Corningworks Performing ‘What’s Missing?’; PICT Staging ‘Oedipus Rex’ at Union Project; (Wed., 3/29/17)

Beth Corning steps to her own drummer and Donald Byrd can’t do a thing about it in ‘What’s Missing?’ photo: Frank Walsh.

1) Beth Corning is back, and this time the innovative Pittsburgh dancer and choreographer has teamed up with a distinguished guest artist: Donald Byrd, artistic director of New York’s Spectrum Dance Theater. The duo is performing an original co-created piece featuring spoken word as well as movement. What’s Missing? is the title of the piece, which Corning and Byrd have billed as an inquiry into the unreliability of communication and perception. They’re challenging the audience to figure out who is telling the truth to whom, or not, and what it all means. That may sound like a lot of work, but Corning fans know that the experience is more likely to be lots of fun. 7 p.m. Runs through April 2.  At the New Hazlett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side. (MV)

2) Sigmund Freud, while living and working in Vienna, Austria, attended at least one performance of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. No doubt his seeing the play affected his formulation of the Oedipus complex theory, a phrase he coined to explain a son’s unconscious sexual desire for his mother. (For girls, he called it an Electra complex.) The term is relatively new, just over 100 years old, while the play dates back 2000 years, proof that this classic Greek tragedy is still ripe for fodder even if we all know the story: Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Oedipus fails to escape fate and gouges out his eyes in horror of his own hubris. Seeing a production of Oedipus Rex should be mandatory for anyone interested in theater, psychology, tragedy, or irony. Luckily, PICT Classic Theatre is staging it at the Union Project, 801 N. Negley Ave., Highland Park. 8 p.m. with a pre-show lecture. Continues through April 8. (CM)

3) Tonight at the PPG Paints Arena there’s a showdown between our Pens. and the Chicago Blackhawks. After this one, only six games remain until the playoffs start.  The Pens are currently residing in third place of the NHL’s Metropolitan Division with the first place Washington Capitols and second place Columbus Blue Jackets. 8 p.m. 1001 Fifth Ave., Uptown.

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