Local journalist Lesley Ann Beck will lead a free seminar in crafting effective materials for communicating with the media

PITTSFIELD, MA, May 24, 2010—“How to Write a Press Release,” a workshop led by local journalist Lesley Ann Beck, will be given at 6 p.m. on Thursday evening, June 2, at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts at 28 Renne Avenue in downtown Pittsfield. Open to the public and free of charge, the session will last 90 minutes and include time for questions. Megan Whilden, Pittsfield’s Director of Cultural Development, will be the moderator.

A well-written press release is essential for any business, organization, or individual wishing to generate publicity, whether in print or online. Fortunately, crafting an effective press release is achievable simply by following some basic, time-tested rules.

The workshop will cover style, organization, format, and structure, including tips on writing strong headlines and good leads. Making important decisions on content and timing will also be covered, as will attachments, photographs, design elements, and length.

The workshop will be useful for anyone who needs to generate publicity in the media, whether a small business owner, leader of a local nonprofit organization, an independent artist or performer, or even the representative for a religious institution or community action effort.

The workshop leader, Lesley Ann Beck, now the editor of BerkshireArtsAlmanac.com, has more than twenty-five years of experience as a journalist, most recently as managing editor of Berkshire Living magazine and editor of BBQ: Berkshire Business Quarterly. Before joining Berkshire Living, she was the editor of the Berkshires Week section in the Berkshire Eagle for nine years. Moderator Megan Whilden was the editor of Artful Mind magazine, a columnist for the Berkshire Eagle and a freelance writer for the Boston Globe and other publications before becoming the City of Pittsfield’s first Director of Cultural Development in 2005.

Examples of successful press releases will be available, and a handout covering the seminar topics and much more will be shared.

Please email mmoyborgen@pittsfieldch.com or call 413.499.9348 to reserve a space; seating is limited.

[Great Barrington, Mass.] The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, an intimate theater with excellent acoustics, was put to ideal use Saturday night when internationally acclaimed dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt offered a splendid recital of songs from the classical canon as well as great American standards, all to mark the Mahaiwe’s 2011 Gala.

Voigt, accompanied for the evening by Brian Zeger, a superb pianist, performed a generous, almost two-hour-long concert. Her magnificent voice filled the theater: there were moments of power and soaring high notes, of course, but her artistry is also in the interpretation of the songs, and her skill as a storyteller was very much in evidence. Voigt honors the narrative in each song, as sensitive to the meaning of the text as to the beauty in the music.

Voigt looked terrific in a sparkly black top and sweeping black skirt as she took her place in front of the grand piano, and began the evening with three lovely songs by American composer Amy Beach (1867-1944), with texts by Robert Browning.

Voigt’s performance was nuanced, masterful, and elegant, and the program was well-chosen for the venue; the songs were varied, from the afore-mentioned Beach to Verdi to Bernstein, and covered genres from Romantic to contemporary, but all were well-served by the simple format of singer and piano.

The second grouping of songs was by Guiseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and included two lovely, rather tragic pieces (“Non t’accostare” and “Deh, pietoso”) followed by a drinking song (“Brindisi”) that allowed Voigt some comedic moments as she slid along the piano feigning intoxication, and finishing with “Stornello,” a humorous take on relationships. Voigt clearly has a mischievous sense of humor; there was a definite twinkle in her eye during the last piece.

The next five songs were by Richard Strauss (1864-1949), “Ich trage meine Minnne,” “Schlechtes Wetter,” “Lob des Leidens,” “Ach, Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden” and “Fruhlingsfeier,” ranging from poignant to sorrowful to the cries of a pagan rite. After the intermission, Voigt returned to the stage, performing works by Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) and contemporary composer Ben Moore, before finishing with six songs by Leonard Bernstein, including several with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The Bernstein selections gave Voigt the opportunity to do some scat singing, some bluesy syncopation, and a sexy, sultry torch song; and her rendition of “Somewhere” from West Side Story was just beautiful.

For an encore, she gave a terrific rendition of Irving Berlin’s “I Love a Piano,” even joining Zeger at the piano for a ragtime duet, flashing a wicked grin at the delighted audience. Her final song of the evening was a superb performance of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, from the musical Showboat.

Deborah Voigt delivered an extraordinary evening of music at the Mahaiwe, a fitting celebration for this most recent incarnation of the beautifully restored theater, now in its seventh season.

“Artists need to act as a constituency,” said Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) during his remarks at the Creative Communities Exchange event held last week at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.

The Creative Communities Exchange, a day-and-a-half of workshops and talks, engaged more than two hundred participants—artists and administrators representing a myriad of creative organizations—and culminated in a talk by Landesman. The conference, which was held Thursday and Friday at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, was a collaboration between New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) and Berkshire Creative, and attracted individuals from across New England. The event included thirty-two workshops presented by creative and cultural community leaders, designed to share successful strategies and useful tools, as well as networking opportunities.

Berkshire Creative co-chair Kevin Sprague of Studio Two in Lenox, Massachusetts, noting that everyone at the Creative Communities Exchange had “certainly brought their A game,” thanked the participants for offering “interesting and optimistic approaches to the challenges ahead,” in his remarks at the closing luncheon.

Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) executive director Anita Walker also made remarks at Friday’s luncheon, commending the participants for “engaging in collaboration and partnership.” She spoke about the public sector, specifically the MCC, as an important partner. “We act on the part of the citizens; we ensure there is public value.” Walker described the NEA as just such a partner on the federal level as she introduced Landesman, who has helmed the NEA since 2009.

“Art works,” began Landesman, citing the NEA motto as he took the podium. He then praised MASS MoCA and the city of North Adams as an important example of “creative placemaking.” In this day and age, he continued, “art is one of the few things that has to be consumed in person,” and place informs arts, a concept he likened to the idea of terroir in winemaking. Art, he said, reflects its unique local characteristics. We need artists to invest in the places where they live, he said, and the places to invest in artists.

Landesman then referenced a Gallup poll conducted last year that revealed that the top three characteristics that create community attachment for the residents are social offerings, openness, and aesthetics. The arts, he added, contribute to social cohesion and civic engagement. “Art creates community attachment.”

Speaking of a new NEA program called Our Town, Landesman explained that the program highlights “creative placemaking” projects, those that engage a community or neighborhood in the arts, one example being the creative use of repurposed buildings in urban areas. “Success as we’ve seen in North Adams in replicable,” he said, referring to the creation of MASS MoCA and the growing arts community. Artists, he said, are a vital part of the community.

The creative economy is vitally important, he said, and “artists need to behave like a constituency,” coming together and speaking as one voice politically.

Rebecca Blunk, executive director of NEFA, also spoke at the luncheon, commenting that “the creative economy movement is global, but we know the action really happens locally,” as she awarded the first of two Creative Economy awards at the luncheon; the first recipient was the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project (RAMP) in Bellows Falls, Vermont. Sandra Burton of Williams College presented the second award to Project Storefront of New Haven, Connecticut. The Creative Economy awards both included checks for $3,500.

For more information, visit http://berkshirecreative.org/ or http://www.nefa.org/.

Reviewed by Lesley Ann Beck

Zero Hour opens to the strains of a klezmer tune as we see Zero Mostel (portrayed by actor Jim Brochu) at work in his studio; facing the canvas on the easel, he growls and barks at an unseen individual knocking at the door. And then Brochu turns to the audience, revealing his startling resemblance to Mostel, courtesy of a massive comb-over, bushy beard, and beetling brows over glaring eyes. He is talking to the reporter (who is never seen or heard) from the New York Times who has come to interview him. This is the framework that allows Mostel to reminisce, recounting his life story. Zero Hour, a one-man show about the iconic actor Zero Mostel, is now running at Barrington Stage Company’s Stage 2 in downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts, through June 5.

Jim Brochu, who wrote the play and stars as Mostel, has mastered facial expressions, vocal inflections, even hand positions that recall Mostel. Brochu’s portrayal is riveting, not only in the way it recalls Mostel, but in the sheer power he brings to sharing the story of Mostel’s fascinating life—a life that includes three Tony Awards and success on stage and in film, as well as overcoming the blacklist, family estrangement, and a serious bus accident.

Brochu begins by talking about Mostel’s love of art and childhood trips to museums with his mother, who encouraged him in his painting and drawing—Mostel considered himself primarily a painter, and Brochu draws and paints as part of the show.

Brochu brings enormous energy to the role, effectively communicating the manic, unpredictable, hilarious, sarcastic, ranting, much-larger-than-life character of the real Mostel. And he has the master’s comic timing just right.

Zero Mostel’s life is rich subject matter, and Brochu does it justice; the writing is good and he unfolds the events in Mostel’s life to great dramatic advantage. Brochu has woven in Borscht Belt era one-liners, anecdotes, and bits from Mostel’s early stand-up routine.

Brochu, as Mostel, recounts the story of his first unhappy marriage; enlisting in the Army; working for the WPA; falling in love with his second wife, a beautiful former chorus girl; how his Orthodox Jewish family sat shiva for him, regarding him as dead to them for having married a Christian; even how he got the nickname of Zero.

Mostel was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, an experience that embittered him for the rest of his life. Brochu’s narration about the blacklist is compelling, giving the audience a real insider’s view of the ordeal. And Brochu reveals Mostel’s rage at the people in show business who “named names.” He rails and rants about the anti-Semitism of the blacklist, calling it “an intellectual final solution,” and he rages about the unfairness of the proceedings. Brochu is particularly effective in relating the story of Mostel’s close friend Phil Loeb, who was hounded to his death.

Some years after the blacklist, Mostel and other New York actors began to regain their careers, and he was about to open in a new show when his leg was shattered in a bus accident. Doctors wanted to amputate, but Mostel refused. His leg was saved, but he walked with a cane after that: Brochu infuses this story with a sense of Mostel’s resiliency.

Mostel went on to perform in Rhinoceros, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and, of course, Fiddler on the Roof. Brochu gives us wonderful stories about the genesis of all these roles, many very funny, some quite bittersweet.

Brochu’s commanding performance encompasses both the iconic Mostel, the extremely funny Mostel, the mercurial Mostel, and the haunted, human Mostel. Zero Hour is remarkable.

Zero Hour (90 minutes, no intermission) runs through June 5 at Barrington Stage Company, Stage 2, 36 Linden St., Pittsfield, Mass. For tickets or more information, call 413.236.8888 or visit http://www.barringtonstageco.org/.

Queen by Right, Smith’s fourth historic novel about fifteenth-century Britain and the royal Plantagenet family, tells the story of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who was the mother of two kings, Edward IV and Richard III. Smith’s three earlier novels were A Rose for the Crown, Daughter of York, and The King’s Grace. Smith takes delight in meticulous research, and even travels to the places her historic characters lived and worked so that she can describe the locations vividly and accurately. “I use the skeleton of history; then I elaborate on that with dialogue and scenes,” Smith says.

Smith specializes in strong female protagonists, and in Queen by Right (Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster), her portrait of Cecily Neville fits the bill. As Smith says in a video interview on her website, www.anneeastersmith.com, she believes that Cecily and her husband, Richard, Duke of York, had one of the great love stories, which was very rare among the arranged marriages common for the aristocracy in the fifteenth century.

“In my novels, I strive to serve those readers who are looking for accuracy in historical fact,” Smith says, “and yet also engage those who are looking for a good story with strong characters, a little romance, and lots of period detail.”

Chapters Bookstore is at 78 North St. in Pittsfield, Mass. For more information, call 413.443.2665 or visit www.chapterspittsfield.com. Saturday’s event is free and open to the public; light refreshments will be served.

Just a few days ago, opera star Deborah Voigt was singing the role of Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. But on Saturday, May 21, at 8, the acclaimed dramatic soprano will be in the Berkshires, giving a recital at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington to celebrate the theater’s annual gala. It’s a treat for opera enthusiasts: last Saturday’s live broadcast of her stellar performance as Brünnhilde was seen at the Mahaiwe by a sold-out crowd.

In Saturday’s recital at the Mahaiwe, Voigt will be accompanied by pianist Brian Zeger and will perform Broadway standards as well as opera selections.

Voigt is known for her roles in popular Italian operas, such as Tosca, Aida, and Amelia in Un ballo in maschera. Earlier this year at her “home” opera house, the Metropolitan, she portrayed Minnie in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), which also was broadcast live and seen at the Mahaiwe. She has won acclaim in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Salome, as Wagner’s Isolde, and Leonora in La forza del destino. In addition to her numerous operatic roles, Voigt enjoys performing American standards and show music; this summer she will star as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, where she will be the first artist-in-residence.

The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is at 14 Castle St. in Great Barrington, Mass. For ticket information, call 413.528.0100 or visit www.mahaiwe.org.

By Lesley Ann Beck

Actor Jim Brochu, who brings his award-winning one-man show about Zero Mostel to Barrington Stage Company (BSC) this week, remembers the day he first met Zero Mostel—it was May 13, 1962, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum had just opened on Broadway. Zero Mostel played the lead, of course, a role for which he won the Tony Award, and, said Brochu, in a recent telephone interview, “I’ve never seen anybody funnier in my life.”

Brochu went to see the show because a family friend, David Burns, was playing the role of Senex. Brochu was thirteen years old and enrolled in a military school at the time; he was wearing his uniform when he went backstage after the show to greet his friend. Brochu walked out onto the stage and bumped into Zero Mostel, who quipped, “Who are you, General Nuisance?”

Brochu wrote and stars as Zero Mostel in Zero Hour, which opens at Barrington Stage Company Stage 2 Wednesday, May 18, and runs through June 5. The off-Broadway production ran for fourteen months and Brochu’s performance garnered him the 2010 Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance and a Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor in a Play.

“Zero kind of inhabits me,” Brochu says, by way of explaining how he came to create Zero Hour. “I stole liberally from him when I became an actor,” Brochu laughs. Brochu maintained his acquaintance with Mostel over the years; at one point Mostel came to see him in an early performance and sent him an autographed photo afterwards, a memento Brochu still has.

Zero Hour is set in Mostel’s painting studio; he painted just about every day. In fact, Brochu says, Mostel considered himself a painter first, working as an actor to support his visual art. Brochu paints on stage as part of his performance; a passion for painting is an attribute he shares with Mostel.

In Zero Hour, Brochu, as Mostel, brushes in hand, reminisces, recounting his fascinating life. Mostel started as a stand-up comedian, which led to his successful acting career. In addition to his award for Forum, Mostel won Tonys for Fiddler on the Roof and Rhinoceros and was nominated for Ulysses in Nighttown. His many film credits include The Front, Rhinoceros, The Hot Rock, The Producers, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

But what I want audiences to come away with, Brochu says, is that Mostel “overcame so many obstacles, professionally, personally, and physically.”

The son of immigrant parents, Mostel grew up on New York’s Lower East Side, in an Orthodox Jewish family, from whom he later became estranged for marrying a non-Jewish woman. In the early 1960s, Mostel was in a serious bus accident and almost lost one of his legs. Perhaps the most difficult obstacle was when Mostel was blacklisted during the 1950s.

“I always call the blacklisting section the spine of the play,” Brochu says. “It affected him terribly. He was always living under the shadow of being investigated. He always felt that the government was still after him.”

For Brochu, who has had a long and varied career in the theater, it made good sense to write a one-man show about Mostel and perform it himself. “As an actor you have to do everything you can to create for yourself. We have to make a living! I tell every young actor, if you can do a one-person show, do it.

Brochu is a prolific playwright, having penned about a dozen scripts, including two musicals. “There’s a side of me that loves to be on stage and another side that loves to be alone, creating characters.” His first published play, Cookin’ with Gus, was written on a bet when he was playing Tevye in Kansas City in 1981, and it is still widely performed.

Although he’s been successful as an actor and as a writer, Brochu is gratified by the attention, and the awards, he has won for Zero Hour. “I have been a working actor for forty-two years but never had this recognition. … It’s just tremendous.”

Barrington Stage Company presents Zero Hour at Stage 2, 36 Linden St., Pittsfield, from May 18 through June 5, with performances Tues-Fri. at 7:30, Sat. at 4 and 8, and Sunday at 3. Additional performance on Fri., May 20 at 3; no afternoon performance on Sat., May 21. There will be a post-show discussion with Jim Brochu on Tuesday, May 24. Tickets are $15-$39. Call 413.236.8888 or visit www.barringtonstageco.org.

According to Pete Seeger, “Tom’s songs have a way of sneaking up on you. You find yourself humming them, whistling them, and singing a verse to a friend. Like the songs of Woody Guthrie, they’re becoming part of America.”

Over the years Paxton has recorded more than twenty albums and written scores of songs; in 2009, Paxton was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys. His songs have been recorded by many, many singers, from the likes of Pete Seeger and Judy Collins to Willie Nelson, Placido Domingo, and Arlo Guthrie.

Tickets are available at the Colonial box office at 111 South St., Pittsfield; by calling 413.997.4444 or online at www.TheColonialTheatre.org.

In her new literary thriller, A Stranger Like You (The Viking Press/Penguin Group), Elizabeth Brundage (whose two previous novels were set in Albany, N.Y., and Stockbridge, Mass.) gives us a gritty, authentic Los Angeles as the backdrop to her taut, suspenseful story. Hedda Chase is a powerful Hollywood film producer, who, intent on eschewing gratuitous violence in her movies, cancels production of a screenplay filled with the kind of brutality she finds objectionable. When the writer of the cancelled script, Hugh Waters, an insurance company employee from New Jersey, learns that Hedda Chase killed his dream, he flies to L.A. and accosts her, drugging and locking her in the trunk of her BMW—the same fate as the character in his screenplay. This well-crafted novel offers clever plotting; complex and troubling characters; and a provocative look at the depiction of violence in film and in fiction.

 
In her latest book, novelist and part-time Northampton, Mass., resident Elinor Lipman concocts a contemporary comedy of manners. The Family Man (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) revolves around Henry Archer, a gay New York City lawyer who has taken early retirement and is feeling a little lonely—until an unexpected phone call from his appalling ex-wife (a brief mistake long ago) brings his long-lost stepdaughter, Thalia, back into his life. Helping Thalia manage her complicated relationships, Henry soon realizes that his own love life is far from over. All of Lipman’s considerable skills are at work in this book: witty dialogue, engaging characters, and humorous situations. Lipman often places her characters in awkward social situations, but with charm, heart, and a measure of sly wit, she shepherds them along to a satisfying conclusion.

Dani Shapiro’s beautifully written second memoir, Devotion (HarperCollins Publishers), mines her very personal search not so much for the big answers as for the right questions. Shapiro, who lives in Litchfield County, Conn., grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home, but abandoned those rituals in college. In her forties, married and with a young son, her need to discover her true beliefs becomes compelling. She visits synagogues and affixes a mezuzah on her front door; spends weekends at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Mass.; goes on a silent meditation retreat. There is no single epiphany, just a series of quiet realizations that, for her, aspects of Judaism, yoga, Buddhism, and meditation all have a place in her life. Shapiro’s tale of her transformative journey is moving, intimate, humorous, and honest.

A society matron schemes to have her estranged husband appear at their daughter’s wedding; a socialite awaits the reviews of her first published novel with dread; and a woman shunned by society for being a divorcé returns to New York City from her exile in Florence, Italy, only to realize that she is still an outcast.

These characters appear in the three short stories—“The Last Asset,” “Expiation,” and “Autre Temps”—included in Edith Wharton on Audio, Volume 1, the first audiobook from the Wharton Audio Project, a collaboration between Berkshire Media Artists (BMA) and The Mount Press. The selected stories were written between 1902 and 1911, when Edith Wharton, the first female author to win a Pulitzer Prize, lived at The Mount in Lenox, Mass., and all three feature characters dealing, in some way or another, with the strictures of “polite society.” 

 Wharton was known for penning “biting social satire,” says Jason Brown, who produced and directed the project at his BMA Studios in Monterey, Mass. “I wanted short stories that were written while she was at The Mount,” he adds, “and these were my favorites.”

The stories are read dramatically by Jonathan Epstein, Tod Randolph, and Tara Franklin, accomplished actors familiar to Berkshire theatergoers. In fact, all three have either acted in or read from Wharton works at The Mount.

 “The Last Asset,” the tale of an American newspaperman on assignment in Paris who is enlisted to find a missing father-of-the-bride, is read by Epstein with just the right inflection of humor. “Expiation” is read by Franklin, whose youthful voice is ideal for the story of Mrs. Fetherel, the would-be author of a scandalous exposé. And Randolph does a marvelous job with “Autre Temps,” the poignant tale of a woman whose own long-ago divorce makes her worry for her beloved daughter, about to risk her status in society.

Musical interludes buffer the excellent recordings of Wharton’s stories, which lend themselves to being read aloud, an activity often enjoyed by Wharton and her guests at The Mount. Edith Wharton on Audio, Volume 2, which features a selection of ghost stories, is due in spring 2011.

Edith Wharton on Audio Volume 1  the audio book is on three CDs; listening time is three hours and fifteen minutes. For more information, visit www.bmaaudio.com.