Photo by Claire Horvath.

Continuing its season of exploring themes of gender roles and identity, Curio Theatre Company will premiere its production of Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa” tonight at 8 p.m. on Curio’s Mainstage, 4740 Baltimore Avenue.

Directed by Gay Carducci, “Dancing at Lughnasa” is Friel’s epic, weaving narrative of five unmarried sisters living in the fictional town of Ballybeg in Ireland’s County Donegal during the summer of 1936. Set around the Celtic harvest festival, Lughansadh, Friel’s TONY award-winning play follows Kate, Maggie, Agnes, Rosie, and Christina as they realize their long buried desires and dashed dreams while dealing with rising tensions that threaten to unravel their close-knit home life. Originally premiered in April 1990, “Dancing at Lughnasa” is loosely based on Friel’s mothers and aunts who lived on the west coast of County Donegal.

“We planned a season with emphasis on gender. ‘Dancing with Lughnasa’ is a memory play. It is a play about hard economic times, deflated dreams, hope, pain, love. It also deals with five adult, in married sisters and their place in the world,” said Carducci in a press release. “To me personally, it is mostly a play about change and how change [affects] us all differently. In this, I find this play to be timeless. All of the themes are themes that will always be present. It is beautiful, lyrical, and touching on so many levels.”

Performances start at 8 p.m. and run Thursday through Sunday night until closing night, March 15th. Tickets are $20 to $25, and can be purchased here or by phone at 215-525-1350.

–Annamarya Scaccia

The Fire Works (Photo from The Fire Works website)

As an independent journalist, sometimes working from home can feel isolating.

Sure, I have my cats and reruns of Dallas, but staying confined to my bedroom’s four walls while furiously typing away can induce pseudo-cabin fever. And setting up shop in a local coffee joint isn’t always better—while there’s activity buzzing around you, you’re still among strangers who may not be up for much conversation.

That’s why coworking spaces like West Philly’s The Fire Works, which recently opened above Dock Street at 701 S. 50^th Street, are a growing trend in the city. Coworking hubs give professionals without a permanent workspace an opportunity to be independently productive while building a like-minded, synergized community. It’s a win-win for most people.

For owner Linford Martin, The Fire Works is meant to achieve just that in West Philly. Opened earlier this month, The Fire Works is an enhanced version of a small coworking group that met in a studio at The Cedar Works—Martin’s 15,000 square-foot community-oriented work and meeting space at 4919 Pentridge Street. Martin approached the group in October about joining forces after Philadelphia Community Acupuncture vacated the third floor of the Dock Street firehouse at 50th Street and Baltimore Avenue, which is already home to neighborhood mainstays Dock Street Brewery, Firehouse Bicycles and the Satellite Cafe. The Fire Works, he said, would be a larger coworking community in West Philly built on their foundation.

“Over the past year, I got to know the group better and understand more about how coworking communities function and how important it can be for people working independently or remotely for an organization,” Martin told West Philly Local. “As we brainstormed about how what shape that might take, we got jazzed about the possibilities and decided to go for it. We didn’t (and still don’t) have everything figured out but we’re enjoying working in the space and having informal discussions about how to make this coworking community an enjoyable and productive place to work.”

So The Fire Works set up shop in the former PCA space, which was revamped to include a conference room, small meeting room, kitchenette and a shared work table in an open space accessible to members only. So far, members of The Fire Works include cartographers, activists, educators, web developers, musicians, and writers according to its website.

But coworking in the 2,000 square-foot hub isn’t free. The four levels of membership range from $60 a month for five days of access a month to $200 a month, which gives you 24/7 access as well as desk and storage space. If you want to use The Fire Works beyond your membership allotment, it’s $12 for each additional day.

Still, if you can afford to drop down the cash, The Fire Works is worth checking out—particularly for the chance to connect and collaborate with local creatives.

“As we’re beginning to grow and welcome new members, we’re realizing our coworking community is really an extension of our geographical community,” said Martin. “Most of us see each other around Cedar Park or surrounding neighborhoods and have interactions with each other outside our physical space. It’s been fun to see new connections happening already.”

–Annamarya Scaccia

There’s still a chance to see a brand new and amazing exhibition of portraits of African Americans by African Americans with connection to West Philadelphia. The “Finding Faces: A Century of African-American Portraiture” is an exhibition of a portion of a private collection of artworks presented in collaboration with the Diartspora Gallery, currently on display at the University City Arts League (UCAL). It is a special event celebrating “Black History Month.” The exhibition will run through Friday, Feb. 28.

A special reception will be held today, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Arts League (4226 Spruce St.), and collectors Michael Guerin and Katie Pfeiffer of the Diartspora Gallery will be on hand to discuss the origins of the art collected over a period of 20 years.

This is a powerful exhibition you don’t want to miss, according to the Arts League’s executive director Noreen Shanfelter. UCAL is grateful to the collectors for giving them this opportunity so they can share it with the community.

The show includes approximately 25 paintings, small sculptures and photographs and is curated by artist Douglas Witmer and award-winning photographer Lori Waselchuk. For more information and the gallery hours, visit: http://ucartsleague.org/.

West Philly is home to some talented folks. Check out this amazing, albeit not finished, snow sculpture created by neighbor Theresa Feo of the 900 block of S. 48th street, according to West Philly Local reader reports. Great work, Theresa!

Fulani cowboys driving their cattle to water. (Photo by Anna Badkhen)

To say the least, Anna Badkhen is a wanderer.

From the edges of Mexico to the villages of war-torn Afghanistan, the West Philly-based Badkhen has roamed the earth, searching for those societies in extremis—those people living in the farthest reaches. It’s often there, in those outlying regions, where she finds a fuller picture of life: of communities surviving in areas unheeded by the contemporary world.

As a journalist and writer by trade, Badkhen has written four books and countless articles about people in extremis, translating her experiences and their realities into exceptionally woven and affected stories. And now, Badkhen has launched an Indiegogo campaign to help fund her latest book, Walking with Abel (Riverhead Books), which will publish next year.

Donations to Badkhen’s campaign, which closes on March 8, will help fund the completion of the Walking with Abel manuscript. The book tells a nomadic Fulani family’s story of “survival, perseverance and adaptation” living in the Sahel region of Mali in Western Africa, where Badkhen spent much of 2013. Ultimately, says her campaign site, the fundraiser will “make truly communal the book that explores the mega-narrative of all of our human migrations, our ancestral restlessness, our shared hejiras.”

When West Philly Local asked Badkhen about what made this trip truly unique, she replied:

“‘Where are you from?’ My hosts in an Afghan village would ask, my hosts on a farm in Western Iraq, in the velvet mountains of Indian Kashmir, in the snakepit dugouts of Azeri refugee camps. I had grown up in a country that no longer existed, in a city that since had changed its name: Leningrad, USSR. I had moved away, and moved again, and again. My point of departure was never the same: Moscow, Massachusetts, Philadelphia. It made for relatively effortless travel. It made for uncomfortable silences, odd hesitations.

The Fulani ‘are regarded everywhere as ‘the other’ or ‘the stranger,’ writes the Dutch anthropologist Mirjam De Bruijn. ‘They are always the people who come from far away.’ They were hereditary outsiders who appropriated all the space their cows required at any given time but never more than that. The Fulani never asked me where my home was.”

–Annamarya Scaccia

AIRSPACE will host the 4th Annual Friends & Neighbors Exhibit. (Photo courtesy of the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence program.)

Don’t miss the chance for a great show opening tonight at AIRSPACE (formerly known as AIR Gallery). The annual exhibit showcases the work of 40th Street resident artists’ friends, neighbors, students and colleagues. Each resident invited two artists to participate in the show. So here’s who’s participating this time:

Barbra Chigounis
Rachel Dobkin
Justin Duerr
Adam Fergurson
Petra Floyd
Lauren Hansen-Flaschen
Najee Haynes-Follins
Terry Johnson
Brooke Lanier
Nicole Myles
Johnny Plastini
Shawn Thornton

To check out the profiles of the participants, who work in a variety of media, visit the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence Program website. The program awards West Philadelphia artists with free studio space for one year. In exchange, the resident artists “give back to the community” by organizing shows and teaching workshops and classes.

The opening reception starts at 6 p.m. (we hear there will also be some great food!) The gallery is located at 4007 Chestnut Street, First Floor. If you don’t make it to the reception you can also see the show on the following Saturdays: Jan. 25, Feb. 1, and Feb. 8 1-4 p.m.) and by appointment (email: 40th.air.app@gmail.com).