Ebony Road Players’ new show tells stories all about the experiences of women of color, and the theater group says the stories are for everyone to hear.

A local comedy club is teaching people the skills of comedy writing, performance and improv, but not all of those people end up onstage. Many of them simply want to apply the skills in their everyday life, whether it’s as a writer, an actor or just in social settings.

It’s a very different world today than the one in which “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” burst onto the Off-Broadway scene in 1998. This critic was tits-deep in queer theory and Judith Butler’s ideas about gender identity formation as a wide-eyed undergraduate, and mainstream culture wasn’t in any way ready for a rock musical/cabaret featuring a heart-broken, foul-mouthed, East German, gender fluid rock star who suffered from botched sex reassignment surgery. But the theater world was — as it always is for a brilliant character with righteous dramatic flair.

One of the most beautiful aspects about live theater is its ability to take people back to a moment in their own lives, a memory that’s ingrained in their brain from long ago or an event that recently happened. With the Wharton Center’s season opener, Come From Away, most members of the audience will probably have at least one memory or two of the event at the center of the musical: 9/11.