Full disclosure: I never wanted to see "August: Osage County." I heard Tracy Letts had written about a family full of drunks and pill-poppers, who were tearing each other to pieces on the stage night after night and I was not interested.

Each week the Make It Better Staff assembles a hot list of recommended events and activities for the week. Check out our suggestions for date night, family outings, fun with seniors, with teens, just for you and making a difference.

Clifford Odets'' "Awake and Sing!" was written in the heart of the Great Depression and set in 1935. The wounded from the War to End All Wars were still walking around, and there was the growing idea that Karl Marx had something important to say to capitalist America.

Be prepared to laugh and weep for the joys and the losses of life. "The Brother/Sister Plays" which opened in Steppenwolf's Upstairs Theatre Jan. 30, is set in the projects somewhere along the Louisiana Bayou in the "distant present," and it stings and sparkles with the spirit of the African-American/Caribbean community there.