This weekend’s cultural highlights include a political drama, an unusual art installation, a music documentary, an orchestral concert, an African-American dance performance, and a spooky, Halloween-themed play.
WAM Theatre will present the New England premiere of “In Darfur,” by Winter Miller, at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, tonight through Sunday, November 16. The story of “In Darfur” follows an aid worker’s mission to protect lives, a Darfuri woman’s quest for safety, and a journalist’s pursuit to deliver a front page story to call world attention to a humanitarian crisis. Each performance of the play is followed by a conversation with a noted expert in the diverse themes presented in the play.
“Brece Honeycutt: underfoot,” an installation of the Berkshire artist’s handmade sculptural books and prints, opens at Knox Gallery at the Monterey Library on Saturday with an artist’s talk at 6pm and a reception immediately following. The exhibit/installation will be on view during library hours through November 29.
Filmmaker Peter Rosen will be on hand to introduce and discuss “Touching the Sound,” his documentary film about extraordinary Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, blind from birth, at the Little Cinema at Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield on Sunday, at 2pm, as part of the “Conversations With…” series presented by Close Encounters With Music.
The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra will perform works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Harold Farberman and Max Reger in the Fisher Center at Bard College on Sunday at 3pm. The concert is part of the Conservatory Sundays series, and all proceeds will benefit the Scholarship Fund of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Melora Creager, best known as founder and leader of the cello-rock band Rasputina, will be in residence at Club Helsinki Hudson on Mondays in November, in a series called “Mondays with Melora,” featuring her new band, the Calico Indians, plus special guests. Creager, who sings and plays cello and banjo, will be accompanied by Chops LaConte on stand-up bass, Ryder Cooley on musical saw and vocals, Luis Mojica on piano and vocals and Timothy Oakley on drums. Special guests will include Kiki * d, Wild Boy with Clare Felice, and singer-violinist Eszter Balint, whom you may remember from her astounding cinematic debut in Jim Jarmusch’s breakout film, “Stranger Than Paradise,” where she incessantly played and sang Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You.”
Camille A. Brown & Dancers perform a new work about black female identity at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College on Tuesday, November 4, at 8pm. Using Angela Davis’ book “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” as inspiration, the multimedia work, performed to live music, examines the politics of pleasure, the concept of patriarchy, and contemporary notions of beauty for black women.
Jeffrey Hatcher’s theatrical adaptation of “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James is being staged by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel House and Gardens in Garrison, N.Y., tonight and Saturday night at 7pm. A reception will follow both performances.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.