Theater brings it all together

Political and public health leaders might be telling us we’re close to getting through this pandemic, but it’s not clear who we’ll be when we get to the other side.

Good thing theater excels at reminding us what it is to be human. It connects us to our past and to our future, to our families and to strangers, to our best and worst selves.

This spring, Bay Area theater grounds us in who we are outside of machines, in our foundational literature and in our ancestors.

“Every Time I Feel the Spirit”: An early tense exchange in Noelle Viñas’ new play hinges on a cracker and a cup of grape juice. How might a small church reimagine communion for pandemicera digital services? And how does that answer change if the pastor is new, butting up against longtime elders, in a denomination that sees few female pastors, let alone lesbian ones such as Gabriela (Vero Maynez)?

Shotgun Players commissioned this world premiere to be written specifically for Zoom, and Viñas and director Elizabeth Carter occasionally cast the audience in the role of church congregants.

April 211. $8$40. 5108416500. www.shotgunplayers.org

“The Bluest Eye”: On the 50th anniversary of Toni Morrison’s knockout first novel, Aurora Theatre Company presents an audio adaptation penned by Lydia R. Diamond, whose crackling “Toni Stone” was canceled just after its opening night at American Conservatory Theater in the early days of the pandemic.

If you take a look at the cast list for “The Bluest Eye,” each successive name might give you its own frisson of joy: Michael J. Asberry, Sam Jackson, Cathleen Riddley, Jeunée Simon and Jasmine Milan Williams.

April 9May 21. $25. 5108434822. www.auroratheatre.org

“Animal Wisdom”: Performer and composer Heather Christian likes to begin her bio by saying that she’s the daughter of a gogo dancer and a blues musician. Another bit of family history: Her female predecessors could supposedly speak to the dead.

If she, too, has that ability, she tries to access it through song in “Animal Wisdom,” a blend of cabaret and seance whose 2017 Bushwick Starr production is being made into a film by American Conservatory Theater and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

Raw, tart lead vocals backed by creamy harmonies deliver jagged lyrics: “Grandmother is a red bird”; “praise be the wrecking ball.”

Ondemand streaming begins May 15. $20. 4157492228. www.actsf.org

Combustible Residency 2021 Installation: If you want to check out the two pieces CounterPulse is mounting as part of this year’s Combustible Residency, which is dedicated to the intersection of art and technology, you have two options: You can either go in person, in one pod of up to four people at a time, or you can catch a live stream from home.

That inperson and digital hybrid might prove a trailblazing latepandemic performance mode, as Bay Area counties advance to lessrestrictive tiers, as per the state’s reopening color system. And it’s a fitting mode for the Combustible Residency, which features “Human/ID” by Berlinbased Strato

Leah Millis / The Chronicle 2017 Noelle Viñas works on her show “Apocalypse, Please” at PianoFight. She has written a Zoom play, “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” for Shotgun Players.

Guillermo Arias / Associated Press 2005 Aurora Theatre is doing an audio play of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”