Arts & Culture

Celebrations for Haitian Flag Day take place on May 18 in Boston, and all over the globe, with parades and cultural as well as culinary activities. As the focal point of May, which is Haitian Heritage Month, Flag Day marks a day of liberation.

In “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” a Tony-nominated play by Jocelyn Bioh running at Speakeasy Stage, the audience spends a day with the stylists and customers at the salon, learning their dreams, their hopes and their fears.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah still remembers hearing the first poem that moved him.

“Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan in a precise and well-acted dual role as the identical Smokestack Twins (one twin is nicknamed Smoke, the other Stack). The film takes place over a single day in October 1932 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the birthplace of blues.

Ron Murphy first became intricately involved with music at the age of five when he began singing at the Myrtle Baptist Church in his native Newton. Over 70 years later, he is still at it.

Painter Stanley Whitney found freedom in restriction. In his first retrospective exhibition “Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon” at the ICA Boston, viewers can see how the artist found his signature structure of colored blocks and the way he has explored that structure for decades.

As technology continues to advance, one of the things that is retreating is the human attention span. With so many options for things to see and engage with, it is becoming more challenging to linger and truly absorb any one thing.

For long scenes in “Night Fight,” a film by Tufts University faculty member Khary Saeed Jones, a car drives along a quiet, wooded road at night. The viewer is situated inside the car and silence envelopes the scene. At times we see Jones in the driver’s seat. At others there is only the road.

There’s an alternate universe where the United States has an African American female president. She presents a bold economic plan to world leaders at the G20 Summit with the aim of promoting financial stability in developing nations. This may seem like a pipe dream especially after last week’s tumultuous economic fluctuations, and for now it is.

“Why let me go?” is a question no daughter should have to ask her mother. But young Nigerian Iniabasi Ekpeyong has arrived in the USA, where she was born, to reunite with her mother, Abasiama Ufot. After giving birth to Iniabasi 30 years ago, Abasiama let her then-husband return to Nigeria with their newborn. 

It has long been said that there’s a lot to like about Lowell. From the historic mills to memories of writer Jack Kerouac to the famed Folk Festival that takes over the city every July, the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution has many attractions that keep people coming back year after year.

Even in 2025, terminal illness is still a somewhat taboo subject. There have been a few attempts at a Broadway-style musical about the big C, but none have hit wild success. “Night Side Songs,” a communal music and theater experience commissioned by the American Repertory Theater, takes a different approach to a near universal experience.