Here’s when I wish for quantum tunneling — or quantum entanglement — a principle of physics that can stretch to teleportation. I want to be in two places at once. And half the time those places have a hill between them. The warmer days seem to have lifted the energy in this valley, and our creative places are absorbing it from the world around them — and this weekend, events are flying.
I could catch a horse-drawn wagon ride at the Sheep and Wool Festival and watch the border collies challenge the bellwethers, bringing in the flocks. I could talk with artists and artisans from Bennington to Cummington to Northampton. Or listen to Cajun dance music at Dewey Hall.
Theater season is opening on at least stages. At Barrington Stage Company, Eddie Jaku, at 100 years old, reflects on surviving the Holocaust. Shakespeare & Company looks at World War II through an epistolary love story. And Berkshire Theatre Group and WAM Theatre re-imagine the U.S. Constitution and the bones of the country to include everyone who lives here.
And while they travel in time, art is shifting phases and dimensions … Joseph Grigely explores sound and silence at Mass MoCA — the museum opens In What Way Wham? (White Noise and other works, 1996–2023), as he reveals lived experiences with deafness and human connection.
Sculptor Ron Mehlman shapes light and stone in outdoor works at Chesterwood. And Portals will open at the Williams College Museum of Art, as Los Angeles artist Beatriz Cortez link this place today to people “who have believed in equality, justice, curiosity, diversity and freedom in the area where Williamstown was created,” she says in her opening words, “and also to imagine the cyclical dimension of these struggles” — her art and stories existing in many places and times. …
David Gow, shown here on stage in a warm and grieving embrace, will appear at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. Press photo courtesy of Shakespeare & Company.
Zurie Adams speaks at a podium with confidence in WAM Theatre’s production of What the Constitution Means to Me (photo by David Dashiell) and Kenneth Tigar stars in Barrington Stage’s world premiere, The Happiest Man on Earth, adapted from Eddie Jaku’s memoir of the same name — his story of survival and courage in the Holocaust (photo by Daniel Rader).
Zurie Adams and Kate Baldwin sit back to back in WAM Theatre's production of What the Constitution Means to Me. Press photo courtesy of WAM Theatre
Events coming up …
Find more art and performance, outdoors and food in the BTW events calendar.
