5 things to do this weekend, including August Wilson’s ‘Seven Guitars’ and a screening of ‘Dear Corky’

We’ve made it to the second week of February and Black History Month. Boston is a great place to be if you are looking for ways to engage with Black culture this weekend. At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, you can catch a special screening of “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.” The New Rep theater is celebrating love and paying tribute to Black music icons Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack and the Actors’ Shakespeare Project takes on August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars.” Keep reading for more details and more weekend happenings.

In celebration of the Roxbury International Film Festival’s 25th year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will host a special screening of “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.” The documentary chronicles the life of the mother of the civil rights movement, from the bus boycott to voting rights and the ongoing movement for reparations. Stick around after the film for a Q&A with the director. Tickets are required for this event and can be purchased online.

In this solo dance and theater performance, Femme Show founder Maggie Cee explores femme history and her youth as a gay rights activist. Cee shines a light on queer women of the past by recreating scenes from lesbian bars in the 20th century. In this special event, the dancer will explore often-forgotten narratives using pre-recorded voices, oral histories and fictional characters alongside her own performance.

This is a screening you won’t want to miss. Presented by the Pao Arts Center, “Dear Corky” is a documentary that follows Corky Lee, an activist, journalist and photographer, as he captures the daily lives of Asian Americans in New York’s Chinatown and around the country. Over his career, he took more than 100,000 photographs. While documenting the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, he became ill with COVID-19 and passed away. “Dear Corky” is an intimate opportunity to get to know and remember an American hero. After the film, there will be a discussion between ​​Curtis Chin, the film’s director, and The Chinatown Project (TCP), a grassroots organization dedicated to documenting and preserving Boston Chinatown through visual art.

The New Rep Theatre at the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown is celebrating love this weekend. In this hour-long musical sampler, musicians will explore what love looks like from different perspectives. Terri Deletetsky and Maria Hendricks will perform a celebration of spiritual spaces through song, Valerie Stephens will take the stage with a piece of theater and Michael John Ciszewski will share a portion of his solo show, “The Lovefool.” Following the sampler, multi-instrumentalist ​​Yukihiro Kanesaka will perform a tribute to Donny Hathaway, featuring Leon Beal Jr., and Roberta Flack, featuring Athene Wilson.

In August Wilson’s Pulitzer-prize nominated play, the untimely death of an up-and-coming blues musician changes the lives of seven housemates. The story takes place in a Pittsburgh boarding house in 1948 and is told in flashbacks, detailing the musician's final days through his grieving housemates' perspectives. This month, Maurice Emmanuel Parent will direct a rendition of the play with the Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Hibernian Hall in Boston. Heads up: this play deals with mature topics and is intended for audiences ages 15 and older.