Clark Art, GlimmerGlass Festival Presents 'Happy End'

12:16PM / Tuesday, May 05, 2026Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, May 9 at 3 pm, the Clark Art Institute and The Glimmerglass Festival present a live performance of the touring production of "Happy End," a musical satire by Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, and Elisabeth Hauptmann.

The production takes place in the Clark's Manton Research Center auditorium.

According to a press release:

Banned after only two performances at its 1929 Berlin premiere, Happy End remains one of Weill and Brecht's most theatrical and incisive collaborations. Set in a smoky Chicago speakeasy where gangsters negotiate power, and Salvation Army missionaries seek redemption, the work explores the intersection of faith, commerce, and morality.

This new touring production of Happy End is presented as part of a historic new collaborative partnership between The Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Saratoga, Finger Lakes Opera, and Seagle Festival in a shared effort to expand access to opera across the region. Music is directed by Rob Ainsley, Artistic and General Director of The Glimmerglass Festival, and features Ana Karneža, a Juilliard drama graduate who won the Kurt Weill Foundation's Lotte Lenya Competition in 2024.

Tickets start at $40. Accessible seats available. Call 413 458 0570 with any questions. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit events.clarkart.edu.

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

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