The play “Mama’s Girls” by Marilynn Barnes Anselmi opens with two siblings in fraught play with Barbie dolls. Though symbols for conventional gender norms, the dolls’ are smooth between their legs, a revelation to Sammy, the emerging trans girl who both catalyzes and suffers from her family’s toxic dynamic.

Anyone who says ballet-based modern dance doesn’t go with hip hop has been proven entirely wrong by Wellspring Cori Terry & Dancers’ Spring Concert of Dance, Seeing/Seen, a collaborative performance that breaks down both real and perceived boundaries from start to finish and beyond.

For 127 years, Carnegie Hall has showcased phenomenal soloists, orchestras and ensembles. An estimated 50,000 performances have taken place in the iconic New York City concert hall. Its walls are embedded with stirring musical history, from Tchaikovsky conducting one of his own works on the night the building opened, to the first assembly of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra in 2009. Nina Simone, Bob Dylan and Beyonce have all performed on its stage.

The inhuman experiences of the 20,000 children orphaned and traumatized by civil war that began in the late 1980s known as the Lost Boys of Sudan have been documented by journalists, documentarians and novelists, among others; yet their incredibly harrowing journeys and often triumphant stories deserve greater attention.