According to Salvadore Lopez Lopez, the grandson of Ballet Folklorico de Mexico founder Amalia Hernandez, it was a trip through her homeland that inspired Hernandez to create her company. Lopez describes the initial experience of his grandmother trekking across the regions of Mexico in 1952, visiting towns and villages and filming the sights and sounds, the colors and movements, the ancient ritual dances, the historic traditions and music of rural Mexico.

Through the mist, a woman walks through an arch, steps out from background shadows and onto the stage, and lifts her skirt, appearing to levitate. Is it intentional? The play is “Gravity” an examination of the life of Isaac Newton, a troubled soul and one of history’s most brilliant mathematicians.

Those few enlightened individuals who have never experienced the need to control others, to exert or assert themselves in an unseemly manner in order to be heard, will probably not be able to relate very well to the content of the three short one-act plays that consist of “Power Plays.

It’s been a while — 151 years — since Charles Darwin wrote “The Origin of the Species," and a mere 84 years since the actual Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, in which a schoolteacher was accused of violating state law by teaching evolution. A new movie on the life of Darwin titled “Creation” opened Jan. 22 in select cities. Coincidentally, the Holt-Dimondale Players resurrected “Inherit the Wind”, a somewhat altered fictionalization of the Scopes Monkey Trial, on the same date.

Put away the Kleenex, there’s no use crying. If you didn’t see it last weekend, you have already missed the last performance of Lansing Civic Players Underground’s Christmasthemed show, “I’ll Make Merry When I’m Good and Ready,” a classic example of the quaint genre of theater often described as “skits.