Caroline, or Change

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KYLE ENCAR

Set in a sleepy Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1963, Caroline, or Change tells of the Gellman family's uneasy relationship with their maid, Caroline. The thirty-nine-year-old single mother of four kids resists a maternal relationship with the eight-year-old Noah Gellman—who just lost his own mother—but balks when his stepmother Rose suggests Caroline can keep any loose change she finds when the boy's clothes go through the wash.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner used his hometown as the setting when he penned this musical in the early '90s, but themes of racial tension and social change extend beyond that small-town setting, and beyond 1963, as a subplot about Confederate monument removal seems especially prescient today. This run at the Westwego Performing Arts Theater, presented by Jefferson Performing Arts Society and Loyola University Department of Theatre Arts + Dance, marks the Southeast Louisiana premiere of Caroline, or Change. 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday; Sunday at 2 pm. $35. jpas.org. Don't miss our interview with Kushner from the November 2017 issue, found here.

On November 2, at 7:30 pm, Kushner will appear at Loyola's Louis J. Roussel Performance Hall (6363 St. Charles Avenue) to discuss his work, before the public, with American Theatre magazine's founding editor, Jim O'Quinn. Free. Reserve seats in the hall's first five rows at presents.loyno.edu.