It’s a pick your holiday weekend in Youngstown. Cinco de Mayo arrives a few days early as the theme for May’s First Fridays Youngstown event at the Phelps Street Gateway downtown. The Calvin Center at 755 Mahoning Ave. will host a three-day May Day Festival starting Friday, and Penguin ...

Art ART ON PARK, 180 N. Park Ave., Warren: Rubbish on Park, 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, free. ARTS & EDUCATION AT THE HOYT, 124 E. Leasure Ave., New Castle, Pa.: “Greig Leach: Past in the Present Will Be the Future” and “Cheryl Capezzuti: Some of Us,” both through May 21. Hours are 11 ...

It started with a premise, one of those ideas that came to playwright Greg A. Smith a decade ago as he was falling asleep. He didn’t pause to write it down, but unlike other drowsy thoughts, it’s one he remembered when he woke up the next morning. That idea becomes a fully realized ...

A founder of Neo-African Abstract Expressionism will display his work in an exhibition opening Sunday at the Butler Institute of American Art. Through his use of dots, textiles and tribal markings, Danny Simmons reclaims and recontextualizes traditional African motifs within the language of ...

A historian and a novelist will take part in Lit Youngstown’s next First Wednesday Reader Series event. Ben Lariccia is a Youngstown native who taught for 30 years in Philadelphia. With Joe Tucciarone, Lariccia authored two studies on early Italian immigration, “Coal War in the Mahoning ...

Art made with nontraditional items will be featured in the next exhibition at downtown Warren’s Art on Park. For Rubbish on Park, artists were instructed not to submit traditional paint-on-canvas works. Curator Ashley Kellar’s suggestions in the call for artists announcement included such ...