Gladiators will battle it out in Penn Museum‘s Warden Garden on Saturday as part of “Gladiator Day,” which will also include a talk by Harvard Latin professor Dr. Kathleen Coleman (and consultant on the Russell Crowe film “Gladiator”) on “The Virtues of Violence: Gladiators, Beasts, and Public Executions in Ancient Rome.”

The event will run from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Gladiators from the Ludus Magnus Gladiatores (The Great School of the Gladiator) will fight every hour beginning at 1 p.m. In between bouts they will give workshops on weapons used back in the day. Wannabe gladiators can make their own helmets at the family craft table.

Dr. Coleman’s talk begins at 2:30 p.m.

The gladiator extravaganza is in conjunction with the museum exhibition Worlds Intertwined: Etruscans, Greeks and Roman. Admission to the museum is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $6 for students and children and free for children under 6 and PennCard holders.

The First World Theatre Ensemble will stage a performance of “Sojourner” on Saturday at The Rotunda (4014 Walnut St.) to help raise money for the Community Education Center (3500 Lancaster Ave.) and the The Paul Robeson House (4951 Walnut St.), two important West Philly-based cultural institutions.

The play features Zuhairah McGill as the abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth. Born into slavery in Swartekill, New York as Isabella Baumfree, Truth escaped with an infant daughter in 1826 and became one of the first African American women to win a court case against a white man when she sued to have her son returned from a slaveowner in Alabama.

The performance begins at 7 p.m. General admission tickets are $25. Tickets for students and seniors are $15. Tickets can be purchased online at: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/168495 or at the door one hour before the perfomance.

Philly jazz musician Warren Oree will play a family-friendly concert today at 2 p.m. at the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library (52nd and Sansom).

Oree, a bassist, is the leader of the Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble and director of the renowned West Oak Lane Jazz Festival. He has produced and recorded several jazz records and has toured throughout Europe, South America and the Caribbean. Oree also leads workshops on jazz for kids and families.

The concert is Free and open to everyone.

The Uhuru Solidarity Movement Earth Day Fest and Flea Market scheduled for today in Clark Park has been postponed to 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. on Sunday (April 17) because of the weather. The “Earth Uprising” fest will feature a number of vendors, music, speakers and yoga in the “B” section of Clark Park – south of Chester Avenue.

Here are two fine stories on two important entities in West Philly.

• Newsworks, WHYY’s community news service, takes us inside HMS School on Baltimore Avenue bordering Clark Park. Fifty six students attend HMS, a pretty fantastic place that has been educating kids with Cerebral Palsy for generations. The story reports on an art festival at the school and includes an inspiring slideshow. Eiko Fan, the school’s art teacher, said that students use special brushes, some paint with markers attached to headbands, others with their feet: “Everything is abstract, but it is powerful,” she told Maiken Scott.

• Philadelphia City Paper takes us inside NextFab Studio at 3711 Market St., which calls itself a “gym for innovators.” This is a place where you pay a membership to get access to all sorts of high-tech gadgetry. The idea is to use the space and the stuff to build things.  For example, one dude is working on a computer powered by a steam engine. NextFab founder Evan Malone told City Paper’s Theresa Everline: “My vision for this place was for inventors to be able to go from a concept to an aesthetically pleasing product that they could show people.”

Every couple of weeks a small room in the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library at 52nd and Sansom is converted into a shrine to the Japanese comic art genre of manga. Teens and ‘tweens (10-12 year-olds) stop by to talk manga, draw manga, read manga and even listen to music about manga.

Manga, which in Japan is read by all segments of society, has swept through this generation of American kids in Harry Potter-like fashion.

“It appeals to a wide range of what you’re looking for,” said Shaunda, a Philadelphia High School for Girls student. “If you’re looking for fantasy, they have fantasy. They’re got action and lots of romance.”

Librarians have welcomed the interest in manga and have dedicated more money to bolster library collections.

“Some of the stories are kind of fantastic,” said Blackwell librarian Jeanne Hamann.

She added that kids who grew up with Pokemon were sort of “primed” for manga.

Hamann also said interest in manga has opened a window into Japanese culture for many.

That was certainly evident at this week’s Manga Cafe. As fans sat at table drawing, reading and talking manga, Japanese music played in the background. Kids leafed through Japanese magazines and Japanese food was served.

See the slideshow below for a better look at the Manga Cafe.