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Sonic Sunsets, Variety Pack, and Mother’s Day at Theatre Exile
The BSR Weekly Arts and Culture Roundup, May 1-7, 2025
Kyle V. Hiller
May is here, and with it comes an abundance of festivals and performances. Coming up, InterAct Theatre Company starts a pair of weekends dedicated to unconventional laughs, BalletX opens its new season with the Festival at the Mann, and a live outdoor jazz festival running through to the end of summer begins in Old City. Then, dance it out with Memory Futures: Desi Transcendence, score some emotional goals with The Wolves, and celebrate and honor the moms in the world with a performance at Theatre Exile.
Variety Pack
May 1-10
Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake, 302 South Hicks Street
InterAct Theatre Company presents a two-weekend festival celebrating Philadelphia’s most unconventional, boundary-pushing alt-comedy acts. The lineup features a drag-king pageant, the entire Twilight saga in 60 minutes, a whirlwind cabaret, live cartoons, and more.
The Wolves
May 2-17
Players Club of Swarthmore, 614 Fairview Road, Swarthmore
PCS Theater transports audiences into the world of a high school girls’ soccer team navigating the complexities of girlhood, autonomy, and the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Memory Futures: Desi Transcendence
Friday, May 2, 6:30-8pm
The Barnes Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Usiloquy Dance Designs and composer Rini Raghavan bring the Philadelphia premiere of Memory Futures: Desi Transcendence to the Barnes. The interdisciplinary performance blends Indian classical dance traditions with compositions merging Southern Indian Carnatic music with the soulful expressions of jazz.
Film screenings at Scribe
Friday, May 2, 7-9pm
Friday, May 16, 7-9pm
Scribe Video Center, 3908 Lancaster Avenue
Scribe Video Center screens two films this month that spotlight grassroots organizing and community care in today’s political landscape. The People’s Way on Friday, May 2 documents three community organizers in Minneapolis who embark on various and interweaving journeys after George Floyd’s murder to care for their communities, find inner healing, and forge a path towards Black liberation. Stand Up For Madinah follows the story of Madinah Wilson-Anton, an African American woman elected as Delaware’s first elected Muslim state representative.
Festival at the Mann
May 2-3, 7:30pm
The Mann Center, 5201 Parkside Avenue
BalletX’s annual festival unveiling their new season arrives this weekend, and it comes with the world premiere of Maslow’s Peak. Helmed by Jennifer Archibald, this performance pulls inspiration from Lord of the Flies and explores human nature and survival. The celebration of the new festival will also include community performances, picnics, local arts organizations, and an interactive flash mob performance from One Dance One Philly.
Confluence
May 3 through July 26, 2025
Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia
Fairmount Water Works hosts its third annual spring fine art exhibition this spring and summer. Opening on Saturday at 10am-5pm, Confluence presents the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers and the junction where they meet with drawings, photographs, and watercolor, acrylic, and oil paintings created by twelve area artists. Admission is free, and the Center is open Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10am-5pm.
Sonic Sunsets
Starting Saturday, May 3, 6pm; every first Saturday through September
Christ Church Burial Ground, 340 North 5th Street
This new outdoor live jazz series arrives this Saturday at the historical Christ Church Burial Ground in Old City. Performances are lined up for every first Saturday May through September, and this month’s edition features artist and drummer Anne Ishii leading a trio of dancers “at the edge of jazz, combining freestyle blues, idiosyncratic drumming, and deep bass roots.” An option tour before the show starts at 6pm, introducing visitors to Philly’s musical past. The show begins at 6:30pm.
Home + Garden Festival
Sunday, May 4, 11am-5pm
8000-8600 Germantown Avenue
Chestnut Hill transforms Germantown Avenue into a spring showcase with the return of its Home + Garden Festival. Featuring nearly 300 vendors, the all-day, family-friendly event highlights home and garden decor, outdoor craft demonstrations, live music, children’s activities, and more. Pick up lawn sculptures, heirloom plants, vintage goods, and the like—could be a great chance to find the perfect Mother’s Day gifts.
Mother's Day
Sunday, May 4, 4-6pm
Theatre Exile, 1340 South 13th Street
Philly-based theater artist Susan Chase brings her mother front and center in this joyful, heartbreaking one-woman show to Theatre Exile this weekend. Through spoken word, music, dance, and film, the play celebrates not just Chase’s mother, but all mothers, while exploring the nature of love, childhood, memory, and loss.
Featured image: Susan Chase’s ‘Mother’s Day’ is both a memoir of one mother, and an homage to all mothers. (Photo by James Johnson.)
Image description: Chase in a floral top, expresses worry or sadness, with a Picasso painting behind her of a mother holding a baby.
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