Theater maker Kayla Hambek is looking forward to seeing the play “The Pavilion” at the Lyric Arts Main Street Stage in Anoka, Minn.

Billed as “Our Town” for contemporary audiences, the play follows Peter and Kari, who were nominated as the cutest couple in high school, as they encounter each other again at their 20-year high school reunion. It’s a story of love and loss, and how the decisions we make affect others’ lives.

Directed by Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan, “The Pavilion” is an intimate show with just three actors; in addition to the roles of Peter and Kari, a third actor plays the narrator as well as all the other people at the reunion. The play was written by Craig Wright, who grew up in Minnesota, and it’s set in a fictionalized Pine City.

Hambek noted that the play feels timely thanks to the fact that it’s staged in October when people are attending homecoming events and looking back on what’s changed since high school or college. The play opens Friday, Oct. 13 and runs through Oct. 29. 

Director talks about The Pavilion

Twin Cities actor Regina Marie Williams is excited about the Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival taking place this weekend at the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis.  

The series was co-curated by local playwright Carlyle Brown, who is the Andrew W. Mellon Playwright-in-Residence at Illusion Theater. The festival consists of one full-length play, Zainabu Jallo’s “We Take Care of Our Own” (directed by Brown), about three elderly immigrant men who find themselves together at a care home.

That show runs Friday, Oct. 13 through Oct. 28. There will be a round-table conversation following Sunday’s matinee that includes Brown and the playwright to discuss “What is the African Diaspora?” 

The festival also includes staged readings of two plays, Cassandra Medley’s “My Soul is Not Rested” and Tonderai Munyevu’s “Red Dragon,” on Saturday, Oct. 14. 

Williams is excited to see three different arts organizations — Camargo in France, the Illusion Theater and the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis —coming together to tell the varied stories of the diaspora, adding “We get to discover for ourselves how they are different and how we are alike.”  

Dance/installation artist Anat Shinar of Minneapolis is looking forward to the upcoming gallery exhibit for painter Owen Brown. His new show, “Myriorama,” takes its title from a 19th-century children’s game, where picture cards could be rearranged to create new images. Brown’s interactive exhibit contains 451 abstracts, each one-foot square, that are attached to the wall with Velcro. Visitors are encouraged to rearrange them. 

“Owen’s work is always about something bigger than himself,” says Shinar, “and this new series beautifully demonstrates how individual pieces contribute to creating the whole and with seeming possibilities.” 

The show opens Sat., Oct. 14, with an artist reception from 5-8 p.m. at the Veronique Wantz Gallery in Minneapolis’ North Loop. The show runs through Nov. 11.