We’re in the kitchen talking about Shakespeare, and both of us turn out to be the kind of people who have pulled out a play sometime or other and started to read it with friends, just for the high of it.
I remember sitting in a college dining hall with an old friend who had Hamlet in her pocket for a class, and both of us were helpless with laughter. Something about the casualness got hold of us — walking into the story without a stage or props or lights, just the heights and depths of feeling in the words.
And now, in the middle of February, a new friend is leaning on the counter and talking about theater games. We’re thinking about building trust and how to make something vast and wild out of almost nothing.
We’ve just learned about a community theater that used to perform in Williamstown in the 1960s and 1970s, and we’re wondering how it would feel to perform like that, in real settings around town — to be actors where people didn’t know you were acting, or audience and become part of the play.
It’s good to remember how it can feel to walk into a story like that and let a scene run just to see where it goes. Sometimes what you say and do can surprise you. And even when it’s 16 below, I can find some of that energy. It gives the world a feeling of improvisation.
I can end up talking about characters in the Torah and Hagar meeting an angel at a well in the desert, or the library of Alexandria in 200 B.C.E., or how a new translation of Rumi sounds more like
Sometimes the Berkshires can be the kind of place where people make something out of nothing …
Tibetan photographer Nyema Droma offers portraits of Tibetans expressing contemporary identities. Press photo courtesy of WCMA, taken by Kate Abbott
Marie-Dolma Chophel's abstract painting Inner Dialog pulses with elemental color in blues and greens, amber and dun. Press photo courtesy of WCMA, taken by Kate Abbott
Contemporary Tibentan artist Dedron paints pilgrims to a shrine in abstract and vivid color. Press photo courtesy of WCMA, taken by Kate Abbott
Wine glasses glint in candle light.
Students compare notes over pizza in Paresky at Claiming Williams in 2017. Press photo courtesy of Williams
Hot chocolate swirls at Dottie's Coffee Lounge.
Snow and ice coat the fir trees in the boreal forest on the ridge at Tamarack Hollow.
Contemporary Tibetan artists’ work comes to WCMA, including Nyema Droma’s photographs and Dedron’s paintings, as Just Futures brings a roundtable to Williams College and Valentine week brings celebrations and snow on the ridge at Tamarack Hollow …
Events coming up …
Find more art and performance, outdoors and food in the BTW events calendar.
