In Spearfish, The Matthews is pulling audiences into the center of Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s acclaimed play about five sisters in 1930s Ireland. The staging places the audience inside the Mundy home, with actors moving through the aisles and across thrust platforms. It’s a smaller, close-range production where the focus stays on the family, how they talk to each other, what goes unsaid, and how the tension builds over time. Seating is limited, which keeps the whole thing tight from the start.

Belle Fourche Area Community Theater goes in a different direction with Curtain Call: A Night of One-Acts, a lineup of four short plays performed in a single evening.

The show opens with a piece where two audience members realize they may be part of the performance. Another follows a bedtime story that keeps expanding past its original telling. There’s an absurd comedy about finding your perfect nemesis, and it closes with a woman returning home for her mother’s funeral.

It’s a mix of tones by design, carried by a local cast and the kind of community energy that includes a bake sale in the lobby before the show even starts.

And in Rapid City, Catalyst Theater Company brings us The Squirrels a comedy (?) by Robert Askins. A sharp, fast-moving comedy about territory, power, and survival, played out through a group of squirrels arguing over who gets to stay and who gets pushed out. It’s the kind of production that feels a little different depending on who you talk to afterward, which is usually a sign that it’s doing something right.