Nov 07 Friday
Cruise Control: Black Joy in Turbulent Waters, written and directed by Deletta Gillespie, is featured in Theatre Morgan’s Fall ’25 season, LOL! Laugh to Keep from Crying. LOL! explores the rich, complex tradition of Black humor as a tool of survival, resistance, and truth-telling. Audiences laugh out loud while thinking deeply.
Welcome aboard the MS Sarah Kinson, where history floats, humor sails, and the clapbacks are stronger than the drinks. Cruise Control: Black Joy in Turbulent Waters is not your grandma’s historical drama—unless your grandma likes her history with a side of shade and a splash of rum punch.
Set on a cruise ship that time-travels and reality-bends, this play turns the audience into passengers on an incredible voyage. Your crew? A cast of griots, storytellers, tricksters, singers, dancers, and a cruise director and staff who’ll have you letting loose like a Caribbean uncle at karaoke night while learning how black folks have always found a way to laugh, even as the world tried to sink them.
Friday, November 7, 2025- 7:30pm (FREE)- Panel discussion on the roots and evolution of Black humor Saturday, November 8th- 2:00pm & 7:30pm- Performances$15-Gen. Admission $10- Senior Citizens $5- Non-MSU Students FREE- MSU Students, Faculty & Staff (w/Bearcard at box office)
In-person: The Murphy Fine Arts Center Box Office (no surcharge) (443) 885-4440
Online: Ticketmaster.com
The Murphy Fine Arts Center, Turpin-Lamb Theater 2201 Argonne Drive, Balto. MD 21218
After unexpected roof repairs delayed our original opening in September, Church Hill Theatre is delighted to offer its production of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express from October 17 to November 2. The stage play is an adaptation by the hilarious American playwright Ken Ludwig, who was asked to take on the project by the Christie estate. Director Kat Melton will propel her cast on a vintage steam locomotive through the snowy alps. Her use of sound, lights and projections will have you on the edge of your seat as Hercule Poirot uses his “little grey cells” to solve yet another mysterious death!
Even if you have read the book a dozen times, the plot remains a real tease, as almost every passenger has a reason to murder the odious American businessman, Samuel Ratchett. Hercule Poirot’s interviews soon uncover connections to a past kidnapping case and other secrets. Passengers include titled Europeans, several Americans, and many with hidden identities. Melton has made room for several smaller parts that enrich the plot and the production. These other passengers, the ensemble, help move along the action—and the scenery. The clues mount up, but is anyone telling the truth? Bien sure, Poirot will of course prevail!
The strong production team is especially proud of the set and effects that really bring a steam locomotive and luxury passenger cars onto the stage. Almost all of our original cast members adjusted their schedules to catch this train but a few understudy substitutions of equally talented actors have been required. The entire cast and crew know this could be your “favorite-ever” show.
It runs from October 17 to November 2, with shows at 7:30 on Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 pm on Sundays. Tickets are available now online at churchhillltheatre.org or by calling the box office at 410-556-6003. If you had tickets for the original September show, you should already have been contacted by the box office to arrange new dates. If there is any confusion, please call the box office.
Church Hill Theatre would like to express its grateful thanks to all of the friends and patrons who supported us during the whole repair process. Your kind words and financial generosity have been heartwarming. THE SHOW WILL GO ON!!!
THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW
MUSIC, LYRICS & BOOK BY RICHARD O’BRIEN
OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 8
This sexy cult classic will make you shiver with antici…pation. It’s time to break out your fishnets and join MET for some campy humorous fun! Squeaky clean couple Brad and Janet have some car trouble and are forced to seek refuge in the gothic castle of the mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Upon their arrival, Frank-N-Furter and his kooky staff of Transylvanians open up the couple’s minds in ways they never imagined.
Join MET's longest running improv team, The Comedy Pigs, for a night full of laughs! The Comedy Pigs perform on the first Friday and Saturday of each month. The Comedy Pigs specialize in short-form improv, similar to what you'd see on the TV Show "Whose Line is it Anyway?"
Nov 08 Saturday
Back for its second year, Abbott and the Big Ten Conference are hosting the We Give Blood Drive competition to entice students, alumni, fans, and community members to rally around their Big Ten school to donate blood, save lives, and address the country's ongoing critical blood shortage.
From August 27 to December 5, anyone eligible to donate blood can do so anywhere, anytime in the U.S. to count for their school. The school with the most donations at the end of the competition will receive $1 million to advance student or community health.
New this year, everyone who donates or attempts to donate blood throughout the competition will receive an exclusive, limited-edition, Homefield-designed T-shirt specific to their school. To receive the shirt:
1. Show up to donate 2. Submit your donation (or attempt to donate) at BigTen.Org/Abbott or by texting DONATE to 222688 (ABBOTT). 3. Click the link sent to your email 4. Use your redemption code 5. Your shirt will be shipped to the address of your choice.
Last year, the University of Nebraska won, and is using the funds to advance student health on campus. The University of Maryland is competing this year and will host several blood drives on campus and in the surrounding area throughout the competition. To find a blood drive near you, please visit: https://bigten.org/abbott/maryland
This focus exhibition of 10 works explores the relationship between burning fossil fuels—namely, coal—and the emergence of European modernism. Drawing on research conducted by climate scientists and art historians, the exhibition presents a range of paintings and works on paper by Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, James McNeill Whistler, and others to explore the ways that their artistic practices and style emerged, in part, in response to widespread pollution in London and Paris.Presented as part of the Turn Again to the Earth environmental initiative.
More than 50 works on paper investigate how artists working in Europe and French-occupied northern Africa watched and participated as nature became a resource for people to hoard or share.
Drawn from the BMA’s George A. Lucas Collection, this exhibition of 19th-century art foregrounds the many ways that human relationships, including imperialism and capitalism, affect the environment. Deconstructing Nature is organized thematically, focusing on five environments and the ways artists explored them in their work: The Desert, The Forest, The Field, The City, and The Studio.
Born and raised in Baltimore, George A. Lucas (1824–1909) spent most of his adult life immersed in the Parisian art world and amassed a personal collection of nearly 20,000 works of art. In 1996, the BMA, with funds from the State of Maryland and the generosity of numerous individuals in the community, purchased the George A. Lucas Collection, which had been on extended loan to the Museum for more than 60 years.
In this focus exhibition of approximately 20 photographs, prints, drawings, and textiles, the natural environment is a source of creative inspiration worth celebrating and protecting.
Works by artists such as Winslow Homer, Richard Misrach, Charles Sheeler, and Kiki Smith, among many others, depict the elements of air, water, earth, and fire and address broader themes of ecological awareness and preservation. These themes range from how artists have used visual language to convey the act of locating oneself in nature; works that depict natural forms through the physical integration of environmental components; and artists’ commentary on sites of environmental disaster, the sociopolitical ramifications of human impact, and the potential of symbiotic healing for this planet and its occupants.
For thousands of years, East Asia’s cultures have viewed human life as part of a much larger system that encompasses the natural world. Drawn from the BMA’s collection, this exhibition boasts more than 40 objects—from magnificent ink drawings to beautifully crafted stoneware and poignant contemporary photographs and prints. They bring into the galleries the mountains and seas, wild and supernatural animals, and plant life that are extensive across East Asian imagery and often carry symbolic meaning.
Works on view include robust 13th-century ceramic vessels, delicate porcelain, carved jade, intricately sewn textiles, and large-scale photography; collectively, these artworks represent the impulse to fully understand the natural world as foundational to our existence, as shaped by human life, and as an enduring metaphor of survival.