North Berkshire Contra Dance Scheduled for Saturday

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.— The North Berkshire Contra Dance will host its monthly community contra dance on Saturday, May 10, from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

The event will feature live music by Joy Factor, a Massachusetts-based trio, and dance instruction by Albany caller Peter Stix.

The contra dance will take place in the Community Hall of the First Congregational Church, located at 906 Main St., Williamstown. Instruction will begin at 7:30 p.m. The admission fee is pay-as-you-can, with a suggested range of $12 to $20.

Joy Factor includes Gianna Marzilli Ericson and Rebecca Rose Weiss on fiddles, and Henry Yoshimura on guitar. The trio performs original, Celtic, Quebecois, and Old Time tunes.

Prior to the dance, at 2:30 p.m., NBCD will hold a beginner calling workshop at the Williamstown library, featuring live music.

Further information can be found at www.NorthBerkshireDance.org.

 

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Theater Review: 'Driving Miss Daisy' Is a 'Wondrous' Production

By Alan PetrucelliSpecial to iBerkshires
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Alfred Uhry's "Driving Miss Daisy" rolled into the St. Germain Stage in late May, marking the opening of Barrington Stage Company's 2026 season.
 
And what a wondrous, welcoming production it is. Uhry won a Pulitzer Prize for his work; he won an Oscar for the 1989 film adaptation of the play, which also won the Best Picture Oscar. Yes, that's how good it is.
 
Daisy Werthan is a 72-year-old white Jewish widow in Atlanta whose car accident destroyed her Packard — and her chance to ever drive herself again.
 
"Mama, we are just going to have to hire someone to drive you," her adult son Boolie tells her. 
 
She is adamant: "What I do not want — and absolutely will not have — is some chauffeur sitting in my kitchen, gobbling my food and running up my phone bill."
 
Enter Hoke Colburn, an unemployed African-American illiterate who grew up in rural Georgia during the Jim Crow-era South. Boolie hires him at $20 a week, and in a span of 85 minutes and a decade or so, this odd couple develop a tight bond that overcomes their cultural, gender and class differences. 
 
Though she's living in a racially explosive time in the South, the irascible Miss Daisy doesn't consider herself racist, nor does she fully accept the realities of the racist culture that has even resulted in a bombing at her own synagogue (a true event in Atlanta, in 1958).
 
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