Gloria Anderson

The 40th Anniversary production of Mama, I Want To Sing! will play El Museo's El Teatro for a special Black History Month limited engagement, it was announced by Vy Higginsen, founder and executive director and producer of The Mama Foundation for the Arts.

Performances for the 2019 Maine Playwrights Festival, the state's most prolific incubator for new plays by local playwrights, have been announced for April 25 through May 4 in Portland. This year's eighteenth annual festival features the world premiere performances of six new plays by Maine playwrights. Public performances will be held at the Studio Theater at Portland Stage (25 Forest Avenue). Festival tickets are available now at www.acorn-productions.org.

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) presents Voulkos: The Breakthrough Years, on view from October 18, 2016, through March 15, 2017. Spanning the years 1953-1968, the exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on the early career of Peter Voulkos, whose radical techniques and ideas opened up new possibilities for clay that are still being felt today.

This fall, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) presents MAD Transformations, a series of six exhibitions showcasing artists who have transformed and continue to reshape the public perception of traditional craft mediums. Building upon the exhibition Voulkos: The Breakthrough Years, which celebrates the work of an artist known for drastically changing the way clay is categorized as an art material and discipline, the series considers fiber, clay, and jewelry and metals-disciplines that have composed the bedrock of MAD's founding mission and collection, and that continue to morph in the hands of contemporary artists today.