Stage struck

Joy Jenkins

This weekend, expand your mind and broaden your perspective with a live performance. The city’s stages will be abuzz with both classic — see: William Shakespeare — and contemporary works. Get thee to a theater and take in one of these sure-to-be-memorable presentations.

“Home Made,” New Genre Festival, Living Arts of Tulsa

For choreographer Angelle Hebert and composer Phillip Kraft, art is a collaborative process. She is a choreographer and movement artist and he is composer, musician, technician, sound designer and digital audio/video specialist. Together, they are the co-founders of tEEth, a Portland, Ore.-based contemporary dance and performance art company. According to the company’s website, Hebert and Kraft focus on “deeply collaborative processes” that unite original music and movement as a means of revealing both “life’s beauty and dark absurdity” while offering “a poignant and uncompromising glimpse of humanity.”

This weekend, tEEth will open Living Arts of Tulsa’s New Genre XIX, an annual festival celebrating nontraditional and exploratory art forms.

The performance, “Home Made,” which will be presented at 8 p.m., Feb. 17-18, at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center’s John H. Williams Theatre, uses choreography and an original score to explore the complexities of a relationship, from tenderness to hostility, playfulness to manipulation and even hints of aggression. “Home Made” will feature a male and female dance duo, accompanied by live male and female vocalists, who will combine music and movement “in a daring exploration of the awkwardness of human beauty and the struggles of intimate negotiation,” according to the Tulsa PAC website.

Open your mind and prepare for what is sure to be a thought-provoking feat of performance art. For more information, visit www.livingarts.org.

Note: This show contains nudity.

“Othello,” Actors Company of Tulsa

It is a tale of jealously, revenge, betrayal and love, a centuries-old Shakespearian tragedy whose themes continue to capture audiences’ attention today.

Actors Company of Tulsa, a new nonprofit theater company that is halfway through its inaugural season, adds a new spin to “Othello” with its production of the classic play, which is set not in Venice and Cyprus but in 1921 Tulsa.

The play follows Othello, who, in this telling, is an esteemed Tulsa businessman enjoying the fruits of the 1920s oil boom in Tulsa. However, Othello’s success has brought him enemies — foes he believes to be friends. They include Iago, who is angry that Othello has promoted Michael Cassio over him; Roderigo, who resents Othello’s marriage to Desdemona; and Brabantio, who believes Othello has stolen his daughter from him in an act of betrayal. What follows is a series of deceptive plots orchestrated by the ruthless Iago, turning friends into enemies, driving Othello to near madness and resulting in the deaths of multiple innocent victims.

“Othello” will be performed at 7 p.m., Feb. 16, 17 and 24, and 1 p.m., Feb. 19 and 26, at the Greenwood Cultural Center, 322 N. Greenwood Ave. Visit www.actorsoftulsa.org for more information.

“The Storm Repertory,” The Playhouse Tulsa

Shakespeare will make a second appearance in Tulsa this weekend with The Playhouse Tulsa’s presentation of “The Storm Repertory,” a pairing of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, “The Tempest,” with “William and Judith,” Cody Daigle’s fictional account of the writing of “The Tempest” that imagines Shakespeare’s relationship with his equally talented sister, Judith.

“The Tempest” and “William and Judith,” which will be performed Feb. 16-19, have already garnered acclaim from area critics and audiences. Learn more about the productions here.