Holland Performing Arts Center will feature Margre Durham’s Concert for Youth performing with Omaha Symphony from March 4 through 6. This interactive concert invites hundreds of elementary students to participate in immersive and engaging musical performances and educational opportunities. Through the Link Up curriculum, students will sing, play and move along with the orchestra, building musical skills while exploring music and movements of Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Music will be presented in both English and Spanish, with an opportunity to explore Portuguese. For more information, visit their website.
Opera Omaha will perform at the Joslyn Castle Carriage House for an opening reception celebrating the exhibition “Ancient, Mythic, Heroic” on March 6 from 5 to 8 p.m. Presented alongside the opera “Hercules”, the exhibit explores the power of myth and storytelling through images and sculpture. Some works focus on physical strength or symbolic power. The exhibit will be shown from March 6 through March 16. For more information, visit their website.
Omaha’s ANCHONDO will perform the Sublime Tribute Show featuring Amy by Aly on April 11 at 8 p.m. at the Slowdown venue at 729 North 14th Street. Back by popular demand, ANCHONDO will play a special performance in tribute to Sublime, the legendary California rockers from the late 80s to the mid 90s, with covered hits such as “What I Got”, “Santeria” and “Doin’ Time”. Amy by Aly will be featured as a guest, who plays tribute to Amy Winehouse. Formed in 2001, ANCHONDO is led by Hector Anchondo, and won first place for solo/duo performance at the 35th Annual International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tenn. For tickets and more information, visit here.
Great Plains Theater Commons (GPTC) has announced playwrights participating in the New Play Festival’s 2026 PlayLab program which will occur May 24 through 30. Playwrights were chosen from a pool of more than 750 anonymous submissions. Each one will work on their projects with a creative team, including a director, designer, dramaturg and cast composed of local and national talent. Each lab will culminate in a free staged reading, after which the playwrights will receive feedback from other top national playwrights, dramaturgs, designers and public audiences. All public events at the Festival are free and open to the public. The 2026 New Play Festival Final Selection Panel was composed of Dr. Martine Kei Green-Rogers, Dr. Samuel Yates and Alex Vermillion.
This year’s selected playwrights and projects include:
- Aster Aguilar, TRANSITION (or The Electrolysis Play)
- Claire Crowley, The Scouts of America Don’t Sell Cookies, B*tch
- Brynne Frauenhoffer, Disillusioned
- Chandler Hubbard, Headless Nebraska
- Kandace James, This is How You Capture the Light
- Alexis Elisa Macedo, Untitled Superhero Play
- Daria Miyeko Marinelli, Beautiful Blessed Child
- Eric Schabla, Escape Velocity
- Megan Tabaque, The Rink at the End of the World
- Sharifa Yazmeen, Bone by Bone
The Lied Center For Performing Arts in Lincoln will present Meredith Willson’s The Music Man on March 5 through 8. This six-time, Tony Award-winning comedy musical follows a fast-talking salesman trying to con the people of River City, but ends up falling for a beautiful librarian and transforms into a respectable citizen. The show is produced by Omaha-native Debbie Denenberg, who’s produced many shows such as The Woods, Guys and Dolls and The Who’s Tommy. Tickets on sale now. For more information, visit here.