By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published June 7, 2013

GREAT BARRINGTON — It’s a scene that has played out many times on film — two longtime friends take a road trip together, bantering along the way. Actor Tony Shalhoub and screenwriter and playwright Joe Cacaci are driving from New York to Great Barrington to make it to the screening of “Food for Thought” — a short film written and directed by Cacaci that stars Shalhoub and actress Minnie Driver — for the opening night of the 2013 Berkshire International Film Festival.

“I would say he’s fun to work with, but unfortunately, he’s not really a good actor — no depth,” says Cacaci jokingly of Shalhoub, in a phone interview from the road.
Sitting in the passenger’s seat, Shalhoub quips back. “I’d work better with good material.”

The two have known each other for most of their careers. The Emmy-winning “Monk” star and the writer whose work has appeared coast-to-coast at venues like The Public Theater in New York and the Coconut Grove Theater in Los Angeles will both be back in the Berkshires for tonight’s Berkshire Playwrights Lab’s sixth season gala celebration at Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. Shalhoub will be starring in a staged reading of a short play by Cacaci, one of five original works written exclusively for the gala.

The play offers a snapshot in time of a businessman-turned politician running for office and his young campaign manager while both are in a Midwestern hotel room on the campaign trail.

“(The politician is) more of an independent, but this isn’t something that delves into one political side or the other, it’s focused on the characters and who they are,” Shalhoub added.

Tonight will mark the first time the play will be read for an audience. Given the two men’s long history together — Shalhoub was featured in a TV pilot that Cacaci wrote several years ago that the two said they hope to revisit in the future — working on this short play made for an easy collaboration.

“You see this short film we did and then look at the character he is playing here for the gala, and you cannot imagine these two characters being connected in any way,” Cacaci said. “Tony can play these characters who are wildly opposite and I haven’t seen anyone who can quite do it like him. That’s the truth.”

Cacaci said Shalhoub is very good at analyzing scripts, providing insights during the rehearsal process that has helped Cacaci see the play or screenplay in a different light.

This ability to bring to life vastly different characters and worlds is something the two men share. Shalhoub said that he has loved having the opportunity to interpret Cacaci’s “intelligent, sophisticated, humor-filled writing.”

“His work has an enormous sense of heart. OK, I take that back — he’s a bitter, bitter man,” Shalhoub joked. “As an actor it is always fun to work on writing that comes from such a vile, steaming bubbling bile.”

Beyond their artistic shorthand and good-natured ribbing, connecting the two men is a passion for working across mediums.

Recognizable to mainstream audiences as the brilliant, phobia-plagued detective Adrian Monk for eight seasons on the USA Network’s “Monk,” Shalhoub got his start in theater. He earned a Master’s in Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama. From Yale, he lived a life treading the boards, performing first with the American Repertory Theater, and then pursued a stage career in New York. Film and television quickly followed, and Shalhoub became one of those recognizable, but not-yet-a household name kind of faces until “Monk.”

This past year, Shalhoub revisited his love of theater on Broadway in the critically acclaimed revival of Clifford Odets’ 1937 drama “Golden Boy.” Following tonight’s gala performance, Shalhoub will be heading back to New York for Sunday’s Tony Awards, for which he is nominated for Best Featured Actor in Play.

“Working on ‘Golden Boy’ was one of the best experiences I had in a long time,” Shalhoub said. “It was a terrific piece of material with a fantastic director. It was a true joy to be part of that whole world.”

This ability to shift from theater to film to television and back again is something Cacaci understands very well. One of the four artistic directors of the Lab, which is the only company in the area dedicated solely to nurturing new plays, Cacaci co-created the CBS series, “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill,” written television films, and has served as co-executive producer of two primetime series — “The Hoop Life” on Showtime and, on CBS, “The Education of Max Bickford.”

Teaching television writing at the graduate film program at Columbia University, Cacaci said the mission of helping young writers is what makes the Lab’s work so crucial.

“It’s hard for new playwrights to find a place for their work,” said Jim Frangione, another one of the Lab’s artistic directors. “That is why having the gala, and featuring people like Tony is so important — it raises awareness and interest in new works.”

For Shalhoub, there is nothing quite like working on a new play.

“Working with a playwright on a new piece is incredible,” Shalhoub said. “Some playwrights are territorial and don’t want to change a syllable, but most are really open to what the actor and the director brings to it. Joe does that.”

Thist will be Shalhoub’s first time at the lab’s annual gala.

“Joe asked me to stay away until this year. He finally allowed me to come,” Shalhoub said as the two men laughed.

“I told him to stay away for the first five years,” Cacaci said. “I figured we could haul him out this time.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published June 6, 2013

Composer Sheila Silver has always been drawn to stories about powerful women like Edna St. Vincent Millay.

“I mostly write about women,” Silver said. “Edna picked me, it just happened. I really identified with her sense of feminism, her sense of freedom — she was the most successful American poet living in her day.”

Though she has been immersed in Millay’s life and writings since the spring of 2011, Silver is now ready to embark on a new project centered on dynamic women’s voices.
She is a 2013 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and will travel to India with her husband and son to work on a new opera, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” based on the novel of the same name by Khaled Hosseini.

Telling an epic multi-generational story about two women’s lives in Afghanistan, the novel’s subject matter had a visceral impact on Silver.

“I’m going to be looking at Hindu-sounding music which is at the core of Afghan music,” Silver said. “I need to go to India to color my Western musical voice, and tell these women’s stories.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published June 6, 2013

HUDSON, N.Y. — When composer Sheila Silver debuts the world premiere of “Beauty Intolerable: A Songbook” on Saturday at the First Presbyterian Church in Hudson, N.Y, she will be looking at the culmination of two years immersed in the writings of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. She has found a journey through a writer’s work and life all-absorbing.

It all started when she came across “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,” a sonnet by Millay.

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why/I have forgotten, and what arms have lain/Under my head till morning; but the rain/Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh/Upon the glass and listen for reply/And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain/For unremembered lads that not again/Will turn to me at midnight with a cry” — those are the first few lines of the sonnet, and after reading them, Silver was hooked.

Silver is an internationally recognized composer whose work has been performed and commissioned by the likes of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the RAI Orchestra of Rome. Only vaguely acquainted with Millay’s work, Silver bought a book of her poetry and then read “Savage Beauty,” Nancy Milford’s biography of the boundary-breaking writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923.

“I started thinking about writing an opera about her. I found that as I was doing my research, I got interested in her as a person and a persona,” Silver said.

Only the third woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Millay was a ground-breaker and early feminist, whose personal life as well as her writings held equal fascination for readers and critics. Born in Rockland, Maine in 1892, and graduating from Vassar College in 1917, Millay catapulted to prominence in the 1920s and seemed to court controversy and praise in equal measure for her outspokenness, open bisexuality and romantic affairs before and during her marriage to Eugen Jan Boissevain.

Referencing her colorful love life, the song cycle’s title comes from a poem written by George Dillon, one of Millay’s lovers during her marriage to Boissevain.
“I had this kind of journey through her work that gave me insights into love,” Silver said. “Her work has this irreverence and is playful, and then it investigates this deep, heavier love.”

Silver’s original plan to write the opera was supported by American Opera Projects, a New York-based organization dedicated to supporting new American operas. That initial idea changed as she pored through Millay’s writing. Instead of a full-scale opera, Silver chose to craft a 15-song collection of Millay’s poems set to new music. Mixing genres and tones, Silver’s compositions are inspired by classical music, jazz, New Orleans bass lines, and one song even uses a rap-based rhythm. It’s an eclectic mix representing a complicated writer’s work.

Writing for classical opera singers, Silver said she is fortunate to be able to gather three accomplished, world-class sopranos in the concert — soprano Lauren Flanigan, mezzo-soprano Deanne Meek and lyric soprano Risa Renae Harman.

“I have these three stage personalities, with three kinds of voices. I wanted these three faces of Edna to come on and off the stage,” Silver said.

It is an ambitious musical project, but Silver said she wanted to have Millay’s words stand on their own. During Saturday’s performance, Tony and Emmy-winning actress Tyne Daly will recite some of Millay’s poetry, while stage actress Tandy Cronyn will read during the June 13 performance of the songbook at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia theater at Symphony Space, a performing arts center on New York’s Upper West Side.

Along with American Opera Projects, Silver’s work is sponsored by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society at Steepletop in Austerlitz, N.Y. Based in the house owned by Millay and Boissevain, the society gave Silver access to the writer’s home as part of her research.

It’s a project that the society’s executive director, Peter Bergman, said is very exciting.

“It’s a song cycle theater piece that, while classically oriented, has a popular rhythm base,” Bergman said. “She’s (Silver) doing something really special here.”

Bergman first fell in love with Millay’s poems at only 8 years old and said he can relate to Silver’s fascination with the writer’s work.

“This is a word that I don’t use frequently or easily, but Millay was a genius as a poet,” Bergman said. “She wrote poetry in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s that touches readers so immediately in every generation as though she had just written it.”

Silver said that Millay’s famous quatrain “First Fig” epitomizes her appeal: “My candle burns at both ends/It will not last the night/But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends/It gives me a lovely light!”

“That’s the life she lived,” Silver said. “She burned her candle at both ends, it’s just who she was. She lived life deeply and fully.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published June 6, 2013

PITTSFIELD — Screenwriter Ned Goldreyer came across the story for his play, “Boss,” by accident.

Sitting down to read The New York Times one day eight years ago, he stumbled on a startling headline — Isaac Levy, one of the last two Jewish people living in Kabul, Afghanistan, had died. Now there was only one Jewish person left, not just in the city, but in the entire country.

“It was basically like, ‘only one Jew remains.’ That is what caught my eye — he must be one of the most toxic characters that you could ever imagine, just there all alone,” Goldreyer said.

Goldreyer immediately saw dramatic and comedic possibilities staring at him from the newspaper. It had to be a play, he thought. Two men, Levy and Zablon Simintov, were living together at opposite ends of a Kabul synagogue. They were not friends, but enemies.

Struck by the story, but not knowing exactly what to do with it, Goldreyer cut the article out and posted it to his wall, where it stayed untouched for the next few years.

A writer on shows like “The Simpsons,” who was nominated for an Emmy for his contributions to “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” Goldreyer said he didn’t have time to translate the story into a script.

Flash forward nearly a decade since he first encountered the story, and Goldreyer’s work will come to Pittsfield on Saturday in a staged reading at Temple Anshe Amunim in Pittsfield.

Goldreyer will fly to the Berkshires to join in a talk after the reading.

Billed as a “tragi-comedy,” the play was first presented before an audience last year, after being selected for a reading by the HRC Showcase Theatre in Hudson, N.Y. Now in its 22nd season, HRC Showcase Theatre is a nonprofit dedicated to developing new plays.

Originally called “Bastards” — a less synagogue-friendly title — “Boss” offered a provocative mix of comedy and existential angst that had an immediate effect on Barbara Waldinger, the theater’s artistic director.

For Waldinger, two men trapped together by circumstance who don’t really like one another made an absorbing read.

“There is one point when the older man says to the younger man, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if the Nazis had won?’ And his point was that if they had won, then they would have buried the evidence of all the horrors that they committed,” Waldinger said. “Future generations wouldn’t know that people could be capable of being so evil. It’s not just a ‘funny play.’ There’s a lot to it.”

The two men debate and ask questions, which Waldinger said is central to the Jewish religious culture. At one point, a Taliban soldier walks into the synagogue — and the events that follow are “funny, ridiculous plot developments,” Waldinger said.

It’s a mix of broad comedy and pathos that Waldinger said stood out to the judges. Directing the reading herself, and assembling a cast that included Hudson and Berkshire-area performers Andrew Joffe, Mel Cobb and Charlie Owens.

Waldinger said the actors were given the script a month in advance. She and her actors worked on a truncated rehearsal schedule. Then the play was presented, followed by a talk back that included Goldreyer.

Goldreyer said he was struck by the probing questions the audience posed after the show. Sitting among the audience were members from Temple Anshe Amunim, where Waldinger is now a member after moving to the area with her husband. Looking for an event that could serve as a benefit for the temple, they approached Waldinger about bringing the reading to Pittsfield.

Bringing more theater programming to the temple community is something that is very important for Rabbi Josh Breindel. A fan of theater and a performer himself, Breindel said he can’t wait for the reading.

“This is the first major theatrical production at the temple since I first came here four years ago,” Breindel said. “Judaism is both a religion and a culture. I’ve been trying to not only offer people the religious experience of being Jewish, but to connect our community to the artistic and cultural aspects of being Jewish.”

Goldreyer said his play is not particularly religious, but offers “an exploration of what it means to be a Jew in a hostile environment.”

“The whole plot seemed a natural for a play. It’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ meets ‘The Odd Couple’ meets ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’ ” Goldreyer said. “It has those basic Aristotelian theatrical elements — it seemed like this was a play that someone was going to write. I wanted to be one of the first.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published May 30, 2013

GREAT BARRINGTON — A group of men huddle together in a dark room. An alarm goes off, piercing the silence around them. Grudgingly, the men get up to start their days as migrant workers living in Arizona. The camera focuses on Carlos, a man with a wearied expression etched on his face and spider webs tattooed on the backs of his hands. The men look for work in a Home Depot parking lot, and the camera cuts to Jen and Andrew, a couple looking to hire two men to repair the deck on their house. Two sets of characters from completely opposite backgrounds converge together, yielding unpredictable results.

That is the beginning of “El Doctor,” an 11-minute film written and produced by Pittsfield-born screenwriter and actress Jude Roth, which will screen at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington this weekend as part of the eighth annual Berkshire International Film Festival.

It’s a project that has been a labor of love for Roth, who has written more than 30 screenplays for television, film and internet platforms. “El Doctor” marks Roth’s first foray into producing, and she brought the film together under her own production company, Sport of Nature Pictures, created in 2012 to make “El Doctor” a reality, with the help of Off-Chance Productions. An Indiegogo fundraising campaign helped bring the necessary pieces together.

Roth assembled a cast of 13 actors that included herself in the role of Jen. The 20-person production crew included her own husband, Rob, who composed the film’s score, and director Heather de Michele, a past collaborator.

“This movie was important from a creative and socio-political standpoint,” Roth said in a phone interview. ‘I thought “El Doctor’ could contribute to this running conversation we’re having about immigration.”

The film is a searing look at one family’s unraveling, juxtaposed against another man’s struggles as an undocumented immigrant living in the United States.
That subject matter resonated

strongly with Roth. One day she was in the car listening to a radio story on SB 1070, the 2010 Arizona State Senate bill that has since passed, enabling immigration status checks by police authorities during any “lawful stop, detention or arrest.”

Describing her own politics as “decidedly left,” Roth said she was affected in a visceral way by stories she kept hearing about individuals impacted by the Arizona legislation. Her curiosity was fueled by watching a friend’s documentary about Los Angeles’ iconic Sunset Boulevard. The film’s look at the street and its inhabitants briefly zeroed in on Hispanic immigrant day laborers. Immediately, Roth was hooked. She wanted to learn more about the laborers’ lives.

While informed by her own beliefs, Roth said the film was not her “own personal soap box.” Instead, she would look at the moral grey area of each character.

It’s a small-scale film that packs a punch, and it stood out to Kelley Vickery, BIFF’s founder and executive producer.

“It tells a whole story and creates a conversation in a short span of time,” Vickery said. “It sets up that whole conversation that we are having right now through great acting and great direction. It wasn’t that hard of a choice to decide to program it.”

Another positive of including the film was the opportunity to feature local-born talent, Vickery said.

Roth’s parents moved to Pittsfield when she was about three years old, and Roth attended Pittsfield High School, going on to earn her bachelor’s degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

A writing career came after experimenting with other mediums. She studied dance at Terpischore Dance Center and Jacob’s Pillow, studied acting at former Berkshire Lyric and Berkshire Public Theaters. She also tried music, which she admittedly “wasn’t very good at.” At NYU, acting sparked her creativity, and she went on to perform at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky. While she loved acting, writing was always bubbling under the surface.

She realized she had a desire to write in the third grade, when she would take classroom notepads home with her.

“I’d prime pen to paper, but would just write the basic Jack and Jill nursery rhyme — I really got off to a great start,” she joked.

Leaving nursery rhymes behind, Roth cultivated her writing during her senior year of college by writing audition monologues for herself. Eventually, acting full-time turned into writing full-time, and after some fits and starts, her screenwriting career began in earnest.

For Roth, the theme connecting her work has been a desire to find intimate narratives within larger stories.

“I have a love and interest in personal stories that are set against political backdrops,” Roth said. “Whether we are aware of it or not, we are affected by the political landscape on a micro level.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published May 28, 2013

photo by Brian Mastroianni
Nell Ezequelle of Great Barrington, left, and Nancy Donovan stand by the Glendale fire truck before the 2013 Stockbridge Memorial Day parade.

STOCKBRIDGE — A childhood disappointment turned into a joyride for a Great Barrington senior Monday.

It was the end of World War II and communities across the nation were celebrating the announcement that World War II was over. Just a child, Nell Ezequelle, who lived in the Glendale Village in Stockbridge, was excited for the town’s parade commemorating the moment.

The Glendale Fire Department was rounding up the children to give them a ride on top of the town’s fire truck. Ezequelle desperately wanted to be part of the parade. She asked her family’s housekeeper if she could ride on top of the truck. The housekeeper said no. With Ezequelle’s parents out of town, the housekeeper was afraid to let the young girl ride the truck without her parent’s permission.

“I stood at the bottom of my father’s driveway and watched the Glendale fire truck go by,” Ezequelle said. “My heart was absolutely broken.”

Flash forward almost seven decades, and Ezequelle’s wish happily came true. During the annual Stockbridge Memorial Day parade on Monday, she got to ride down the town’s main street on the old Glendale fire truck now owned by Jake Donovan and Clint Schneyer.

“I was riding on the truck, and all of a sudden I saw myself standing there on the bottom of my father’s driveway, watching everyone else have a wonderful time,” Ezequelle said. “I’ve never ridden on a fire truck before. It was wonderful.”

Monday’s long-awaited ride resulted from Ezequelle’s friendship with Donovan and his wife, Nancy. It all happened rather unexpectedly. One day she happened to tell Nancy about her childhood wish, and how it was something that had stayed on her mind since. Nancy said she was immediately touched by her friend’s story.

“The other night when we talked about it, I saw the tears in her eyes. They were so fresh,” Nancy said. “I ended up asking her to ride on the truck with my daughter and granddaughter.”

While much has changed for Ezequelle since that day in 1945, the disappointment has remained. Still, when the opportunity came, Ezequelle was initially hesitant.
“She told me, ‘at this age, I feel a little silly about this, I don’t know if I can get up there,’ ” Nancy said.

Ezequelle gave in at the insistence of close friends who urged her to seize the opportunity.

“They just said ‘Nell, go for it,’ ” Ezequelle said. “So, I did it and it ended up being a perfect parade. My grandson was even there, marching with the Monument Mountain high school band. My family was there watching.”
For Ezequelle, the day was a way to commemorate those who had served their country as well as think back to being that little girl watching the parade pass by her family home.

“I’m so grateful for Nancy and Jake for making this happen,” Ezequelle said. “I got my fire truck.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published may 23, 2013

NORTH ADAMS — Listen to “My True Story,” the title track on R&B and soul legend Aaron Neville’s new doo-wop album, and you can hear what makes his voice unique.
From the start, Neville hits the first note on the 1961 song by The Jive Five in a high falsetto, smoothly reaching higher without a break. It’s a seamless sound, and its singular quality has become his trademark throughout his five-decade-spanning career.

“Love will make you ha-ppy/And love will make you cry/Love will make the tears fall/When your lover says goodbye,” Neville sings, managing to capture the inherent melancholy of the lyrics without making the song heavily sad. His voice carries its own built-in sense of optimism.

Coming to Mass MoCA on Saturday as part of his current national tour, Neville said the title of his new CD is personal — he approaches each concert eager to share something of his own story through the love of music that defined his childhood.

“This music is where I come from,” Neville said in a phone interview with The Eagle. “Doo-wop was like the medicine they gave me growing up.”

It was ever-present medicine for a young man growing up in New Orleans. Born in 1941, Neville said doo-wop was part of the eclectic mix that supplied the soundtrack to his formative years. He loved everything from Nat King Cole to Hank Will-iams, digesting a wide spectrum of influences that would come to shape his work.

Starting out locally, Neville had his first crossover success with 1967′s “Tell It Like It Is,” which remained the number one hit on the R&B charts for five weeks. Since then, he has branched out to tackle various genres and collaborate with notable hit makers. His 1989 Grammy-winning collaboration with Linda Ronstadt on the album “Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind,” produced hit duets “Don’t Know Much” and “All My Life.” He has had four top-20 hits in the United States, and has toured with his brothers, Art, Charles and Cyril, as The Neville Brothers.

Neville said that doo-wop’s influence has been a constant throughout the years.

“I just love doing the harmonies and hitting those high notes and the bass notes. It’s an era of music that has motivated me,” Neville said. “Everything I’ve done has had some doo-wop essence.”

First emerging in the 1940s and becoming popular in the 1950s and early 1960s, doo-wop developed among African-American communities in cities across the United States. From New York and Philadelphia to Chicago and Detroit, doo-wop gained popularity for its soulful group harmonies and simple beats. While often accompanied by a backing band, a lot of doo-wop music centers on a cappella harmonizing.

The idea to revisit this music had been in Neville’s mind for decades. In 1985, Neville released “Orchid in the Storm,” a five-track album of music from the 1950s and early 1960s that included some doo-wop songs. It inspired Neville to revisit the music of his youth on a bigger scale.

“I’ve asked recording companies for years to do this, but no one was interested,” Neville said.

Along came Blue Note Records, which released the new album, and a poweful producing duo — the label’s president Don Was and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Richards’ guitar can be heard throughout the album.

“This is the same stuff Keith grew up with, so it was a no-brainer for him to get involved. I’m just so happy to get to do this,” Neville said. “It has this innocence to it. You can sit down and listen to it with your grandmother and granddaughter — it’s for everybody.”

This universal appeal, said Jodi Joseph, director of communications at Mass MoCA, made Neville a perfect fit for the museum.

“People are really excited to see this concert. It’s something that is attracting locals who live 10 minutes away, and then people who live five hours away,” Joseph said.

The unofficial start of the summer season, Memorial Day weekend has had big significance for the museum, Joseph said. Mass MoCA opened its doors during the holiday weekend in 1999, and the museum has had a major concert each year featuring headliners like Rosanne Cash and Patti Smith.

In an era of auto-tune, Neville said it is a joy to be able to introduce the songs of his youth to a new generation.

“I rather go old-school, but I still love all of the new stuff,” Neville said. “But for me, I’d rather do it raw.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published May 16, 2013

GREAT BARRINGTON — The first verse of Yiddish lullaby “Makh Tsu Di Eygelekh” (“Close Your Eyes”) is mournfully beautiful: “Now close your little eyes/Soon little birds will fly/In circles everywhere/They’ll flutter by your bed/Your head upon your hand/The house in ash and sand/We leave, my darling child/In search of life.”

The song possesses a grim beauty that is very much a product of the environment in which it was written. First conceived as a poem by Isaiah Shpigl, the song was given musical accompaniment by composer David Beigelman when both men were living in the Lódz ghetto in Poland during the early 1940s. The second largest ghetto behind Warsaw in Nazi-occupied Poland, Lódz was liquidated in 1944. Both men were subsequently sent to Auschwitz in the same year. Shpigl ended up being sent to various concentration camps throughout the duration of World War II, and would survive the Holocaust. Beigelman died the year he moved to the camp.

The songs they wrote were a mixture of light and dark — the delicate rhythm of the tango paired with lyrics that reflected a desire to cling to and nurture a sense of innocence that was quickly slipping out of reach. The men’s work falls in a very specific musical category often referred to as “ghetto tango,” which is genre-bending music performed and written by Jewish people living in Nazi-imposed ghettos during the Holocaust.

On Sunday, Berkshire audiences will witness something of a musical time
capsule on the stage of the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, when The National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene presents “Ghetto Tango,” a revue of music from the Holocaust.

The title of the production is somewhat provocative in its combination of two words not usually associated with one another, said Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of The National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene.

“Because the tango was very popular in Europe during that era, many of the songs that were written by Jews in the ghettos were actually tangos,” said Mlotek, who conceived and created the idea for the traveling revue with the late Yiddish vocalist Adrienne Cooper.

The performance sheds light on an era of music not often discussed, and more importantly it honors and gives a voice to musicians who tragically died during one of history’s darkest periods, Mlotek said.

“Some of these people were professional composers, but in most cases they weren’t. These songs are windows into the lives of those who were survivors, as well as those who did not survive,” Mlotek said.

The music presented in the concert, which partly commemorates the theater’s 98th season, gives a rich combination of genres, he said.
“These people actually formed cabarets inside the ghettos, combining songs that had influences carrying down from the ‘20s and ‘30s — there are Charlestons, Yiddish folk songs, tangos and movie music,” Mlotek said.

It is this strong connection to personal stories of despair, survival and, in many cases, hope that immediately appealed to the Congregation Ahavath Sholom in Great Barrington, which is sponsoring the concert for the synagogue’s 90th anniversary.

“The concert parallels the ups and downs and the doggedness of the people who founded our congregation,” said the congregation’s spiritual leader, Barbara J. Cohen.

Purchasing the current Ahavath Sholom building in 1923, the synagogue’s initial congregation of modest dairy farmers and cattlemen inspired a legacy of acceptance of people from all walks of life that Cohen said directly ties into the themes of “Ghetto Tango.”

“The narrative of a creative Jewish civilization that refused to be suppressed is inspirational in a global way,” Cohen said. “The more things get terrible, the more creativity explodes, which I think is an inspirational message.”

It’s a message that struck the congregation’s vice president, Sandra Flannery, immediately when she first heard about the show.

“I know a lot about Holocaust, having grown up in a Jewish household, but I didn’t know one thing about these underground cabarets in the ghettos,” Flannery said. “It was eye-opening to me to hear about this.”

In the show, Lisa Fishman will perform with Avram Mlotek in Yiddish with English supertitles. They are young performers, about the same age as many of those who first brought the songs to life.

It is all part of bringing an authenticity and moving immediacy to music that has been lost in the public consciousness, Mlotek said.

“When you had 16 people crammed into a two-room apartment, they had to create cultural activities for themselves — so they made their own cabarets and theaters,” Mlotek said. “When you hear the music it reveals how amazing the human spirit can be.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published May 14, 2013

PITTSFIELD — Bluegrass musician and Lenox native Mason Zink looks every inch the country music star with his blue jeans, brown cowboy boots and tan sports jacket, accented by gold lapel clips.

What differentiates Zink from someone like the late, hard-living country great George Jones? For one, Zink is several feet shorter than the average Grand Ole Opry-ready superstar. Similarly, his cowboy boots resemble those sported by Woody, the cowboy from “Toy Story,” more than what would be worn by the typical sad, song-loving drifter. They also light up.

While Zink might sing very adult standards about lost loves and deep regrets, at age 4, he hasn’t even started kindergarden yet.

Yes, you read that right. Zink is a 4-year-old, currently enrolled at Elm Preschool in Pittsfield, who has been nurturing his love of bluegrass ever since he was 18 months old.

It is a love of country music that is rooted deep in his family tree — his grandfather and great uncles were part of the popular October Mountain Boys, a bluegrass group that performed throughout the Berkshires, while his father, Corey, currently headlines the Corey Zink Band.

“My father and uncles played around the county for years, and as I got into music, I fell in love with country,” Corey said. “Then I got to have my own band, and now Mason is following in the same footsteps.”

Mason is a physically small talent with a very large stage presence, and he’ll get the opportunity to perform in front of pretty sizable crowds this week, when he sings at the Third Thursday street festival in downtown Pittsfield.

Sitting down for an interview with his parents in his mother Melissa’s new photography studio on North Street, Mason is very much a typical 4-year-old. The middle child between Cooper, 6, and Molly, 1, Mason’s favorite things are Woody from “Toy Story,” pizza and doughnuts. Also, like many children his age, he gets restless and doesn’t always sit still — whether it is before a performance, or during an interview with The Eagle.

“When this all started, we weren’t sure if a 4-year-old boy would show up at a performance, or if it would be this little musician,” Melissa said. “So far, the musician shows up every time. He’ll throw a tantrum all the way down, but once he is there, boom, he puts on his blue jacket, puts his guitar over his shoulder, gets on stage and he’s very serious about it.”

Given his father’s love of music, Mason has been growing up with music constantly playing around him. With no formal music lessons or training, he picked up the tricks of the trade almost instinctually, often taking his father’s iPod away for himself, spending hours listening.

During a performance by Corey’s band featuring Mason’s grandfather at the Masonic Temple in Pittsfield, Corey said Mason, only 18 months old at the time, walked onstage. Once he got there, he stopped the show. He grabbed the mic and started to sing.

“It just blew us all away,” Corey said. “We were shocked, and had no idea he was going to do it.”

Melissa said Mason’s commitment to music is unwavering. He gets up around 7:30 a.m., picks up his guitar and starts to play.

“That’s how he starts his day,” Melissa said. “We would think, ‘is he really serious, or does he just think it’s fun?’ It just became an everyday part of our lives. Basically, I’d go, ‘Mason, we’ve got a new XBox game, and he’ll just say ‘no thanks, Momma.’ Or it’ll be, ‘go outside and ride your bike.’ And then it will be ‘no thanks, momma.’ He just loves it.”

When asked what his favorite song is, Mason gets a little shy. He looks to his dad before saying that it is “Roustabout,” a song by bluegrass band Open Road.

Mason is also attracting quite the following. Since launching in March, his Facebook fan page has attracted more than 500 “likes,” and Mason has been asked to perform at various gigs around the county.

Despite all of the attention, Mason’s parents said it all goes back to their little boy’s deep love of music and family.

When he performs, he is accompanied by multiple generations of Zinks, including his his father, grandfather and great uncles.

“Mason idolizes his grandfather, and even has the same kind of guitar strap with the little studs on it,” Corey said.

“Mason loves his family and he loves his music,” Melissa added. “So when they perform, it’s just putting those things together.”

By Brian Mastroianni, Berkshire Eagle Staff
First published May 10, 2013

Two cities linked by their industrial pasts and economic downturns have shared a relatively recent phenomenon — the emergence of a cultural economy fueled by the arts.
For the entrepreneurs, artists, locals and visitors involved, the transformation of communities reeling from economic fatigue to places with re-energized downtowns has been both frustrating and exciting.

Pittsfield, following General Electric’s withdrawal, has struggled to find a new role as the county’s economic anchor. In North Adams, the loss of the Sprague Electric Co. left a giant hole in the city’s economic infrastructure.

“The city is still struggling, but I feel that all of the members of the arts community feel like we are building another segment of the town,” said Martha Flood, owner of Martha Flood Design in North Adams.

Flood, who offers custom fabric pattern designs, has had her own shop on Eagle Street since 2010.

“You know what? It’s funny, I don’t remember what the downtown was like before all of this,” she said.

It’s a feeling that some of her Pittsfield counterparts share.

“Pittsfield has totally changed,” said Nicki Wilson, the artistic director of New Stage Performing Arts, a small nonprofit theater company formerly based in a space above the Beacon Cinema on North Street.

Wilson’s theater opened in 2010, and for three years she observed Pittsfield’s downtown renaissance firsthand.

“I remember years ago noticing people’s hunger for theater in downtown Pittsfield and thinking, ‘something is happening here,’ ” Wilson said.
Both women are independent artists running small businesses in cities that a decade ago they would never have seen as hubs for creativity.

Welcome to the changing faces of North Adams and Pittsfield.

‘A sense of community’

“The past five to 10 years have been a very exciting period of time for Pittsfield,” said Megan Whilden, the director of cultural development for the city.

She shared a study by Americans for the Arts, a national organization, on the economic impact that nonprofit arts programs had on Pittsfield between 2005 and 2010. The study found that attendance at city arts events increased by 169 percent.

That this increase occurred around the inception of Whilden’s office at City Hall is no coincidence. Former Mayor James Ruberto created Whilden’s position as a community organizer for the arts in 2004.

“When GE left Pittsfield, they left the city with a $10 million economic development fund, and Mayor Ruberto decided to invest a third of that into the arts and culture in the city,” Whilden said.

Some of that money was invested in the $20 million renovation of the Colonial Theatre, a Gilded Age theater that had suffered from years of neglect. Whilden said that Ruberto also invested in Barrington Stage Company and the renovation of the Berkshire Museum, as well as in Hancock Shaker Village.

“All of this was controversial, and it created a lot of conversation and debate. When something is new and untried there is definitely hesitancy, with the point of view that maybe it isn’t worth it,” Whilden said.

Downtown theaters brought a revival of large-scale events like the Third Thursday festival and the Pittsfield Ethnic Fair, the opening of Beacon Cinema and the institution of the WordXWord and the Pittsfield City Jazz festivals.

All of this led a swath of Pittsfield’s downtown to be re-christened the “Upstreet Cultural District” — one of the first four cultural districts designated by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2011.

“There is a real sense of pride in the city of Pittsfield,” said Jim Benson, a local restaurateur who founded the annual WordXWord Festival, a weeklong event in August celebrating spoken word performance.

“The cool thing about this from a business standpoint is that spoken word really has a draw in downtown Pittsfield,” Benson said. “Bring one of these poets to a Tuesday night in March at Ybar and you have a full house for poetry.”

A city on the way back up

North Adams’ downtown area has experienced its own renaissance over the past decade.

When Mass MoCA opened in 1999, filling the massive factory spaces left over by Sprague Electric to become one of the largest contemporary art museum in North America, it brought something completely new to the small city — a world-class modern art center.

Watching the museum gradually alter the face of the former mill community has been exciting, said Jonathan Secor, director for special programs at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Secor came out to the city in the late 1990s to serve as a consultant for Mass MoCa and help the museum institute its performing arts programs.

“I witnessed the city go down when Sprague left and then have been watching the city make its way back up,” he said.

Though North Adams has done a lot to spur economic growth and open up pathways for artists to make a living in the city, there is still a lot of work to do, Secor said.

“As with Pittsfield, we both can’t say ‘we made it’ yet without lying,” Secor said. “North Adams has a lot of issues that all real cities have. I’ve really come to believe that our new slogan should be ‘slow and steady wins the race,’ and we are sticking to it.”

Secor said it is remarkable to imagine just how rapidly the city’s Main Street has changed. From completely empty storefronts to restaurants, small shops and gallery spaces, the downtown is more lively than it has been in decades.

One of the city’s highest profile events is Solid Sound, the band Wilco’s music and arts festival, which has drawn huge crowds to downtown North Adams. This year the festival will run from June 21 to 23.

Some challenges come with hosting a music festival in the Berkshires, said Wilco’s manager, Tony Margherita, who organizes Solid Sound. But hosting the event in North Adams makes it distinct from any other festival, he said.

“There’s a lot to be said for urban settings,” he said. “But there is a particular feeling about performing at Mass MoCA that is a huge part of what makes this different from any other festival we have been at in other parts of the world.”

While Pittsfield has seen many organizations come together, North Adams’ metamorphosis over the past 10 years has almost solely come from Mass MoCA.
The museum attracts more than 100,000 visitors annually, and Secor said North Adams’ main challenge now is to try to ensure that those people who come just for the art stick around and enjoy the city.

“Mass MoCA could be like Disneyland, in that you enter the gates, say hi to Mickey, and then leave. We have to find a way to avoid that,” Secor said.
Artists have expanded away from the museum and scattered around the city. The Eclipse Mill houses a series of artist lofts in a former textile mill. Murals in the downtown, gallery spaces and public art events like the monthly Downstreet arts festival have helped restaurants and small businesses on Main Street.

Looking forward

Not all news is good news. According to figures released by the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, the unadjusted jobless rates for Pittsfield and North Adams in March 2013 were 7.8 and 9.1 percent, respectively — higher than the state’s 6.8 unemployment rate.

Whilden and Secor agree that there is more work to do.

“The arts are catalysts and are not the end point,” Secor said. “Naysayers say, ‘we’d rather have a factory,’ and while I don’t disagree, I don’t see that happening. Not in North Adams, and especially not in North America.”

For Whilden, the growth of the arts in the cities makes the Berkshires more attractive to businesses. Two major hotel chains, Marriott and Hilton, have plans to build new branches in Pittsfield, and she said rumblings about a train service between Pittsfield and New York City would be a great boon to the county’s economy.

She has more good news for the immediate future — her office has just won a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support “Art + Industry,” a new initiative to explore the city’s industrial past through artwork.

“The city is still a work in progress,” she said, “and I can’t wait to look back and say ‘look at how far we’ve come from 10 years ago.’ ”

“It’s just a very dynamic time to be in the Berkshires,” Secor said. “Change is evident.”