Your weekend arts forecast: ‘Roe’ gets a reading at Stageworks

Cast and crew are donating their talents for this weekend’s staged reading at Stageworks Theatre, in Tampa’s Channelside district. The show is Roe, by Lisa Loomer – it follows the personal journeys of lawyer Sarah Weddington and plaintiff Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe”) in the years following the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion.

Of course, with the Supremes’ recent about-face on Roe V. Wade, playwright Loomer has updated her drama.

“Regardless of where one stands on the issue, Roe is an extremely fair and compassionate treatment of factual events,” Stageworks artistic director Karla Hartley said in a prepared statement. “As a society, we seem to have lost the ability to have nuanced conversations. We hope this play reminds people that there is value in listening to the opinions of people who don’t share our point of view and try to find common ground.”

Performances will take place Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with a 3 p.m. matinee Sunday. Tickets are available here; proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood.

Ybor City’s LAB Theatre Project has just opened Creating Monsters, a thought-provoking drama about writer Mary Shelley and the genesis of Frankenstein. The play was written by LAB founder Owen Roberston. Read all about it here.

Meanwhile in St. Pete, it’s the final weekend for two fine dramatic productions: Neil Simon’s Rose and Walsh at freeFall Theatre, and Selina Fillinger’s Something Clean at Studio Grand Central.

Music

Tonight at the Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheatre, the Black Keys play, with opening act Band of Horses (Ben Bridwell and company have just issued their first album in six years). Tickets here.

Also at Mid-Florida, Santana, with Earth, Wind and Fire, Friday. Tickets.

The O’Jays are on their “Farewell Tour,” and stopping at Morsani Hall, inside Tampa’s Straz Center, Friday. Here’s our interview with founding O’Jay Walter Williams from earlier this week.

It’s double-dip night at the Straz Center Friday. In Ferguson Hall, say hello to violinist Damien Escobar, the 2008 third place finalist on America’s Got Talent (he and his brother had a unique musical duo called Nuttin’ But Stringz). The brothers played at Barack Obama’s inauguration the following year.

Escobar is, to date, the youngest person ever accepted into The Juilliard School (he was 10, he says, and graduated at 13). Today, his music incorporates elements of hip hop, jazz, classical and pop; tickets are here.

Comic singer/parodist Randy Rainbow is in concert Friday at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater; the show (tickets here) was originally scheduled for 2021.

Hip hop over to the Yuengling Center, on the University of Florida Tampa campus, for a Saturday concert featuring Trick Daddy, CeeLo Green, Trina, Juvenile, Plies and more. Tickets here.

There’s a swell jazz lineup Sunday afternoon at 4 at the Side Door, the intimate downstairs room at the Palladium Theater. The Octet: Majors & Minors features Joe Porter, bass; John Jenkins, drums; David Pate, tenor saxophone, Kendric McCallister, tenor saxophone, David Mason, alto saxophone; Jason Charos, trumpet, Don Austin, trombone and Leonid Morozov, guitar. It’s an Al Downing Jazz Association show, and tickets are here.

Tuesday (that’ll be Aug. 30) there’s a big reggae show at Jannus Live, with UB40, the Original Wailers featuring Al Anderson, Maxi Priest and Big Mountain. Tickets for the 6:30 p.m. concert are here.

More stuff

The University of South Florida Museum of Contemporary Art opens two new and related exhibitions Friday: Jesse Murry: Rising and Necessary Angels: Jesse Murry & Lisa Yuskavage. Gallery tour and opening reception is 6:30-9 p.m. Friday; details can be found here.

In case you missed it: St. Petersburg its getting its first-ever anime convention. The organizers of the St. Petersburg Comic Con, which debuted in January, have announced Anime St. Pete at the Coliseum Sept. 17 and 18. The event will feature prominent anime voice actors and anime cosplayers, more than 50 panel discussions and events including “Anime Jeopardy, cosplay contests, a lip sync competition and a TikTok Film Festival. Details and tickets are available here.

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