare & Company’s 2017 Northeast Regional Tour). Alice Reagan – director of Shakespeare & Company’s acclaimed 2016 production of “Or,” – will direct.
Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (photo Michael Norwood)
LOS ANGELES GUITAR QUARTET at MAHAIWE
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – The Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet brings its eclectic blend of critically acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks to the Mahaiwe on Saturday, May 6, at 6pm, as part of the Close Encounters With Music series. The program includes haunting works from the time of Cervantes; an arrangement of the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 6; a transcription from the opera “Carmen”; Far East and Irish classics; and works by famed guitarists Chet Atkins and Pat Metheny.
My Bubba
MY BUBBA BRINGS NORDIC FOLK to MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Scandinavian folk duo My Bubba brings its soft, soulful, sensual music to Club B10 at MASS MoCA on Saturday, May 6, at 8pm. Bennington, Vt.-based singer-songwriter Jacqui Alpine warms up the crowd for My Bubba.
Steve Ross (photo Stacy Sullivan)
CABARET LEGEND STEVE ROSS BRINGS STANDARDS to THE CLARK
(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) — Noted singer and pianist Steve Ross bring his repertoire celebrating the pre-rock American popular songbook, Broadway show tunes, and classic standards at the Clark Art Institute on Sunday, May 7 at 3pm in the auditorium. The concert is a prelude to the Clark’s summer exhibition, Orchestrating Elegance: Alma-Tadema and Design, opening June 4.
Fishermen on the Irrawaddy River, Myanmar by Scott Barrow
SCOTT BARROW TURNS LENS on MYANMAR in NEW EXHIBITION
(LENOX, Mass.) – Award-winning photographer Scott Barrow presents “Mystical Myanmar,” a new exhibition of photographs taken on his first visit to Southeast Asia this past winter, at the Scott Barrow Photography Gallery from Saturday, April 15, through Thursday, June 15.
Daniel Bellow, Rocket series, ceramics (photo Olivia Wade)
HAND-THROWN PORCELAIN by DANIEL BELLOW at BERKSHIRE MUSEUM
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – An exhibition of hand-thrown porcelain by Berkshire-based artisan Daniel Bellow is on view in the BerkshireNow gallery space at the Berkshire Museum now through Monday, May 22. The work by the accomplished potter, remarkable for its exquisite glazes and intriguing textured surfaces.
For this solo exhibition, Bellow has created sculptural forms in porcelain and imagined a detailed scenario about their origin. According to Bellow’s backstory, scale models of rocket ships, supposedly created during the Song Dynasty in China at the command of Emperor Gaozong, have recently been discovered by archaeologists.
The unique sculptural “rocket ships” in the exhibition echo the work of the Song dynasty potters, whose smooth, dense porcelain ware was praised for its simplicity of shape and understated decoration.
NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM SALUTES SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON TEAM HANNA-BARBERA
(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – “Hanna-Barbera: The Architects of Saturday Morning” features the work of the creative team behind such memorable Saturday morning cartoons as “The Yogi Bear Show,” “The Flintstones,” and the “The Jetsons,” on view at Norman Rockwell Museum through May 29, 2017.
Before the rise of basic cable, Saturday mornings for many children in America were spent watching cartoons on one of three available television channels. From 1958 through the 1980s, a majority of those cartoons bore the imprint of Hanna-Barbera. Creating scores of popular series such as The Yogi Bear Show, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, and Scooby-Doo, Hanna-Barbera was an animation powerhouse and its bountiful creativity is beloved to this day.
Gabriel Metsu (Dutch, 1629–1667), Public Notary, c. 1653. Oil on panel, 16.14 x 12.8 in (41 x 32.5 cm). The Leiden Collection, N.Y.
17th-CENTURY DUTCH PAINTINGS at THE CLARK
(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – An Inner World: 17th-Century Dutch Genre Painting is on view at the Clark Art Institute now through Sunday, September 17. The exhibit brings together paintings from the Clark and The Leiden Collection, among the largest and most important private collections of Dutch Golden Age paintings in the world. The exhibition features seven exceptional genre paintings by Dutch artists working in or near the city of Leiden in the 17th century.
An Inner World explores the work of Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613–1675) and his contemporaries by considering tradition and innovation in the representation of figures in interior spaces, individuals in moments of contemplation or quiet exchange, and the enduring taste among collectors for works created by fijnschilders, or fine painters.
Nick Cave, ‘Until’ (detail) (photo Doug Mason)
NICK CAVE’S SITE-SPECIFIC ‘UNTIL’ TAKES OVER MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — Nick Cave, the artist known for his wearable sculptures called Soundsuits, turns expectations inside out at MASS MoCA in “Until,” a massive immersive installation. Cave uses MASS MoCA’s signature football field-sized space to create his largest and most overtly political installation to date, made up of thousands of found objects, a rich sensory tapestry. The sheer volume of material that has been gathered is astounding — 16,000 wind spinners; millions of plastic pony beads; thousands of ceramic birds, fruits, and animals; 13 gilded pigs; more than 10 miles of crystals; 24 chandeliers; 1 crocodile; and 17 cast-iron lawn jockeys.