Troupe

After a year spent locating a space and cast members, the Play Around theater is ready to take the stage and emphasize the "community" in community theater. The Quincy-based troupe, which will unveil its first production at the end of the month in Hingham, plans to perform for free in nontraditional spaces. As her company gets its footing, founder Anastasia O'Brien has big plans for performances in many communities south of Boston. "We could have just done what every other group does, but why just be another community theater group that's just going to do the same thing?"

When is a home invasion a good thing? When it's Theatre on Fire coming through the door. The edgy Boston troupe will hit more than a dozen residences around the Boston area over the next few weeks with its production of "Vincent River," performing Philip Ridley's two-character play for audiences of up to two dozen people sitting on folding chairs. "I think this is just one more extreme way of changing the audience's experience and getting them as close as possible, as in-the-room as possible," said Darren Evans, artistic director of Theatre on Fire, which usually stages...

Rhythm junkies rejoice. In the propulsive, high-energy dances of choreographer Nicholas Leichter, the beat is king. It’s tough to watch Leichter’s effervescent dancers weave their wily moves into, over, and around the groove without tapping your toes and bobbing your head. This was vividly illustrated in the two works that Leichter and his 15-year-old New York company offered in their Boston debut over the weekend, presented by World Music/CRASHarts at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Both works feed off Leichter’s abiding love of club dance, interwoven with influences of...

The following was submitted by Theatre North of Boston: Tickets are now on sale for the April Fool's Eve premier performance of Marblehead Little Theatre's improv troupe,  "Accidentally on Purpose. "  Their improv style is based on the hit TV show "Who's Line Is It Anyway. " The nine member troupe includes Marblehead residents Susan Parker and Andrew Dunlop, Swampscott resident Bruce Whear, Salem residents Erik Rodenhiser and Erik Neumann, Peabody residents Brett Bovio and Ted Neary,  Boston resident Liz Hartford and...

The weekend debut of Mass Motion Dance Company provided an excellent showcase not only for the choreography of its artistic directors, Katherine Hooper and Irada Djelassi, but for Collage Dance Ensemble, one of the area's leading folk dance troupes. It was a clever marketing stroke to invite the veteran company to share MMDC's first concert, both in terms of attracting a wider audience and in serving its mission for community outreach. The pitfall, however, was that the internationally acclaimed Collage is a hard act to follow.

"Most dreams last only five to 20 minutes,’’ an authoritative voice intones in the opening moments of “PSY,’’ purporting to impart nuggets of psychological wisdom to the audience inside the Cutler Majestic Theatre. Sometimes, though, dreams can last more than two hours, and even then you emerge from them with great reluctance. That’s the case with “PSY,’’ a transfixing circus spectacle that boggles both mind and eye while also relocating your heart to your throat once in a while.

CAESAREAN SECTION Created by Teatr Zar Presented by Charlestown Working Theater in partnership with Double Edge Theatre. At: Charlestown Working Theater, 442 Bunker Hill St., Charlestown, May 29-June 1. Tickets: $25. 866-811-4111, www.charles townworkingtheater.org “There’s a lot of great traditional theater in Boston, and we like to offer something that is alternative,’’ says Jennifer Johnson, co-director of...

UNTAMED: The Wild Underground Suspended Cirque, June 2 at Cyclorama, Boston Center for the Arts. Tickets: $50-$175. 866-811-4111, www.bcaonline.org A chandelier descending from the rafters transforms into a merry-go-round upon which exotic creatures cavort. Three aerial aliens dance and tumble in midair. A haggard crone wearing a cloak of newspapers sweetly plays the violin. And a tuxedoed gentleman drops down from the ceiling, clearly a stranger in a strange land.

Kabuki theater has been popular in Japan for nearly 400 years. But Boston is only now getting its first taste of it. And it's a tiny one: the famed Heisei Nakamura-za Theatre is appearing at the Cutler Majestic through tomorrow. The six-man troupe is led by Nakamura Kankuro, whose family has included kabuki actors for 15 generations. Also featured is his son, Nakamura Shichinosuke, perhaps better known to Western audiences as the young emperor in "The Last Samurai. " The first piece last night was "Bo-Shibari" ("Tied to a Pole")

The following was submitted by Theatre North of Boston: Tickets are now on sale for the April Fool's Eve premier performance of Marblehead Little Theatre's improv troupe,  "Accidentally on Purpose. "  Their improv style is based on the hit TV show "Who's Line Is It Anyway. " The nine member troupe includes Marblehead residents Susan Parker and Andrew Dunlop, Swampscott resident Bruce Whear, Salem residents Erik Rodenhiser and Erik Neumann, Peabody residents Brett Bovio and Ted Neary,  Boston resident Liz...

Despite its unpretentious title, Deborah Abel's "Calling to You" is an ambitious 75-minute dance piece with sets, lighting, exotic costumes, and live music. Its subtitle is "A Tale of Ancient Wisdom in the Modern World," and its scenario juxtaposes the story of an unhappy contemporary couple with a version of a parable that the Deborah Abel Dance Company found in Stephen Cope's book "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self. " Saturday evening, in the first of two weekend performances at Boston University's Tsai Performance Center, the piece seemed to have fallen victim to the schematic...

From the beginning of his career as a choreographic apprentice at the Houston Ballet in 1989, Trey McIntyre has been his own man, with a strongly individualistic approach to life and dance. "I'm not sure why I was drawn to dance as an artistic medium in the first place," says the choreographer, 42, in a recent phone conversation. "I'm as interested or more interested in the other arts. But I've found it's how I can understand things, break them down and go beyond talk and intellectualizing.

The tremendous swirl of color and rhythm; the rich layering of djembe drums with the kora lute and marimba-like balafon; storytelling theater that starts as gentle conversation and escalates into a dance party that pulls the audience out of their seats: Nimbaya!, the dance and drumming troupe from Guinea, delivers all you expect from a top-notch African dance event. Plus something more. In an unusual departure from tradition, Nimbaya! consists of only women - not just the dancers, but also the musicians.

BENEFIT SCREENING: The Lexington High School choral department will host a screening of "The Singing Revolution" next Sunday, from 3 to 5:30 p.m., in the school auditorium as a fund-raiser for its upcoming concert tour of Sweden, Finland, and Estonia. "The Singing Revolution" is a documentary that recounts the peaceful, spontaneous singing demonstrations of forbidden patriotic songs that took place in Estonia from 1987 to 1991, ultimately contributing to the country's independence from Soviet occupation.

As a play, Tennessee Williams's "Green Eyes" is not much more than a fragment - make that an exceptionally jagged shard - of an idea. But as an experience, it is something special. The queasy power of "Green Eyes," written in 1970 but only published a few years ago, lies in its utter obliteration of the line between spectator and voyeur. That is always a blurry and subjective boundary anyway, especially when it comes to stage dramas that probe the tangled intimacies of personal relationships.

After a year spent locating a space and cast members, the Play Around theater is ready to take the stage and emphasize the "community" in community theater. The Quincy-based troupe, which will unveil its first production at the end of the month in Hingham, plans to perform for free in nontraditional spaces. As her company gets its footing, founder Anastasia O'Brien has big plans for performances in many communities south of Boston. "We could have just done what every other group does, but why just be another community theater group that's just going to do the same thing?"

CAMBRIDGE — Chances are you’ve seen, heard of, or desperately tried to avoid shows with names like “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding.’’ Now comes “Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant,’’ which marries the most blithely un-self-conscious brand of kitsch there is — dinner theater, home of Tony and Tina — to the most painfully self-conscious brand of culture there is: avant-garde performance. The result is a knowing spoof of both styles that makes for an entertaining, if overlong, evening at Oberon, a club on the outskirts of Harvard Square.

When is a home invasion a good thing? When it's Theatre on Fire coming through the door. The edgy Boston troupe will hit more than a dozen residences around the Boston area over the next few weeks with its production of "Vincent River," performing Philip Ridley's two-character play for audiences of up to two dozen people sitting on folding chairs. "I think this is just one more extreme way of changing the audience's experience and getting them as close as possible, as in-the-room as possible," said Darren Evans, artistic director of Theatre on Fire,...

James Lord Pierpont, taken from the website of The Harvard Square Library. By Maggi Smith-Dalton and Jim Dalton, Globe Correspondents How were a musical M.D., born in Salem, and the rebellious, wandering son of a fierce Massachusetts abolitionist (a son who wrote songs for and served in the Confederate cause) connected to "the" quintessentially joyful Christmastime song—a song which, by most accounts, was inspired by memories of a New England winter? _______ Words and music to the tune we now know as "Jingle Bells" were written by music director James Lord...

An antidote to the commercialism that often clouds the Christmas season began inside a Roxbury youth club yesterday, where an African dance troupe helped to usher in the dawn of Kwanzaa. There, celebrants kicked off a seven-day celebration of family, culture, and community and paid no attention to who got the biggest and best gifts. "There is a lot of despair out there. And this is good for the heart," said Sadiki Kambon, a former chairman of Boston's Kwanzaa committee. "We need to stop the lie of Santa Claus and...