Your weekend arts forecast: Three from Jared Eberlein
Three one-acts by New England playwright Jared Eberlein begin a shared run tonight at LAB Theater Project in Ybor City, which is becoming the go-to for little-known and/or unproduced work from newer writers.
Four years ago, LAB mounted a production of Eberlein’s Precious Thieves; he worked with the company on last year’s Project Greenlight script-writing workshop.
“I have found myself landed in the middle of a cohort – a tribe – a family of Tampa-based artists who are committed to storytelling and to every season, cultivating a more creative and welcoming space for artists in the community,” Eberlein says.
“LAB has found and maintained a meeting place for committed creatives to tell stories and ask tough questions of the artists involved and audiences who share in the journey.”
Eberlein and LAB executive producer Owen Robertson are old friends who got their MFAs from the New Hampshire Institute of Art.
The three shows are:
Katie Calahan and Leah LoSchiavo appear in “I’ll String Along With You.”
Described as a “fast moving percussive language piece,” Click: A Travel Motif casts Lance Felton and Chazzz Macartney as two men waiting for a bus, interacting with each other and the city traffic “as they deal with and survive relentless snap judgements”;
Felton is back as a San Francisco beatnik in Jack: A Love Story, the narrator turning fairytales upside down, along with just-released Alcatraz convicts Miles Randolph and Orion Flanagan;
In the dramatic I’ll String Along With You, Katie Calahan and Leah LoSchiavo play a married couple dealing with a turbulent set of family dynamics, including guilt, potential treachery and misunderstanding. Orion Flanagan co-stars.
An Evening with Eberlein is produced live, with limited audience capacity, and will also be livestreamed. Get all the pertinent info here.
The other stuff
Christopher Demos-Brown’s drama American Son is in its second weekend (of three) at Stageworks Theatre in Tampa; in St. Petersburg, the avant-garde The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name) continues Friday, Saturday and Sunday (8, 8 and 2 p.m., respectively) at The Mar.
Trumpeter Robert Smith takes the spotlight for this weekend’s Florida Orchestra Masterworks concerts at the Mahaffey Theater. He’ll solo on Hadyn’s Trumpet Concerto; the program also includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 and works Ravel and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Daniel Black conducts, at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Masterworks alternates with a TFO Soundwaves concert, percussion with harpm flute and more, at 5 p.m. both days. Tickets are here.
LaRue Nickelson
Speaking of The Mar, at 6 p.m. Sunday jazz guitarist LaRue Nickelson returns with another MARtalk- sort of a TED talk with musical enlightenment – at 6 p.m. Sunday. He’ll be joined by Daniel Navarro on bass and Dave Hamar on drums. Admission is $15.
Six degrees of separation: LaRue Nickelson is part of The Rubber Band, which jazz/soul saxophonist Jeremy Carter has assembled for Friday’s “Palladium Live!” virtual concert. Read all about it here.
Opera Tampa is live on the Straz Center’s Riverwalk Stage with Troubadour’s Tale, an abridged version of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. The 65-minute program is presented six times between Friday and Sunday; tickets are here.
