Every Friday, we highlight three great shows from local performing artists that you can see this coming weekend.

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia
Friday, February 28th at 8PM at Deep Dish Theater

1331244762

Want to see a play about everything?

Well, not everything. But close to everything: landscape architecture, tortoises, chaos theory, dueling, adultery, Lord Byron…

1993’s Arcadia is a play by Tom Stoppard, which means that language and ideas whip across the stage fast and furious. Not many other playwrights can fold so much of everything into their work, but Stoppard is a master at keeping all the juggling balls in the air at once. He even takes us time-travelling, as characters interlace across the centuries. But on top of all the pyrotechnics, Arcadia also has tremendous heart, presenting the affecting story of a 16-year-old genius and her devoted tutor. It also works as a crackling mystery, as modern researchers try to solve a two-hundred-year-old puzzle.

Deep Dish Theater tackles this challenging and rewarding play with their usual aplomb. The only reason not to recommend seeing their production this weekend is that it’s already sold out! But never fear – it runs through March 22nd, so you’ll have many more chances to experience Arcadia.

Murphey School Radio Show
Saturday, March 1st at 3PM and 7PM at the Historic Murphey School

Basic CMYK

Eat your heart out, Garrison Keillor! The Triangle’s favorite new variety show is back for two performances this Saturday, and it’s doing “A Prairie Home Companion” one better. The Historic Murphey School (right smack between Hillsborough and Durham on Old Highway 10) plays host to a top-notch collection of local artists for your entertainment and delight. There’s musicians like legendary bluesman Ironing Board Sam and world music band Mappamundi; authors like Lookaway, Lookaway scribe Wilton Barnhardt; and even unclassifiable stars like 3-time national hollerin’ champion Tony Peacock! It all adds up to a crazy quilt of talent, home grown and world class. The best part is that your ticket price goes straight to the Shared Visions Foundation, which helps some of the worthiest charities in town. A great time and a great cause overlap this Saturday – don’t miss it!

Baroque and Beyond: Waking The Spirit
Sunday, March 2nd at 3PM at the Chapel of the Cross

baroque

When you listen to your favorite music, whether Mozart or Motown or Mos Def, it’s easy to see it as an island that popped up all on its own. But every island is simply the top of a mountain, stretching miles down. That’s what makes early music amazing: you’re hearing the roots of everything that comes after.

This Sunday, Baroque and Beyond caps off a successful season of the original roots music with Waking The Spirit. This side project of Preservation Chapel Hill invites talented musicians to explore music from the Baroque period that produced Bach and Handel (1600-1750 or so) through the more familiar Classical and Romantic eras.

Sunday’s season-ender unites a trio of instrumentalists – UNCG pianist Andrew Willis, Duke flautist Rebecca Troxler, and UNC cellist Stephanie Vial – to play trios by Bach’s son C.P.E. and Haydn on the instruments they were originally written for. The sound of those older instruments is somehow newer than the ones we’re used to, and these are virtuosi playing them. Then Sally Renee Todd joins Willis on the fortepiano (a piano ancestor) for a 4-hands piece by Mendelssohn contemporary Ignaz Moscheles.

It’s a journey into the musical past, made thoroughly modern.

For more on these and other great activities, click here to sign up for our newsletter and get “Ten Things To Do In Chapelboro This Weekend” delivered every Thursday to your email inbox.