The new play Slip/Shot opens tonight in Philadelphia. The play is set in 1962, at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and centers on the case of a 17-year-old African-American boy. The boy is unarmed, walking home from his girlfriend's late at night, when he is shot and killed by a white security guard. The local sheriff declines to press charges, and the security guard walks free. The story of Slip/Shot directly parallels the Trayvon Martin case, but playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger started working on the play months before the world had ever heard of Trayvon or George Zimmerman. And while Slip/Shot is set in the midst of the civil rights movement, its themes easily resonate today.

Perhaps this has happened to you before. You’ve said something that someone misunderstood — with or without a translator. Due to culture, language, or even gender, a statement like "I appreciate your frankness" comes across as "I enjoy your rudeness." The new play, "Chinglish" pays tribute to, and pokes fun at, these moments when something gets lost in translation. The play is in both Mandarin and English. And because the show has subtitles similar to those at the opera, the audience is fully in on all the jokes, even when the mono-lingual characters are not. 

At the age of 27, Jesse Eisenberg tackled the role of a lifetime. Playing Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," Eisenberg racked up dozens of nominations and awards. But his newest project is off-Broadway at the tiny Cherry Lane Theater here in New York. Jesse Eisenberg wrote and is starring in a new play called "Asuncion." The play explores what happens when a Filipina woman moves in with two ultra-liberal young men. Eisenberg plays Edgar, a bright, young man obsessed with saving the world.

Celeste Headlee is broadcasting from the studios of our partner, WGBH, today. She's in Boston to speak at the National Race Amity Conference this weekend. Tonight, a new play called "Xernona and the Grand Dragon X" premieres at the conference. The play tells the story of the friendship between Xernona Clayton, an African-American civil rights leader, and Calvin Craig, a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan. It was his friendship with Xernona that convinced Calvin to publicly renounce the KKK in 1968.

These days, it seems that technology connects us with everything we want to know. Using our phones, Facebook, the pages of Wikipedia and YouTube videos, we instantly fulfill our desires for information, connection and amusement. But as a result, have we eliminated many of life's surprises?

Former Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib is starring in a new play about his three years in U.S. custody. The BBC’s Phil Mercer spoke to the cast at rehearsals and tells us about the play.