MCLA Announces Music, Gallery and Theater Performances for Winter, Spring Semester

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Department of Fine and Performing Arts at MCLA announced the Winter/Spring 2024 programming including cultural events, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and musical experiences.

According to a press release:

MCLA Gallery 51

The first exhibition of 2024 will examine the entangled histories of ecology and migration. "Unfortunately It Was Paradise" features three artists, Lorena Molina, Larissa Rogers, and Jumana Manna, who address how ecology surfaces in our memory, imagination, and present that are shaped by the legacies of slavery, war, and settler colonialism. The show is on view through March 29. To close the semester, the gallery will feature work from a variety of MCLA students from April 15 to May 11 with an opening reception on April 18 from 5 to 7 p.m.

MCLA Theater MainStage Performance

This March the Fornés Festival returns with "The Summer in Gossensass" by María Irene Fornés and directed by Laura Standley, associate professor of Fine and Performing Arts at MCLA. The show will run from April 4 to 6 at Williams College's 62' Center. "The Summer in Gossensass," tells the story of two American actresses living in London during the 1890s who launch the first English language version of the play HEDDA GABLER by Henrik Ibsen.

MOSAIC Performance

On April 7, the internationally acclaimed Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band will take the stage at the MCLA Church Street Center at 7 p.m. The Wheels improvise with the intimacy of chamber music and the intensity of a rowdy dance band. Their engaging contemporary interpretation of Jewish music is irresistible to audiences ranging from elementary school students to the judges at the International Jewish Music Festival, who heralded them as "a true musical democracy."

MCLA Theater Developmental Workshop Musical

To close out the theater season, a developmental workshop musical titled "Emma When You Need Her," written by Bendetti Fellow Rudy Ramirez, and directed by MCLA Fine and Performing Arts Associate Professor Jeremy Winchester. It will take place at the Church Street Center from April 26-28. The Spring Music Concert, featuring MCLA Wind Ensemble, Concert Choir, and Studio Students, will take place on April 29 at 7 p.m. at the Church Street Center.

North Adams Hopes to Transform Y Into Community Recreation Center

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:19AM / Thursday, May 02, 2024

Mayor Jennifer Macksey updates members of the former YMCA on the status of the roof project and plans for reopening. 

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The city has plans to keep the former YMCA as a community center.

 

"The city of North Adams is very committed to having a recreation center not only for our youth but our young at heart," Mayor Jennifer Macksey said to the applause of some 50 or more YMCA members on Wednesday. "So we are really working hard and making sure we can have all those touch points."

 

The fate of the facility attached to Brayton School has been in limbo since the closure of the pool last year because of structural issues and the departure of the Berkshire Family YMCA in March.

 

The mayor said the city will run some programming over the summer until an operator can be found to take over the facility. It will also need a new name. 

 

"The YMCA, as you know, has departed from our facilities and will not return to our facility in the form that we had," she said to the crowd in Council Chambers. "And that's been mostly a decision on their part. The city of North Adams wanted to really keep our relationship with the Y, certainly, but they wanted to be a Y without borders, and we're going a different direction."

 

The pool was closed in March 2023 after the roof failed a structural inspection. Kyle Lamb, owner of Geary Builders, the contractor on the roof project, said the condition of the laminated beams was far worse than expected. 

 

"When we first went into the Y to do an inspection, we certainly found a lot more than we anticipated. The beams were actually rotted themselves on the bottom where they have to sit on the walls structurally," he said. "The beams actually, from the weight of snow and other things, actually crushed themselves eight to 11 inches. They were actually falling apart. ...