Since its publication more than 150 years ago, Little Women has been adapted into plays, musicals, operas, ballets, silent movies, feature films, TV series and Japanese anime.

One of the most referenced literary works in pop culture, it was even name checked on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, whose star—neurotic curmudgeon Larry David—described the March sisters “mawkish and twee.”

Playwright Lauren Gunderson adds her own spin on the classic Civil War-era story in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, running at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Sept. 24 through Oct. 12. In Gunderson’s adaptation, directed by Giovanna Sardelli, Alcott is inserted into the play to show how much of her life directly influenced the book and its themes of family, feminism and resilience.

“I have always loved the book,” Gunderson says. “I was in middle school when I played Jo March in our production, and it meant so much to me back then. I really wanted to do something special with it. So instead of just being the story of the March sisters, it’s also the origin of those beloved characters and Louisa discovering the reason to write them, and stepping into the story through herself and putting her sisters into it. We get to know both the Alcott and the March families.”

Gunderson, who lives in San Francisco, has created several plays inspired by famous historical women, namely supreme court justices, French revolutionaries, tennis player Billie Jean King, author Lorraine Hansberry, astronomer Henrietta Levitt and the first woman in congress, Jeannette Rankin.

TheatreWorks recently staged part of her trilogy Christmas at Pemberley, based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and co-authored by Margot Melcon. The theater, along with City Theatre Company (Pittsburgh), Northlight Theatre (Skokie, Ill.) and People’s Light (Malvern, Pa.), co-commissioned Gunderson to come up with a “fresh take” on Little Women “that is still really true to the book.”

“It’s really a rare model for developing plays,” Gunderson says. “All of the theaters were looking for a similar thing. But because of the cuts in arts funding and precariousness of our arts sector, none of the theaters could really do this commission on their own, so they all came together. It was a wonderful, fruitful collaboration. And I love all these theaters independently. It was a chance to meet all of them and talk about what each of them is looking for. I just absorbed all of that and filtered it through my own artistic lens.”

Gunderson began writing the play in 2023 and the following year presented a reading of the script at Alcott’s Orchard House and museum in Concord, Mass., where Little Women takes place.

In her interpretation, Alcott’s real-life mother and sisters interact with the fictional Marmee, Meg, Beth, Amy and Jo (the middle March sister and aspiring writer, who also plays the author). The characters speak Gunderson’s dialogue as well as some of the original language from the book, which was published in two parts in 1868 and 1869. The male characters—Laurie, John, Friedrich and the sisters’ father—are also represented. Gunderson’s modern take highlights the parallels between the novel and Alcott’s biography, but it also retains the story of a close-knit family struggling with war, poverty, independence and gender roles in 19th-century society.

“Alcott admits that so much of the book is drawn from her life and her sisters,” Gunderson says. “So it was really easy to see them in each other. By working that into the script we could mix it up. They don’t just stay in their lane. There’s a lot of Meg in Jo, and there’s a lot of Jo in Marmee. Beth isn’t just weak and Meg isn’t just domestic and sweet. Meg has some of Amy’s pluckishness and humor in her. They’re one unit as a family, but they build upon each other’s characteristics.”

After debuting last year at the Northlight Theatre, the production has been commissioned by other theaters beyond the end of its initial run in 2026.

“I hope the audience sees this as an American classic and a classic that is as universal as American classics written for men and boys,” Gunderson says. “Little Women is not a polite, tidy, easy and sweet story, but something that’s raucous, deeply intellectual and romantic. It’s all the things that I want from a great work of literature. And I want audiences to be reminded that women can be brave, brazen, creative, ambitious and, yes, absolutely head over heels in love. And they deserve a big, full-throttled love story.”

The TheatreWorks Silicon Valley production of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women runs Sept 24–Oct 12 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets are $39-$109. theatreworks.org

Sculpture has traditionally been a male-dominated art form until the emergence of female sculptors in the 19th century. One such artist was Edmonia Lewis, who not only carved a name for herself in the medium as a woman, but also broke the color barrier.

Lewis was the most famous female sculptor of color in America. Done in neo-classical style, her sculptures were inspired by Civil War heroes, abolitionists, biblical characters and mythical creatures, as well as her Black-Indigenous heritage. The Cantor Arts Center’s new exhibit, “Edmonia Lewis: Indelible Impressions,” which runs Sept. 17 to Jan. 4, explores both her life and work and her connection to the Bay Area.

“In the course of my research, I learned that three of her sculptures were on exhibition at the San Jose Public Library,” says curator and Stanford University professor Jennifer DeVere Brody, who’s writing a forthcoming biography on Lewis. “And while they’re accessible to the public, they are behind a wall and not in a museum context. So I had the idea to bring them to the Cantor and to the larger public.”

Lewis was likely born in 1844 near Albany, N.Y., of mixed African, Haitian and Ojibwe descent. She was orphaned at a young age and raised Catholic; her half brother, Samuel, lived for a time in San Francisco. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio—one of the few colleges that admitted female students—but was forced to leave before graduating due to accusations of stealing and poisoning classmates, which were thought to have been racially motivated.

Lewis opened a studio in Boston, where she created portrait medallions of well-known abolitionists. After moving around Europe, she set up another studio in Rome that was home to a group of female expatriates, namely Harriet Hosmer, the most famous female sculptor, and Emma Stebbins, who designed the central sculpture in Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain.

Frederick Douglass visited her there. Ulysses S. Grant commissioned a bust of himself. Lewis also sculpted a bust of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose poem The Song of Hiawatha inspired her sculpture, Old Arrow Maker.

In 1876, she displayed her most famous sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. The statue, which took ten years to complete and weighs more than 3,000 pounds, depicts Cleopatra at the moment of her death. It went missing for nearly a century, having traveled around various locations, including a saloon, golf course and a mall. The sculpture currently resides in the Smithsonian American Art Museum along with several other Lewis works.

Lewis exhibited in San Francisco in 1872 and in San Jose in 1873; an article published in a local Black newspaper described her art as having “indelible impressions.” A fundraiser was organized to purchase her bust of Abraham Lincoln as a gift to the San Jose Public Library. Sarah Knox-Goodrich, a women’s suffrage activist in San Jose, bought Awake and Asleep, Lewis’ companion sculptures of two small children. All three are housed inside the library’s California Room. The Cantor exhibit, which also features historical text, articles, photographs and video, will be the first time the three sculptures have been shown together outside the library in 30 years.

“The sculptures are about sleep and peacefulness,” says Brody. “These images of sentimental innocence were very popular in that period.They were made to sit in homes, on a table. They talk about the cycles of life. And they were cut from a block of stone, so you have to remember how much was involved in chiseling the exquisite details.”

There has been a resurgence in Lewis’ art the last couple of years. She died in 1907 in London in an unmarked grave, but her grave was restored thanks to a GoFundMe. There was a play and opera made about her life. In 2017, Google announced a Google Doodle in Lewis’ honor. In 2022, the U.S. Postal Service celebrated Lewis with a Black Heritage stamp. And that same year, Oberlin College issued her a posthumous diploma.

“There was a historic precedent for art and culture in the Bay Area during the Gilded Age,” Brody says. “One of the key figures to help foment that was this American sculptor who produced works for this burgeoning culture. She was a sculptor from the U.S. who had made a name for herself globally, and she brought that cachet back to the Bay Area.”

Edmonia Lewis: Indelible Impressions runs through Jan. 4, 2026, at the Cantor Arts Center, 328 Lomita Dr., Stanford. museum.stanford.edu

Before the Twilight movies became a global phenomenon, the high-school vampire romance started as a 2005 book written by author Stephenie Meyer. Twenty years later, fans can celebrate the love story’s anniversary with a string of events taking place September through November, including a theatrical re-release of all five films in the franchise, special editions of the original books, and even a Forever Twilight in Forks festival happening in Forks, Washington. There’s also Twilight in Concert, a national tour featuring a screening of the first 2008 film and live performance by a 12-piece ensemble of Oscar-nominated composer Carter Burwell’s soundtrack, illuminated by 1,000 candles on stage.

Twilight in Concert

Fri, Sept 26, 7pm; $80-$85

Center for the Performing Arts, San Jose

Indian-American author Kiran Desai’s debut novel, 1998’s Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was followed by 2006’s The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. (Desai was then the youngest woman to win the Booker Prize at age 35.) Nearly 20 years later, Desai, who lives in New York, unveils her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a modern-day romance between two young Indian writers that takes place from 1996 to 2002, and is set in India and on the East Coast. Hosted by Kepler’s Literary Foundation, Desai discusses her new work with fellow writer Ellen Sussman.

Kiran Desai

Sun, Sept 21, 5pm; $22

Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park

Local non-profit San Jose Jazz, which produces annual performances and educational events, partners with Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana to host this workshop on making alebrijes. Instructors Pilar Aguero-Esparza and Rayos Magos teach participants the Mexican folk art of carved, brightly colored creatures (real or imagined) using paint and cardboard. Though mostly associated with the city of Oaxaca, the art form was created by Papier-mâché artist Pedro Linares in Mexico City in the 1940s and later popularized by fellow artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Fantastic Animals

Sat, Sept 13, 1:30pm; $35

MACLA, San Jose

The Los Altos Stage Company presents Cabaret, one of the most iconic musicals in American theater history. With music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff (which in turn was based on a play by John Van Druten and a novel by Christopher Isherwood), the musical debuted on Broadway in 1966 and was later adapted into the 1972 film, which won legendary director-choreographer Bob Fosse his first Oscar. The story revolves around Sally Bowles, an American singer at the Kit Kat Club in Berlin, just at the beginning of the rise of Nazism. Directed by Lee Ann Payne, this production features actors Melissa Momboisse and Brandon Savage. Performances go until Sept. 28.

Cabaret

Thu, Sept 4, 8 pm, $13-$41

Bus Barn Theater, Los Altos

Mark de Clive-Lowe, a Japanese-New Zealand jazz pianist, DJ and composer based in L.A., has released 16 studio albums and collaborated with the likes of Sheila E, Lauryn Hill, Jody Watley and Shirley Horn. He’s also a fellow at Montalvo Arts Center’s Lucas Artists Residency Program. His latest record, Past present (tone poems across time), mixes ambient jazz, synths and field recordings, and is inspired by his late father’s time living in Japan for more than 20 years. De Clive-Lowe’s performance features visual projections by Travis Flournoy and is preceded by a talk with Bay Area music writer Jeff Chang.

Mark de Clive-Lowe

Thu, Aug 28, 7pm, $10

Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

Kepler’s Literary Foundation hosts a book discussion, followed by a wine reception, with Menlo Park author Pamela Gullard. The writer reads from her latest collection of 11 short stories, Lake Crescent and Other Spirits, which is set in the Bay Area and Gullard’s hometown of Seattle, especially Lake Crescent in Washington’s Olympic National Park. Gullard, who’s also a teacher at Menlo College, has written a previous short-story collection, 2014’s Breathe at Every Other Stroke, as well as three books on the history of Atherton, Portola Valley and Palo Alto.

Pamela Gullard

Wed, Aug 27, 6pm, $27

Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park

The 175-acre Montalvo Arts Center, which houses an art gallery, artist residences, park, hiking trails and the historic Mediterranean Villa Montalvo mansion, hosts yearly indoor and outdoor events, including the annual Play on the Grounds, where actors perform stripped-down readings of plays. This weekend, Katie O’Bryon Champlin directs a double-bill featuring David Lee White’s dark comedy, Backfire, in which a couple reconnects at their 30-year high school reunion, and Stephen Sachs’ excellent comedy-drama, Bakersfield Mist, about an ex-bartender living in a trailer park who insists she owns an original Jackson Pollock painting, though a New York art dealer says it’s a fake. Performances go until Aug 22.

Bakersfield & Backfire

Wed, Aug 20, 6pm; $30

Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

Perhaps the most famous duo in opera, dramatist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, gave us such operettas as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado, and The Pirates of Penzance. Since 1972, the Lyric Theatre has staged its Victorian-era music, as well as light operas and musicals by other composers. The Gilbert & Sullivan Sing-Off is a fundraiser for the theater done in the style of a reality TV competition where three fictional theater companies, named the Silicon Valley Savoyards, Topsy Turvy Opera Company, and Sunol Grade Community Theatre, perform Gilbert and Sullivan favorites, and the audience determines the winner.

The Great Gilbert & Sullivan Sing-Off

Sat-Sun, Aug 9-Aug 10, 2 pm and 7:30 pm, $35-$55

Saratoga Civic Theater, Saratoga