Oct. 8: Leslie Liao (Crystal Ballroom, Somerville)
Be prepared to let out some guffaws as celebrated comedian Leslie Liao, who shares her experience as a single Chinese American woman living in Los Angeles, takes the microphone at Crystal Ballroom. She worked in Netflix’s human resources department while gaining street cred as a stand-up comedian, living a kind of double life that she called a “Superman-Clark Kent thing” until her debut set, “Fixing Straight Men,” skyrocketed her career in 2023. Liao has since released her debut comedy special “Silky Smooth” and toured nationally. Now Somerville welcomes her to Davis Square.
Oct. 11: “Le Temps” (The Foundry, Cambridge)
A “new metaphysical comedy” comes to Kendall Square’s The Foundry, in the form of “Le Temps,” the first full-length stage play by Boston-based Indo-Carib-American writer Angele Maraj. The focus of the show is a “bureaucratic afterlife run on metrics and efficiency” called “Corporate.” Workers referred to as “Temporary Soul Agents” are tasked with processing recently deceased individuals, keeping the bodies running before the souls choose to pass on or return. Directed by Jess Viator, “Le Temps” explores what happens when the complicated life of a woman named Jessica arrives under their supervision, and one of the agents must confront the value of a person’s life beyond what one may accomplish. The play is a gender-bending production that deals with themes of identity and mental health.
Looking to see more from Maraj after taking in this debut? Her 10-minute “tell me a story” appears in the Asian American Playwright Collective’s Playfest 9 and Anthology IX this month.
