Spend A Night with Janis Joplin Courtesy of NC Theatre

Generally, North Carolina Theatre favors the one-and-done: single-week productions of hit Broadway musicals that vanish after their allotted time. But in this change-up, a coproduction with Connecticut’s Ivoryton Playhouse, audiences have three whole weeks to see New York’s Francesca Ferrari fill a very tall order: channeling Janis Joplin, the gritty, damaged, transcendent goddess of rock, blues, and gospel, in sequences on stage and off. In Randy Johnson’s 2013 Broadway musical biography, a two-act homage with a live band, a veritable pantheon of African-American musicians who fundamentally influenced Joplin’s music have their moments as well: Etta James, Nina Simone, Odetta, and Bessie Smith. But it’s Joplin’s electrifying live performancesor exorcisms, as she grappled with a darkness that ultimately overcame her in a heroin-and-alcohol overdose at age twenty-seventhat Ferrari must convey.