The Little Pilot
Through 10/4
Aviator and writer Antione de Saint-Exupery is best known today as the creator of the evergreen novella The Little Prince, but his life through his disappearance on an aerial mission at the end of World War II is also fertile ground for this creation by Sandbox Theatre at the Southern. With an ensemble using airborne silk acrobatics and visual art projections, the show delves into both the dreams and the autobiographical contours of a man whose imagination took him to outer space while his adventures took him to the skies.
sandboxtheatreonline.com
(Right: Photo by Matthew Glover.)
Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin with The Guilty Ones
10/8
Time hasn’t dimmed the sound of the brothers Alvin—equal parts folk, rockabilly, R&B, and California hillbilly like the sounds from the most exquisite garage in the known universe. I remember them snagging my ear with a vengeance via their 1980s band the Blasters, and their sound had grown even more deep and rich. With their latest, Lost Time, they dig into tunes by everyone from James Brown to the blues greats; expect them to raise joyful ghosts and play with all the rich diversity of the American sound.
dakotacooks.com
(Right: Photo courtesy Dakota Jazz Club)
Annapurna
Through 10/18
This two-person drama has an irresistible setup: An ailing man named Ulysses is hiding out in a camper in the Colorado mountains when he suddenly has to deal with the arrival of the wife who left him—and who he hasn’t seen in two decades. Terry Hempleman and Angie Timberman, two of our best, promise to deliver the goods with deep humanity, humor, and touching depth in one of the final shows before new Jungle artistic director Sarah Rasmussen takes the helm with her first season.
jungletheater.com
(Right: Photo by Dan Norman.)
The Velocity of Autumn
Through 10/24
There seems to be something in the air that’s leading to intriguing two-handers on local stages this autumn—in this case, a play about an almost-octogenarian living alone in Brooklyn. Our last years shouldn’t be riven with strife, but then how often does what should be actually happen? The arrival of her son as a family go-between sparks an attempt on both their parts to forge ahead with some semblance of truth and compassion. The ever-surprising Melissa Hart and oft-sympathetic Paul de Cordova play mother and son, as the current incarnation of Old Log also seeks to forge its latest path into the future.
oldlog.com
(Right: Photo courtesy Old Log Theatre)
“Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia“
10/24-2/28
When I moved from the Midwest to Northern California for college in the late 1980s, the phantoms of two decades past still made themselves known: through clothes and music, yes, but also in the lingering memory of a Utopian and egalitarian impulse that, we were told, had been thoroughly quashed and discredited by the Me Decade of the 1970s and the Reagan Revolution. Well, I never bought it, and this exhibit at the Walker traces the influence of the Hippie movement from ecological awareness, social inclusiveness, organic foods, social justice and alternative energy (not to mention some truly trippy imagery).
walkerart.org
(Right: Image by Haus-Rucker-Co., Gerald Zugmann)
