Westcoast Troupe follows the ‘Pipeline’
The Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe combines live theater and video for the Sarasota premiere of Dominique Morisseau’s timely drama “Pipeline.” The play, which WBTT originally planned to present live in the fall, is being filmed inside the theater and will then be shown in outdoor screenings in the theater’s parking lot Friday through April 30. Home streaming will be available May 1-23. The roughly 90-minute play is about an inner-city public high school teacher whose son is threatened with expulsion from an elite private boarding school after he attacks a teacher. It is directed by L. Peter Callender, an actor and artistic director of the African-American Shakespeare Company of San Francisco. Tickets are $20. For more information: 941-366-1505; westcoastblacktheatre.org
It is a show full of bombast – sometimes too much so – heard in what Lopez calls the “mother of all Broadway medleys” and a rousing tribute to Latina superstars including Selena, Gloria Estefan, Shakira and Celia Cruz, that makes you want to join in. And of course, there’s a sequence recalling moments from “Evita” itself.
It’s a show that might never have come together had Asolo Rep not reinvented itself during the pandemic by building its outdoor Terrace Stage. It has presented five concert and theater programs to large, socially distanced and masked crowds since December while the indoor theater remains closed.
Video views of art in the world
In conjunction with its current show, “Janaina Tschäpe: Between the Sky and the Water,” the Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College is offering a video series tied to the career retrospective of the artist. On Saturday and Sunday, the museum will be showcasing some of Tschäpe’s video works that were created from 2000 to 2014 and touch on some of the painted and sculpted pieces featured in the exhibition. Showings start at the bottom of every hour and will be limited to 20 people on a first-come, first-served basis. The videos are included with museum admission. The exhibition continues through May 2 at 1001 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. For more information: 941-304-4300; sarasotaartmuseum.org
Isabelle, who has spent most of the pandemic hosting an entertainment news program in Puerto Rico, was well known to some music fans from winning a Latin variation of “American Idol” and the Billboard hit “Por Amarte Asi” before she decided to shift her career focus to musical theater and film. At the time, she described “Evita” as one of her biggest opportunities.
When Michael Donald Edwards, Asolo Rep’s producing artistic director, contacted her last fall about doing a concert program for the theater’s new outdoor Terrace Stage series, Isabelle said she wanted to do something different than the kinds of concerts she performed while building her pop music career.