Ian Bell’s crowdsourced carnival of anonymity returns on a life-after-death theme. For the newcomers: Every three months, Seattle Confidential collects anonymous stories and gives them to actors to read. (Sometimes they add bells and whistles—PowerPoint presentations, charts and graphs, instant polls that the audience contributes to via text.) The confessional mode gives the writers a cloak to air their dirtiest, most hilariously awkward laundry, and everybody has a blast. It’s not only funny but comforting—we all have screwed-up stories, and laughing at them together feels therapeutic. (ACT, 700 Union St, acttheatre.org, 7:30 pm, $15)

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....