PLUS a sneak peek (well, more of a sneak listen) to our 1st place storyteller Jennifer Holey telling her tale about “Little Creatures” at the inaugural batch of the new Berkshire Yarn Mill’s live story event!
Sandy McKnight’s Pop Clique provided welcome acoustic tunage for the first storytelling event of the new “Berkshire Yarn Mill,” launched Wednesday night at SereniTea Café and Bar in North Adams.
The Spirit Shop, 280 Cole Avenue, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Today is Friday, December 1st, 2017, and you’re listening to Episode 64 of Will Call, here at the Greylock Glass. I’m your host, Jason Velazquez, and I have to say welcome to all our listeners, and thanks for tuning in. I am so pleased to announce that this episode is sponsored by the newest supporter of the Greylock Glass, The Spirit Shop of Williamstown, located at 280 Cole Avenue, purveyors of fine wines, a masterfully curated selection of domestic and imported beers, local hard ciders, and a full range of liquors—if you check your cabinet and find your holiday entertaining supplies lacking, a trip to the Spirit Shop, might just be the solution you’re looking for.
“Canon and Variation,” by Twin Musicom, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
This episode features two great conversations about Berkshires theatre, both performances that are being staged right now as well as productions that are coming up in 2018. We speak first with Laura Standley, Associate Professor, Theatre – Acting and Directing at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts about the 2017 / 2018 Season entitled, “We the People.” We explore Molière’s “Tartuffe,” which enjoys a much-anticipated opening this weekend at the Venable Theatre on The MCLA campus. The link to tickets and more information is, of course, in the shownotes.
We’re also thrilled to finally have our long-awaited conversation with Shakespeare & Company’s artistic Director, Allyn Burrows, who is feeling pretty pleased with the outcome of the 2017 season, his first at the 40 year old Lenox institution. We talk about how the 2018 line-up of Shakespeare works came together, and how developments in staging locations have generated new enthusiasm for outdoor performance. No amount of prying would get him to reveal other titles from next year’s roster, but he assures us that we won’t have to wait too much longer.
Some of you probably heard about the launch of the new Berkshire Yarn Mill storytelling project this past Wednesday, November 29th. Actually, I know some of you heard about it, because some of you were there. The Greylock Glass began this initiative to help promote live storytelling in North County, and our first monthly batch of yarns, spun at SereniTea Café and Bar in North Adams, was a huge success. We’ll hear a sampling from the winning story later, but right now, let’s go to our conversation with Laura Standley of MCLA’s Fine and Performing Arts Department.
Affiliate Link.
“Tartuffe,” by Molière
Presented by the MCLA Department of Fine and Performing Arts
December 1 –10 Tickets
We speak about this complex work of satire with Laura Standley, Associate Professor, Theatre (Acting and Directing), who explained that this was a perfect choice for the 2017–2018 season, entitled, “We the People.”
Laura Standley, Associate Professor of Theatre—Acting and Directing; photo by Dennise Carranza.
Laura Standley holds a BA in Theatre from University of Central Oklahoma and an MFA in Acting from University of California Irvine. She has studied under master teachers Robert Cohen, Dudley Knight, Annie Loui, Catherine Fitzmaurice, Ragnar Friedank, Joanna Merlin, Barney O’Hanlon, Lenard Petit, Ted Pugh, and Fern Sloan. Recent collaborations include Passage (work in progress) with Kickwheel Ensemble Theater, as well as Howard Barker’s Scenes From an Execution and David Ives’ The Liar with Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park. New York directing credits include Reckless Season (New Works Reading Series), Pump Boys and Dinettes, Lobby Hero, and Burn This, all with Ground Up Productions. Favorite academic directing credits include bobrauschenbergamerica,Romeo and Juliet, Mud and The Successful Life of 3 by Maria Irene Fornes, Angels in America,Hedda Gabler, and the punk rock version of Steven Berkoff’s Agamemnon.
Laura has taught at University of North Carolina – Charlotte, Stony Brook University, Chapman University, and University of California, Irvine. She is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Actors Equity, Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Association of Theatre Movement Educators, and the Michael Chekhov Organization. Laura is fascinated with the intersection of movement, action and the theatre experience. Her work incorporates classical theatre, body-based disciplines, and the use of dance choreography techniques in preparing performance. Laura continues to be inspired by this work in meaningful ways and is constantly looking for new forms of making theatre.
Thoughts on Shakespeare & Co.’s 40th season with Allyn Burrows…
…and a look forward to the 2018 line-up of Shakespeare works.
About Allyn Burrows
Allyn Burrows, Artistic Director at Shakespeare & Company, photo by Olivia Winslow.
As Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company, The Tempest, God of Carnage, T.S. Eliotand his Love of Shakespeare, Or, King John, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV Pt 1, Measure for Measure, Betrayal, The House of Mirth, Love’s Labours Lost, Macbeth, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).
As Artistic Director of Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Allyn directed productions of Romeo & Juliet, Pericles, Jon Lipsky’s Living in Exile, Richard II, and The Tempest, and performances there included The Winter’s Tale, Henry VI Part 2, Henry VIII, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Richard III.
He recently performed in Can You Forgive Her (Huntington Theatre), Breaking the Code (Underground Railway Theatre), Shipwrecked (The Lyric Stage), Oceanside, The Seafarer, Pursuit of Happiness, and The Homecoming (Merrimack Repertory Theater), and Five by Tenn (Speakeasy Stage). The 2006 Elliot Norton Award recipient for The Homecoming, King Lear, and Five by Tenn, Allyn also received the 2011 IRNE Award for Breaking the Code. Off-Broadway credits include Bug, Killer Joe, Louis Slotin Sonata, Closetland, and The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd.
He has worked regionally at The Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, The American Conservatory Theatre, The Long Wharf Theatre, The Denver Center, and The Walnut St. Theatre. Television credits include The Broad Squad, Law and Order, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Against the Law, and on film in The Company Men, Julie & Julia, and Manchester by the Sea.
Learn more about Rosalind and other women who populate Shakespeare’s works.
Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays, by Tina Packer (affiliate link).
“Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare’s Immortal Heroine,” by Angela Thirlwell (affiliate link).
Macbeth
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Melia Bensussen
July 3 to August 5
Tina Packer Playhouse
A gripping tale of blind ambition and nefarious plotting by two of Shakespeare’s most notorious anti-heroes of all time, Macbeth is a deliciously shadowy thrill ride. When yearning and imagination collide in the darkest recesses of a passionate mind, there may be blood. If victims fall in the consumption of power, the conscience can devour itself from within. Peace and sleep do not come without a reckoning. Such is the eternal and towering reminder of this stunning classic.
As You Like It at twilight
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Allyn Burrows
July 10 – August 18
Roman Garden Theatre (Outdoors)
Like the Roaring Twenties for this country, the Forest of Arden represented a world of possibilities for young Rosalind. Our brilliant adventurer escapes a threatening world of suppression, even death, and her exile represents a dramatic break between past and future as she traverses the forest and the prospect of new horizons. Menace gives way to hope, re-invention, poetry, and love, cooked up with a big dose of hilarious comedy!
Love’s Labor’s Lost
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Kelly Galvin
July 11 – August 20
The Dell at the Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home (Outdoors)
by Jason Velázquez A few years ago, when I told my buddy Mike that my eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old son would be
Mason Wray; Photo by Forrest Aguar.
MASON WRAY is a poet from Georgia. A graduate of the MFA program at Ole Miss, his poems have appeared in Ploughshares, RHINO, New Ohio Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Diode, and others. He’s received support from organizations including Bread Loaf and the Hambidge Center. He serves as a poetry editor at Bear Review and lives in Atlanta.
Lizzy Beck; submitted photo.
LIZZY BECK (she/her) lives with her family in Western Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Grist, Pleiades, Rhino, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and is at work on her first collection of poems.
Michele Bombardier; photo by Joel And Mary Levine.
MICHELE BOMBARDIER’s debut collection “What We Do” was a Washington Book Award finalist. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Bainbridge Island, Washington and the 2024 winner of the NORward Prize in Poetry. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Mineral School, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. Recent work has appeared in JAMA, Atlanta Review, Parabola, New Ohio Review, Crab Creek Review, SWWIM, and others. Founder of Fishplate Poetry, Michele teaches workshops and leads retreats in support of humanitarian work, specifically medical care in the Middle East and Gaza.
Zite Ezeh; photo by Aaron Jackson.
ZITE EZEH is a Nigerian-Kenyan-American writer, musician, and educator. Her recent literary work braids indigenous Igbo cosmologies with elements of today’s world. She is particularly interested in how her characters carve out slices of home for themselves—often against the backdrop of a world that has othered them. Currently, Zite is an MFA candidate in Fiction at UC Riverside and an incoming resident at Vermont Studio Center. They received the 2024 Abraham Polonsky Endowed Award, and their flash fiction piece, “The Ruins,” was published by Beyond Worlds magazine in 2023.
Melenie Freedom-Flynn; submitted photo.
MELENIE FREEDOM FLYNN is a writer, actor, and teacher. Her writing has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell, the Elizabeth George Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Djerassi Residents Artists Program, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Melenie’s essay “Message from Your Inmate” won the annual nonfiction contest at Vela Magazine and her recent work can be seen in Provincetown Arts Magazine. A graduate of the MFA Acting Program at California Institute of the Arts, she has performed in theatres across the country.
Thaddeus Haas; photo by Sue Beck.
THADDEUS HAAS has lived many different lives, from academic philosopher, to wildland firefighter, to acupuncturist, and in each one of these, writing has given him a way to make sense of his experience. It is only now, as he enters his fifth decade, that he has dared to think of himself as a writer. From a hamlet in Upstate New York, he spends his days working on an assortment of projects in between his son’s school drop offs and pickups. His current focus is a memoir of sorts about his years working as an elite wildland firefighter in Western Montana.
Irene Jiang; photo by Zach Page.
IRENE JIANG is a Chinese-American filmmaker and writer of genre and literary fiction. She writes about unruly outsider women who navigate migration and aspiration with feminine rage. Her short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Pinch Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, Uncharted Magazine, and 101 Words, and her personal essays can be read in Joysauce and The New York Times. She is revising her first novel, “Immoral Purposes,” about a young Chinese woman in 1880s California who escapes sex trafficking and seeks revenge on her abusers. Irene is a Fulbright Morocco alum.
Michael Jerome Plunkett; submitted photo.
MICHAEL JEROME PLUNKETT (he/him) served in the United States Marine Corps. He is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Literature of War Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to building libraries on military bases. He hosts its podcast, The LitWar Podcast. He led the Patrol Base Abbate Book Club. His writing has appeared in The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The War Horse, Leatherneck Magazine, Coffee or Die, Dirtbag Magazine, and Lethal Minds Journal. His debut novel, “Zone Rouge,” is forthcoming from UnnamedPress.
Brenton Sizwe Zola; photo by Von Wong.
BRENTON SIZWE ZOLA is a first-generation writer, interdisciplinary artist, and researcher. Informed by experiences of childhood homelessness, global travel, and a lineage of African spiritual leaders, his work examines themes of myth, spirit, and sanctity. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, Inc., American Theatre, Boulevard, Prism, and WBUR Boston, among others. He is a recipient of the Marianne Russo Award for a Novel-in-Progress at the Key West Literary Seminar, an Adult Fiction mentorship at The Word and his poem “Multiplicity” is one of the official poems of the City of Denver.
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