Former Spokane actress Sophia Anne Caruso is one of the nominees for the Earn Lortel Awards, which honor the best in Off-Broadway theater.

Caruso, 13, is up for Outstanding Featured Actress in a play for her work in “The Nether,” written by Jennifer Haley and produced by MCC Theater. The play also was nominated for Outstanding Play and in three technical categories.

The play, described by the New York Times as an episode of “Law & Order: SVU” written by Ray Bradbury, is a sci-fi drama about a virtual world that encourages those plugged into it to act out their dark fantasies. Also in the cast were Emmy-winning actress Merritt Weaver (“Nurse Jackie”), Tony winner Frank Wood (“Sideman”), Ben Rosenfield (“Boardwalk Empire”) and Peter Friedman (“Brooklyn Bridge”). The play concluded its run last weekend.

The awards will be announced on May 10 in a ceremony hosted by “Modern Family” star Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Anna Chlumsky from “Veep.”

Before moving to New York in 2012 to pursue acting full time, Caruso played the lead in “Annie” at Spokane Civic Theatre and was Helen Keller in the acclaimed production of “The Miracle Worker” at Interplayers. Since moving east, she’s landed roles in NBC’s live production of “The Sound of Music,” “The Little Dancer” at the Kennedy Center and in “Ruthless! The Musical” at 72 Stage.

Keberle homecoming nears

Jazz fans take note. Ryan Keberle’s coming home.

The acclaimed trombonist is bringing his band, Catharsis, to his hometown as part of a Northwest tour. The show on Friday at the Bing Crosby Theater will come after gigs in Seattle and Missoula, and before stops in Ellensberg, Eugene, and Arcata, California. The group released an album in the fall, “Into the Zone,” on Greenleaf Records.

Keberle is a 1998 Mead High School graduate whose parents are Ann Winterer, a local piano teacher and longtime church music director, and Dan Keberle, a music professor at Whitworth University who also directs the Whitworth Jazz Ensemble and plays trumpet for the Spokane Jazz Orchestra. Aside from a set father and son performed with the SJO back in 2013, this will be the younger Keberle’s first Spokane performance as a band leader.

We’ll have more about this show in 7 on Friday. In the meantime, tickets are $20 general, $15 for students, and available through TicketsWest. Revisit a story we wrote about Keberle’s work on the David Bowie jazz single “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” from November at https://www.spokesman.com/ stories/2014/nov/09/ryans-song/.

Durant a visiting artist

Multimedia artist Sam Durant has been the subject of solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and in Germany, Belgium and New Zealand. He has pieces in the public collections of the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth.

Now, this Seattle native – who teaches at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia – will be in Spokane next week for a series of talks as part of the 2014-15 Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

Durant’s art touches on politics, pop culture, history, race and class. The CalArts website says Durant’s work “argues that without historical reconsideration it is impossible to understand the present.” He has a longtime interest in monuments and memorials, and in 1999 created his “Proposal for Monument at Altamont Raceway” stemmed from his research into the infamous Rolling Stones concert. The piece is housed at the MOCA NY, whose website describes it as “a toxic landscape of poured foam into which speaker-tower scaffolds are placed, memorializing the dissolution of peace-and-love ideals into an atmosphere of violence, drugs, racism, and sexism.”

The series, presented by Spokane Falls Community College, Eastern Washington University and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, will include three public talks: noon April 15 at Eastern’s Art Auditorium, Art Building, Room 116; 6:30 p.m. April 15 at the MAC, 2316 W. First Ave.; and 11:30 a.m. April 16 at SFCC’s Building 24, Room 110, with a reception to follow in Building 6.