DANCE YOUR WAY WITH TIME TRAVEL AND stop/TIME dance MACHINE

Do you believe in time travel? H. G. Wells did and wrote a novel in 1895 called “The Time Machine.” A current television program “Quantum Leap” relies on one character, Dr. Ben Song, a scientist, stepping into an accelerator and vanishing. His hope is to change an historical event for the better, like ensuring President Lincoln does not get shot. Now meet Darlene Zoller, the founder, director and choreographer of stop/time dance theater and a co-artistic director of West Hartford’s Playhouse on Park. Darlene is taking the concept of time travel and putting it cleverly on tap shoes and rhythmic moves in “stop TIME dance MACHINE until Sunday, April 2. The stop/timer dancers become frantic when they witness their dedicated leader Darlene disappear in a time machine. Will she ever return or will they have to carry on without her inspired direction? The dancers in their white laboratory coats and experimental equipment waste no time in breaking up into groups to find her. Using an activator reading and fearing miscalculations, they land in the roaring twenties seeking their best pal. Despite singing and tap energetically dancing “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?,” Darlene is nowhere to be found. Dressed in a colorful variety of costumes from flappers to bathing beauties to cavemen, all cleverly created by Lisa Steier, they then sway to Benny Goodman tunes and bravely enter the 1960’s and 1970’s. Ever looking for a sign, even venturing into the future, they despair they will never see Darlene again. With the acting and singing led triumphantly by Amanda Forker, Rick Fountain and Victoria Mooney, the talented, ever smiling troupe of dancers-Lisa Caffyn, Jennifer Checovetes, Amelia Flater, Ali Forman, Rick Fountain, Shannon L’Heureux, Meredith Longo, Erica Misenti, Laurie Misenti, Shari Righi, Melissa B. Shannon, Alicia Voukides, Courtney Woods, and Darlene Zoller-is non-stop energy and style. Darlene Zoller conceived, directed and choreographed this entertaining evening of fun. For tickets ($45-55), call Playhouse on Park, 244 Park Road, West Hartford at 860-523-5900, ext. 10 or online at www.playhouseonpark.org. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. On Saturday, April 1 at 2 p.m., there will be a matinee at 2 p.m. The Playhouse just announced an exciting series for 2023-2024 that includes “The Complete Works of Jane Austen (Abridged)” September 27-October 22 that features all of Jane’s favorite characters; "The Pin-Up Girls: A Musical Love Letter” November 29-December 23 that delivers musical missives from service folk over the last century; “Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson-Apt 2B” January 24-February 18 that spins a female romp into Mysteryland; “Toni Stone” May 29-June 16 that tells the inspiring tale of the first female Negro baseball league player who paved the way for the future; “The Prom” July 10-August 11 about a troupe of New York celebrities who descend on a small Indiana town to help a pair of teen lesbians attend the big dance; and stop/time dance theater March 13-24 to present a novel choreographed crowd-pleaser. Other offerings include for kids “Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day” April 16-May 5 about a really really bad day set to music; “Mama D’s Outrageous Halloween Romp” October 27-31 that is definitely NOT for children; Comedy Nights and staged readings; Encore Fundraising event TBA in 2024 but honoring John Kander this year on May 13 as well as “Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical” available to tour in schools February 21 to March 17 about Lily Polkadot and her time adjusting to a new school in Squares Only town. Call the Playhouse for more information on signing up. Be careful as you enter the time machine to remember to look for Darlene as you are swept up in the dancing frenzy that will make you wish for your own set of dancing feet.

COMIC FEAST OF LOVE AND LEMONS: "SECONDO"

Symbolizing the strength of your marriage, its resilience and inability to rust, aluminum and tin are the traditional gifts to commemorate ten years of marriage. Not so romantic I’d say. For Giulia Melucci, who spent a good part of her life searching for the perfect soul mate, she is grateful that after many imposters she found, or he found her, the love of her life, Gavin. She remembers all the trials she experienced, many of which she immortalized in her book “I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti” and now she is preparing to celebrate her tenth wedding anniversary by making her film critic husband his favorite foods, a roast leg of lamb, pillows of ravioli and a special lady finger dessert. She is feeling trickles of guilt because she cancelled her ticket to go with Gavin to Cannes for a twelve day film festival and her reasons may not have been without an element of sin. As a good Catholic, she is concerned she may not absolve herself or that Gavin may not forgive her. To learn Giulia’s secrets, go to Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury by Sunday, April 2 for “Secondo” by Jacques Lamarre, from the stories by Giulia Melucci and directed by Michael Schiralli. Maria Baratta’s Giulia opens her heart and her kitchen as she speaks directly to the audience about her current dilemma. Mitch, a man from her past, has insinuated himself in her life and wants her undivided attention and affection. Now, as she is in the midst of anniversary preparations, Mitch is demanding she commit to him. What is a good religious girl to do? She loves Gavin but can she convince herself and him of her affection? The fact that her phone keeps ringing and distracting her doesn’t help. For tickets ($43-47), call Seven Angels Theatre. 1 Plank Road, Waterbury at 203-757-4676 or online at boxoffice@sevenangelstheatre.org. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Come help Giulia as she struggles to stabilize her marriage, despite the fact her framed certificate of marriage keeps flying off her kitchen shelf.

MEXICO AND ANCIENT GREECE FIGURE PROMINENTLY IN "MOJADA: A MEDEA IN LOS ANGELES"

The cries of the gauco, a laughing falcon bird of Mexico, echo ominously with the ancient Greek myth of Medea, a sorceress who uses revenge and murder to settle her family grievances. Pack your suitcase as The Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven prepares to take you on a perilous eleven hundred mile journey from Zamora, Mexico to California until Saturday, April 1 in Luis Alfaro’s “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles.” What would it be like to leave your homeland, abandoning all you have known and loved, sneaking out under cover of darkness, to seek a new life in an unknown country? By acknowledging that you are traveling illegally and could be be sent back to Mexico at any moment is frightening. Being undocumented and wanting a better life for you and your family are your only crimes. Medea's skills as a seamstress are no guarantee that freedom will be hers. She cannot sew her way to citizenship, earning a paltry $8 for each shirt, learning that Bloomingdale’s will sell that same garment for $120. Camila Moreno’s Medea is content to spend her days and nights bending over her sewing machine, working to protect and encourage her partner Alejandro Hernandez’s Hason and their sports loving son Acan, played by Romar Fernandez. Hason is ambitious and will employ any means to further his career, even if it means becoming uncomfortably close to his boss, Monica Sanchez’s Armida. Supporting Medea in her new life are her long time servant Tita, a grandmotherly Alma Martinez, who breaks the fourth wall of the theater and speaks directly to the audience, explaining so much of the neighborhood gossip and the family’s background, and a new friend who shares her history, Josie, a sweet talking Nancy Rodriguez. Waving banana leaves, alternately in a blessing or a curse, Medea tries to protect her loved ones but circumstances beyond her control overwhelm her and she relies on drastic deeds to cure her woes. Laurie Woolery directs this intensely personal saga of love and loss, family and forgiveness on a set designed by Marcelo Martinez Garcia, with impressive lighting by Stephen Strawbridge and a striking gauco costume by Kitty Cassetti. For tickets ($15-65), call Yale Rep, University Theatre, 222 York Street, New Haven at 203-432-1234 or online at yalerep.org. Masks must be worn. Performances are Tuesday at 8 p.m., Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Yale Rep’s annual education initiative WILL POWER will provide three morning performances free of charge for New Haven high school students. Moving to a new home in the same community can be traumatic, but what if the move was monumental, in geography and perspective, how might you react? Can you understand what Medea feels forced to do in the name of family and love?

"THE ART OF BURNING" ALMOST TOO HOT TO HANDLE AT HARTFORD STAGE

If you break a vase, you need a tube of Gorilla Glue to reassemble the pieces. For a broken lamp, often electric tape will do the job. If your fence falls, grab a hammer and nails and wooden boards to fix the problem. What happens if it’s your family that is broken and, like Humpty Dumpty, can’t be put together again. In a world premiere production, Hartford Stage is exhibiting one such family in the midst of a crisis in Kate Snodgrass’s “The Art of Burning” until Sunday March 26. Divorce is never easy and rarely amicable, especially if there are children involved. For Patricia, an artist, she feels betrayed by her husband Jason's infidelity and the thought of revenge is never far from her mind. Her concern for their daughter Elizabeth, a vulnerable Clio Contogenis, only fifteen, is central to her concerns. Have her parents prepared her for life or failed to make her equipped to handle life’s challenges? Before Patty, a sincerely questioning Adrianne Krstansky, will sign the divorce papers she demands answers of all those involved. Jason’s good friend and attorney Mark, a conciliatory Michael Kaye, is trying to be helpful but along the way he learns some disturbing facts about his own marriage to Laura Latreille’s Charlene and the lies she may have been feeding him. Are any of us who we appear to be? Also central to the plot is Vivia Font's Katya who is the catalyst stirring up the marital pot and what of the news she is sharing with Rom Barkhorder’s Jason about their relationship? As if this were not drama enough, in the midst of the proceedings, Elizabeth disappears? Is Patty hiding her or has she taken a page from the Greek tragedy she saw last night and done something unforgivable to Beth? Melia Bensussen, Artistic Director of Hartford Stage, directs this intense drama with care as a mother reawakens her responsibilities to her daughter and works to protect her from the world. For tickets ($30 and up), call the Hartford Stage 50 Church Street, Hartford at 860-527-5151 or online at HartfordStage.org. Performances are Tuesday to Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. andmatineex at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and select Wednesdays. Checkfor masked performances and post-show conversations. Capture the different points of view, depending on where you are standing on Luciana Stecconi’s intriguing lighted floor set, as you take this roller-coaster ride of emotions and eruptions and try to keep your own precarious balance.

"AGNES OF GOD" AN INTRIGUING PUZZLE AT SQUARE ONE THEATRE OF STRATFORD

What might happen when emotions, morals and religion clash, crash and collide? What feelings might that clash awaken in you, especially if you have a relationship with the Catholic Church? Fasten your seat belts for a wildly and dramatic ride that will expose you to what theater is capable of presenting. If you are the Mother Superior at a convent, what might you think if a novice nun claims the baby she gave birth to is the result of an immaculate conception like Mary and Jesus and that this is a virgin event. Even more mystifying, what if the novice has no memory of the event and can explain none of it. When that baby is found dead, what might your feelings be? The resulting investigation causes an explosion of beliefs between the Mother Superior and the female psychiatrist assigned to discover the truth and you, the audience, are firmly trapped in the dramatic debate about Agnes and what really happened. Artistic Director Tom Holehan of Square One Theatre Company of Stratford has assembled a talented cast of three to perform this gem of a play written in 1979 by John Pielmeier. The playwright read a newspaper story about a nun and her baby and used that as the starting point for “Agnes of God.” Holehan will be exposing and exploring all the possibilities and explanations, rational, religious, miraculous and unbelievable at Stratford Academy, 719 Birdseye Street, Stratford weekends until Sunday, March 26. Lucy Babbitt is the commanding Mother Superior Miriam Ruth who wants to protect Agnes and avoid a scandal. What responsibility does she play in Agnes’s dilemma, especially when it is revealed that Agnes’s mother is her younger sister, a woman who drank and isolated her daughter from the world and filled her head with insecurities and negative feelings? Priscilla Squiers’s role as Dr. Martha Livingstone is to determine the truth through gentle questioning of Agnes and even hypnosis. And what of Sister Agnes, a tormented Celine Montaudy, who doesn’t remember or understand the trauma she experienced? For tickets ($22, seniors and students $20, front row $25),call Square One at 203-375-8778 or online at www.squareonetheatre.com. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.and Saturdays at 4 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Talkbacks will occur after many performances at the theatre, especially on Tuesday, March 28 at noon at the Lovell Room of the Stratford Library. Come bear witness to Agnes and her puzzling predicament and relationship with her mother and with God. Agnus Dei means Lamb of God and Agnes looks to God to be her shepherd and help her find answers.

CONNECTICUT REPERTORY THEATRE FOCUSES ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN "ROE"

The Connecticut Repertory Theatre is offering a compelling history lesson until Sunday, March 11 at the Nafe Katter Theatre on the campus of the University of Connecticut with Lisa Loomer’s “Roe,” the story of how abortion rights and women’s choice have impacted our nation. With fifty characters, over two and a half hours, this talented cast reveals and exposes layers of facts about how Texas became the proving ground for this battle all the way to the Supreme Court. A landmark United States Court decision in 1973, almost fifty years ago, Roe v. Wade established a women’s right to elect an abortion. Five decades later this ruling was overturned by another United States Supreme Court ruling, and people are firmly attached to their own version of what the law should be. In 1969, an unwed mother, pregnant with her third child, was given the name Jane Roe. She lived in Texas where abortion was only legal if it saved the life of the mother. A lawsuit was filed on her behalf. Her name was Norma McCorvey ( Audrey Latino) and she claimed to have been raped. With the help and encouragement of her lawyer Sarah Weddington (Annie Tolis), Norma became the symbol of this struggle for personal freedoms, for a woman’s rights for reproductive choices in her own body. The basic argument was the Texas laws were unconstitutional. In January 1973, in a 7-2 decision, nine judges ruled in Jane Roe’s favor, citing the 14th amendment’s fundamental “right to privacy,” protecting a pregnant woman’s right to an abortion, utilizing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all United States regulations. Come be caught up in this controversial legal decision and immerse yourself in “Roe,” define the motivations of those involved and the struggle both sides fought. Taneisha Duggan directs this dangerous and dramatic topic. Others in the cast include Andrew Rein, Lori Vega, Katherine Berryhill, Andre Chan Chi Lun, Kat Corrigan Tony King, Aly Liew, Lucy Ouimet, Kiera Prusmack and Casey Wortham who play multiple roles. In 2022 the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in a new court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on the grounds that the substantive right to abortion was not “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history or tradition,” nor considered a right when the Due Process Clause was first ratified in 1868 and was unknown in United States law until Roe. For tickets ($10-35), call the Nafe Katter Theatre, 820 Bolton Road, Storrs at 860-486-2113 or online at crtboxoffice@uconn.edu. Performances are Thursday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m., Friday, March 10 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, March 11 at 8 p.m. Several talkbacks are scheduled. Masks are encouraged and required for some performances. No matter which side of the debate speaks to you, you will have much to learn from this involving production in all its personal and political ramifications.

A "GOLDFISH" BOWL OF FAMILY EMOTIONS AT NEW HAVEN THEATER COMPANY

Goldfish are also valuable for experimentation about vision, memory, psychology and skin cancer. All that being said, it is ironic, to me, that playwright John Kolvenbach chose “Goldfish” as the title of his newest play being offered by the New Haven Theater Company until Saturday, March 11. “Goldfish” centers itself around two families, a father and son and a mother and daughter. It is the children of college age who are the mature adults looking after their parents, Nick Fetherston’s Albert tries to structure his father Leo’s life as he goes off to college in another state. He knows his dad, a tormented and weak John Strano, has serious challenges, not the least of which is an addiction to gambling, and he puts financial roadblocks in place to make sure Leo does not sabotage their future. At school Albert, a loner, becomes enamored with Lucy, an outspoken and friendly Sara Courtmanche and their tentative courtship blossoms into love. Enter Lucy’s inflexible mom Margaret, as created by Sandra E. Rodriguez, who has a fantastically unusual tale about Lucy’s dad, a father who is not in the family portrait any longer. What happens when Leo goes off track and Margaret stays adamantly fixated will have you shaking your head in sadness. Can this young couple overcome their heritage and find happiness together? Come discover for yourself in this dramatic portrayal of family directed by John Watson. For tickets ($20), go online to newhaventheatercompany.com at New Haven Theater Company, 839 Chapel Street, New Haven at the English Building Market. Performances are Thursday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m, Friday, March 10 at 8 p.m, and Saturday , March 11 at 8 p.m. Enter the lives of these two families as they strive to thrive in emotionally challenging times.