This week the cultural highlights in our greater region include a literary death match, a new exhibit of porcelain sculptures, a cast reunion of a classic comedy, a symphonic concert, a book launch, and 24 hours of experimental drone music.
Authors Jedediah Berry, Arda Collins, Ron Currie Jr., Paul La Farge, Courtney Maum, Sue Smith and Jenny Zigrino will take part in a Literary Death Match at The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home in Lenox, tonight at 8 p.m. Four of these authors will read original work before a panel of three all-star judges. Performances will be judged on literary merit, performance style, and other, intangible factors.
Family Affair, a group exhibition featuring painted porcelain sculptures created by Sergei Isupov, Kadri Pärnamets, and their five-year-old daughter, Roosi Isupov, opens at Independent Art Projects (IAP) on the MASS MoCA campus in North Adams with a reception on Saturday at 4 p.m.
An unprecedented cast reunion and screening of “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” the classic 1978 comedy directed by John Landis and starring the late John Belushi, will take place at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Saturday, at 7 p.m., in a presentation by the Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF). Cast members expected to attend the reunion include Karen Allen, Peter Riegert, Judy Belushi and Otis Day, who will perform following the screening. The BIFF weekend of Hollywood glamour kicks off with “Hollywood Costume,” a presentation by Academy Award-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis at the Mahaiwe on tonight at 7 p.m. Landis will present a behind the scenes look into “costume as character” and the magical relationship between costume designers and filmmakers.
Tina Packer, Shakespeare & Company’s founding artistic director, actor, writer — and one of the country’s foremost experts on Shakespeare — celebrates the publication of her new book, “Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays,” in the Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.
The American Symphony Orchestra will perform works by Leoš Janá?ek, Hermann Goetz, and Alberto Ginastera in the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson tonight and Saturday night at at 8 p.m.
Hudson’s own Buffalo Stack brings its bluesy brand of roots-rock to Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday at 9 p.m. With slide blues guitar, gospel organ chords, New Orleans-style horns, and group harmonies, Buffalo Stack can’t help but recall Woodstock heroes the Band. In fact, it was at Levon Helm’s barn in Woodstock that husband-and-wife Andy and Tania Stack (a Grammy and Juno award- winning fiddle player) of Hudson met the musicians who would soon join them to become Buffalo Stack.
And finally, 24-HOUR DRONE: Experiments in Sound and Music, an immersive event and all-encompassing experience featuring musicians from the region and beyond experimenting in electronic, psychedelic, classical, non-Western and instrumental drone music for a full 24 hours, inaugurates the fifth season at Basilica Hudson on Saturday at 3 p.m., running through Sunday at 3 p.m. Featured musicians include Prurient, SUUNS, Bobby Previte, Patrick Higgins, Arone Dyer, Randy Gibson, Eric Fraser, Brian Dewan, Eliot Kessel, Slow Collins, and Lea Bertucci.
That’s all we have time for today. There’s more on the website at rogovoyreport.com.
I’m Seth Rogovoy, and that’s the Rogovoy Report for this weekend.
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