Academy Award-nominated Lucy Alibar, whose stage play was adapted into the award-winning film ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild,’ workshopped her latest, Throw Me on the Burnpile and Light Me Up with the Sundance Theatre Lab, in residency for two weeks at the museum last December.
THREE NEW MUSICAL THEATRE PROJECTS WORKSHOPPED at MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Obie Award-winning writer Kirsten Childs’ “Buffalo Bella: An American Tall Tale,” a musical exploring the African-American experience in the Old West, is one of three new musical theater projects that will be presented in Club B10 at MASS MoCA on Saturday, November 14, at 8pm, as part of the annual Sundance Institute Theatre Lab residency gathering top-tier dramatic artists and including work-in-progress performances for audiences. This year’s participants tackle themes from the underbelly of American life, exploring race, love and politics.
Robin Spielberg
NEW AGE PIANIST-COMPOSER ROBIN SPIELBERG INAUGURATES ‘ONSTAGE’ SERIES at COLONIAL
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – Pianist and new-age music composer Robin Spielberg inaugurates the new on “On the Stage” series at the Colonial Theater with a concert on Sunday, November 15, at 2pm. Audience members will be seated onstage for performances in this series. Spielberg’s albums bring traditional, classical, original and popular music to life in piano solos and piano-based ensembles. Her discography includes albums of original piano solos, arrangements of American standards, original pieces for piano/ensemble, recordings for the holidays, a CD of American melodies, and a CD of lullabies.
Crescendo Chorus
PERIOD MUSIC ENSEMBLE CRESCENDO FEATURES WORKS by BACH CONTEMPORARIES
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., and LAKEVILLE, Conn.) – The period music ensemble Crescendo – the 2014 winner of Chorus America’s ASCAP/Alice Parker Award for Innovative Programming = will present choral works of the Italian composer Pietro Torri and the German composer Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel in back-to-back concerts at at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington on Saturday, November 14, 2015, at 6pm, and at Trinity Church Lime Rock in Lakeville, Conn., on Sunday, November 15, at 4pm.
Jessica Lea Mayfield
JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD BRINGS MOODY INDIE-ROCK to HELSINKI HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Jessica Lea Mayfield brings her blend of dream-pop and grunge to Club Helsinki Hudson on Thursday, November 12, at 8pm. While Jessica Lea Mayfield has often earned comparisons to the Black Keys (Dan Auerbach produced her debut album, and she was the first guest vocalist ever to be featured on a Black Keys album) and Foo Fighters (she counts Dave Grohl as a key influence), and some call her “the female Kurt Cobain,” it’s never hard to hear Mayfield’s musical roots – she first performed with her family bluegrass band One Way Rider at the age of 8. They began touring as a family band, boarding a 1956 tour bus (once belonging to Bill Monroe, Kitty Wells, and Ernest Tubb) and headed south from Kent, Ohio, to Tennessee.
Amie Lytle plays Abigail in ‘Holy Laughter’
WAM THEATRE PRESENTS NEW COMEDY ‘HOLY LAUGHTER’ at BARRINGTON STAGE
(LENOX, Mass.) – The new comedy “Holy Laughter” by Catherine Trieschmann receives its first developmental workshop production by WAM Theatre at Barrington Stage’s Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center through Sunday, November 22. “Holy Laughter” is a poignant comedy that follows Abigail, an Episcopal priest who finds that the reality of leading a church is radically and hilariously different than what she learned in seminary. Hymns, liturgical dance and a wicked tongue lift this antic portrait of a small, struggling congregation to comic heights.