10 x 10
You may begin with young poets curating an evening of spoken word — or with a rising comedian from New York — or with Brazilian jazz, bossa nova and blues.
The 10x10 festival keeps growing. This year, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival has joined in with a free workshop and performance by the Boston company Danza Orgánica.
And the 10 Spot art exhibit at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts and at the Sohn Gallery has drawn in photographers from New York to the West Coast.
The sixth annual festival will return from Feb. 16 to Feb. 26, with more than 50 events in downtown Pittsfield.
In this podcast, we have talked with directors and curators, a playwright, photographer and dancers about this year’s festival.
To hear more, listen during the festival for a new short podcast from the Greylock Glass, each day.
Barrington StageAccording to Jen Glockner, [director of Pittsfield’s Office of Cultural Development,] the festival began in 2012 with an idea from Julianne Boyd, artistic director at Barrington Stage Company — to create an evening of short plays.
Barrington Stage’s New Play Festival has become central to 10x10. This year, Boyd says, six actors will perform 10 new plays in one evening.
They range from comic sketches about blanket forts and sand boxes to one-acts that touch deeply on the experiences of the the partner of someone with dementia, or Irish workers in the 1920s, or a young woman who wears a hijab in New York City today.
Matt PennThis year, for the first time, she is co-directing the New Play festival with Matt Penn, the co-artistic director of the Berkshire Playwrights Lab.
Tom CoashTom Coash’s full-length play, “Veils,” set in Cairo at the beginning of the Arab Spring, played at Barrington Stage in the fall of 2015. He says an experience from “Veils” inspired him to write the shorter work that appears in this year’s 10x10 Festival.
To hear more about Tom Coash’s work, listen for a new short podcast from the Greylock Glass each day of the 10 X 10 Festival.
Danza OrgánicaOn Feb. 24 at the Boys and Girls Club, Jacobs Pillow will bring Danza Orgánica, a Boston-based Contemporary Dance Theater Company.
Director and choreographer Marsha Parrilla will lead a free Dance for Social Justice Movement Workshop, and her company will perform from her work, Running in Stillness, to music composed and performed by Shane Shanahan and Ricardo Gallo.
10 Spot
The Lichtenstein Center for the Arts and the Sohn Gallery in Lenox are collaborating this year on 10 Spot, a group exhibit of 10 photographers showing 10 images each. Cassandra Sohn finds their work wide-ranging and timely.
Photographer Ken Dreyfack takes his camera around the world and into city streets at night.
To hear more about the 10 Spot photographers, listen for a new short podcast later during the festival.
To hear more about WordxWord poetry, jazz, theater, comedy and more, listen during the festival for a new short podcast from the Greylock Glass, each day.
