Civic Ensemble's ReEntry Theatre Program presents its third production with 'Streets Like This', a full-length play written collaboratively by Thom Dunn and AC Sidle with members of ReEntry Theatre Program. Material comes from the real lives and imaginations of participants of the program. The play was created in weekly sessions over the past year and in rehearsals this spring. Sarah K. Chalmers, who facilitates the entire program and leads the sessions, directs this production, supported by assistant director Gabriella Carr, who is also producing this show.

'Streets Like This' introduces audiences to sit with Deon and Dennis, two local men getting up there in age. Deon is black, Dennis is white; both are worn out from past convictions, dysfunctional institutions, and the preventable deaths of loved ones. From their stoop, watch Crystal, Abby, and Brian struggle with their diverse obstacles and mistakes while stuck in the United States' broken criminal justice system. Deon and Dennis narrate the stories of these three and other characters navigating the perils of real life and their own demons while dealing with the consequences of probation, incarceration, parole, and court-ordered rehabilitation. 'Streets Like This', based on true stories, travels from the Meadow Street Mobil to Social Services offices and the curb outside Day Reporting to their own workplaces and homes. The play offers no single solution but rather brings you into their worlds. As Deon says, "But maybe next time, you'll do more than turn your heads away as you toss some spare change in their cups."

The Cornell Chorale performs on Friday, April 27 at 8:00pm in Sage Chapel. The concert highlight will be Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, planned to coincide with the celebration of his 100th birthday. Director Stephen Spinelli selected the work, one of Bernstein's largest and most beloved choral pieces, to honor his impact on conducting, composition, and overall music-making. Organist Anna Steppler and the Cornell Percussion Ensemble join forces with the Chorale on the Bernstein, with Steppler also opening the concert with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Suite of English Folk Songs and the Percussion Ensemble performing a work inspired by the painter Paul Klee. Spinelli will showcase the ensemble's diversity by featuring a trio of folk songs taught and conducted by students in the Chorale, with each piece coming from the native country of the representative student conductor.

In the not-so-distant future, survivors of a global nuclear disaster band together in grassroots theatrical troupes. For the characters of "Mr. Burns, a post-electric play" by Anne Washburn, it's not entertainment at stake, but survival: theirs is a reality in which remembered dialogue from "The Simpsons" is traded as currency, and where pop songs and commercial parodies provide the only emotional connections to a world that no longer exists.

"'Mr. Burns' is dark, witty, and powerful. It is the type of show that lingers," says Kilburn.