Do you have any plans for the month of March? Maybe some live music? A show? Maybe a date night with a friend or partner?
Here to help you plan your calendar for March is our First Friday Arts panel. This month, we’re joined by Pat Moran covering arts and local music for Queen City Nerve, also Jesse Boykin Kimmel covering local theater for Y’all Weekly, and Rubie Britt-Height, WFAE’s director of community engagement.
They spoke with WFAE’s Nick de la Canal.
Nick de la Canal: All right, Jesse, once again you are up first. What’s catching your eye for this month?
Jesse Boykin Kimmel: Hey! I’ve got a few things to talk about. This weekend only The Lotus Project, founded locally by J Stage Community Theatre veteran Susan Cherin and Kayla Piscatelli, will perform “Spring Awakening,” a 2006 musical based on the play of the same name from 1891.
“Spring Awakening” is about adolescent self-discovery and youth revolt in a world controlled by grown ups. The Lotus Project has added a content warning for themes of sexuality and does not recommend this show for audience members under the age of 15, but that is being produced at The Arts Factory at West End Studios.
Curtain Call Photography
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Davidson Community Players
Up Interstate 77 in my hometown of Davidson, the Davidson Community Players end their run of “The Minutes,” which is a dark comedy about an upstart town councilman who, after being away for just one town council meeting, returns to find that secrets are being kept from him, and the minutes from last week’s meeting are missing. What happened? Find out at Davidson Community Players at their theater on Armour Street. There are three more performances, including the one at 7:30 tonight.
Also — sorry I’ve got a list — Agatha Christie’s “Witness for the Prosecution” opens tonight at Lee St. Theatre in Salisbury, and later in March we have “Continuity” from Charlotte Conservatory Theatre on March 21. Theatre Charlotte opens the musical “Violet,” and Davidson Community Players in association with Charlotte’s Off-Broadway opens Charlotte original, “A Small and Humble Erasure.”
Mitchell Kearney Photography
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Art Pop Street Gallery
De la Canal: Love it. OK, Rubie, let’s move to you. I think you’re looking into some visual art and museum happenings?
Rubie Britt-Height: Absolutely. You know March is Women’s History Month, and so a lot of activities also are going on around women and celebrating them. So Art Pop Street Gallery is going to have a great art market this Saturday at Le Meridien Charlotte hotel. They’ll have 10 talented artists from wooden robot maker ZeroPopArt, Indigenous Catawba potter and basket maker Teresa Dunlap, and cultural fiber artist Linda Keene. So many others with various talents and gifts that they’re bringing.
Then later on in the month, we have at the Bechtler Museum of (Modern) Art, Queens March 2025. This is a showcase that celebrates the legacy of Black women in music and fashion. So you’ve got the visual, you’ve got the performing, you’ve got culinary arts with chefs that are going to be doing the dishes. This is a ticketed event, and it supports the IMAC Global Academy, with opportunities for those students over there who they mentor.
De la Canal: All right, Pat, you’re going to get the last word here, and I think you’ve got some live music events on your calendar.
Pat Moran: I do, I do. This is like getting a jump on spring. There’s sort of a spring theme going here. It’s Springadelia. It’s at Snug Harbor. It’s three nights, two stages, 24 performers, plus four visual artists that are doing light shows.
This is a psychedelic event — like psychedelic rock, but basically the music is all over the map. There’s Celeste Moonchild, who does kind of a neo-soul thing. There’s La Brava which is Lisa Ortiz. It’s a solo, electro-Latin act that she does.
Also, I mean there’s so many good national acts coming through. I had to pick one, and I picked these German techno nerds, Kraftwerk, and entire genres of music wouldn’t exist if it were not for these nerds from Germany. They had a huge hit with an album called “Computer World” in 1981. They were singing about home computers long before anyone had such a thing. That is March 17 and that’s at Bojangles (Coliseum.) It’s going to be an immersive multimedia show, and basically they were one of the first to do an immersive multimedia show.
