Leading up to November 5, Shaking the Tree is hosting a series of politically inclined stage readings—a pre-election balm. Two takes on Alfred Jarry’s notorious Macbeth parody Ubu Rex sandwich the six nights. First, a trip through the original text, which skewered the bourgeoisie in 1896. On the last night, Brenda Withers’s Ubu Roar brings the enduring, absurdist favorite into the present via modern authoritarian reference points.

In Pulitzer Prize–winner Annie Baker’s latest play, five women bond as patients at a fasting clinic, an esoteric treatment that promises to cure whatever you’ve got, cancer to Lyme disease. But instead of resolving, starvation pauses. “The clinic is a Purgatory,” Helen Shaw wrote in a review for the New Yorker, “but it’s also a kind of bizarre Eden.” Pain is inherent to life, but companionship helps abate it, even if you’re starving at a bleak wellness camp. Third Rail Repertory Theatre is behind this local production. 

Audrey II, everyone’s favorite blood-thirsty plant, returns to Triangle Productions!’s stage for the holiday season. The campy classic about a florist’s assistant who accidentally grows a carnivorous plant started where the best things do, very far off Broadway, in 1982. It’s bounced around high- and lowbrow theaters ever since, and of course was immortalized in Frank Oz’s 1986 movie. 

The confections are (mostly) metaphorical here. BodyVox’s annual series pairs its company dancers, known for their athletic prowess, with new work by independent choreographers. Programming is different each night. And there’s usually a dash of fresh-baked, “peppermint-infused” holiday spirit in the air. 

Winner of five Tonys, this touring Broadway musical follows the namesake Kimberly, a 16-year-old whose family recently moved towns, as she navigates teenage turmoil. Except Kimberly has a rare condition that makes her age four-and-a-half-times faster than normal. She’s 16 going on 72.

Jocelyn Bioh’s recent Broadway hit, which is now touring the country, is a bright splash in the world of workplace comedies. In a Harlem braiding shop, its cast of West African stylists and their regulars conjure, per the reviews, something extraordinarily close to its real life inspiration, as well as the energy of an immigrant community’s home away from home.  

The Trocks, as the group is known, is an all-male ballet company that lovingly, skillfully, and with all due respect subverts the rigorous art form in drag. This show, presented by White Bird, pulls from the company’s expansive repertoire, which runs the gamut: a little Sleeping Beauty, some Don Quixote pas de deux, and the Chopin ballet blanc Les Sylphides.

The Guardian called Anna Deavere Smith’s one woman, documentary–style play a “searing exposé of the school-to-jail pipeline.” In it, Smith performs as 18 different characters, or sources, presenting information she gathered through 250 interviews conducted with people of color directly affected by racist law enforcement across the US, aiming to start the next Civil Rights Movement at the intersection of education and law enforcement. Portland Playhouse’s associate artistic director Ramona Lisa Alexander stars in this local production.

In Diana Burbano’s play, a primatologist works to prove an orangutan’s capability for human speech. The primatologist, Elsa, is on the autism spectrum, though she passes as neurotypical. Part of her conviction to teach her orangutan companion, Wookie, to speak stems from her deep connection with him. But when her nephew, AJ, who’s autistic and nonverbal, bonds with Wookie, Elsa’s notion of what constitutes communication is thoroughly upended.