Experience an Ohio family’s story told through visual and musical relics in a moving theatrical performance, Relics and Their Humans. Seated on stage in Centennial Hall. Join the performers on a theatrical and musical journey alongside the Quillen family in Dover, Ohio. Three key family relics—a recorded interview with Quillen’s mother, Jerry Quillen’s journal, and a surprising playlist — guide us through three years of family life framed around the years following a devastating ALS diagnosis. Using reimagined musical classics, from “One Less Bell to Answer” to “Free Bird,” and phrases from Jerry’s journal, Gordon and Quillen’s spirited performances, together with playwright and director Talvin Wilks’s inventive dramaturgy and Jennifer Tipton’s evocative lighting design, transform these elements into a beautiful storytelling experience. Relics and Their Humans marks the second collaboration between writer, director, and performer Ain Gordon and composer, writer, and percussionist Josh Quillen (So Percussion). This work was partially developed during a 2022 residency with Arizona Arts Live. 

Step into a fantastical world where reality bends and imagination reigns with MOMIX’s mesmerizing new show, ALICE. Presented in Centennial Hall. MOMIX: Alice sends audiences flying down the rabbit hole in Moses Pendleton’s newest creation inspired by Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland, seemingly seamlessly blending illusion, acrobatics, magic, and whimsy. “I don’t intend to retell the whole Alice story,” Pendleton says, “but to use it as a taking off point for invention.” Join this dazzling company on a mind-bending adventure, as Alice encounters time-honored characters including the undulating Caterpillar, a lobster quadrille, frenzied White Rabbits, a mad Queen of Hearts, and various other surprises. Filled with visual splendor and startling creative movement, Alice reveals that nothing in MOMIX’s world is as it seems!

Experience a heartfelt tribute to global music legend Cesária Évora and Cape Verde’s rich musical traditions with Award-winning jazz vocalist Kavita Shah. Presented in the Century Room. Kavita Shah is an award-winning jazz vocalist, composer, researcher, polyglot and lifelong New Yorker of Indian origin, hailed for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages” (NPR). In her latest project, Cape Verdean Blues, she explores the sounds and stories of São Vicente, an island of Cape Verde, off West Africa, and the birthplace of world music legend Cesária Évora. Shah, herself a daughter of diaspora who resonated with the music’s language of longing, has teamed up with Évora’s longtime bandmates–including master acoustic guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Bau–to create her most personal work to date. This is music that makes you want to dance and cry at the same time. She will be joined by Bau, as well as two other masters of Cape Verdean music: guitarist Jorge Almeida and percussionist N’du Carlos.