Clark Art Presents Constant Smiles and Ava Mirzadegan

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Clark Art Institute's Music at the Manton Concert spring series concludes with a performance by Constant Smiles and Ava Mirzadegan on Sunday, May 5 at 5 pm.
 
The performance takes place in the Clark's auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center.
 
According to a press release:
 
Constant Smiles began in 2009 in leader Ben Jones' home of Martha's Vineyard. Inspired by the island's now-defunct community record store Aboveground Records, the group made their live debut as a noise duo opening for Ralph White (Bad Livers). Fourteen indie-folk albums later, Constant Smiles returns to their electronic roots with their latest release Kenneth Anger, evoking the eponymous filmmaker with hypnotic, '80s-inspired synth classics that examine how rituals and community can heal feelings of isolation.
 
Ava Mirzadegan opens for Constant Smiles. Mirzadegan writes quiet songs about heartbreak, longing, letting go, and befriending the night sky. Accompanied most often by fingerpicked nylon string guitar, her work rings of unembellished honesty.
 
Tickets $10 ($8 members, $7 students, $5 children 15 and under). Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. Advance registration encouraged. For more information and to register, visit clarkart.edu/events.
 
Presented in collaboration with Belltower Records, North Adams.

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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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