Want to know my definition of good theater? It’s when you take a seat, see a show, and go home a changed person. That’s what you can expect from the M Ensemble’s new production of Strands, now on dazzling display at the venerable company’s North Miami theater. Strands is one…
Beauty of the Father: There is much to savor and even more to contemplate in Nilo Cruz’s new play, now receiving a visually compelling world premiere at the New Theatre. The production offers several pleasures, first and foremost of which is Cruz’s poetic, luxuriant language. Listening to Beauty is like…
Deeply Rooted Distilled Flower Fungus Seedpot Pollen: Jason Hedges’s Deeply Rooted Distilled Flower Fungus Seedpot Pollen is a spectacle in between sensorial zones, a performance feast of sight, taste, and smell. At the opening you could sample three different kinds of grappa, and he exhibited a variety of mushroom vitrines,…
Thursday 2/12 There’s a reason they call corporate logos “brands.” Though they don’t stink of burned flesh anymore, today’s brands still retain their air of slavery. The aim, it seems, is to pollute the human mind with a barrage of commercial slogans, swooshes, and “lifestyles.” San Francisco artist Hank Thomas-Willis…
SUN 2/15 Imagine the pressure put on a singer when critics compare his style with venerable musicians like Paul Simon, Raffi, and Mr. Rogers. (Wait a sec, when did Mr. Rogers become a musician? Well, he did sing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) Such acclaim means he must embrace the…
If you’re looking to see theatrical craft in action, I suggest you get over to the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s carefully wrought production of The Chosen, which features an array of fine acting talent and one world-class performance by Theodore Bikel. In a modern world that relies on fast-paced glibness for…
According to a recent New York Times article by Benjamin Genocchio, a young generation is slowly changing the way art (and art business) is done in New York. The driving force behind this is, writes Genocchio, the “precarious economics” of the ventures and few interested sponsors. He evaluates the new…
Valentin Childhood memories are part of filmmakers’ stock in trade, and many a director has based films on them — Fellini’s Amarcord, Boorman’s Hope and Glory, and Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, to name but three. Alejandro Agresti’s Valentin (2002) continues this tradition with the tale of an owlish, bespectacled eight-year-old boy…
James Norwood Pratt has been called America’s Tea Guru. As author of The Tea Lover’s Treasury, the seminal tome on the subject published in 1982, it could be said he started a trend, one that’s taken a bit of time to catch on, but a trend nonetheless. The world has…
If after a rash of layoffs your boss sends out a memo instructing you and your office mates to chill out, have some fun, and mix it up as an effort to turn around the communal dread of additional corporate hatchet jobs, be careful. Be very careful. The Bush administration’s…
SAT 2/7 Next month’s South Beach Wine & Food Festival may have Emeril. But this coming weekend’s FAB Fest — the long-running Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Taste of the Beach food festival, renamed this year to reflect a broadened international FAB (Food, Arts, Beverages) focus — has Skippy. For…
SAT 2/7 At Loxahatchee Arthur R. Marshall National Wildlife Refuge, the sound of a snail kite could take all the pressures and hassles of your cellularly connected life away. Even the toothy grin of an alligator basking in the sun could unleash the natural beast inside you. In fact there…
FRI 2/6 Not since Prince has an artist embraced the color purple. But Barney, that cuddly singing and dancing dinosaur, has an excuse for his purple power: He was born with it. Barney’s Colorful World Tour is taking the country by storm. In fact the show’s producers have been responsible…
MON 2/9 You can call it a local equivalent to the Oscars. There will be goddesses working the red carpet and glamorous gowns, but be on the lookout for the freaky styley. Shelley Novak, Miami’s hairy-chested drag wonder, is honoring the best of the local cross-dressing culture. Will Pussy-la win…
FRI 2/6 When jazz trumpet player Melton Mustafa blows his horn, people listen — on local and national levels. One of Miami’s favorite musicians, Mustafa for the last 8 years has even run his own jazzy celebration that attracts some of the biggest names in the biz. This year’s Melton…
Thursday 2/5 There are people who eat to live. And there are those who live to eat. You count yourself among the latter. But today for a change you can eat and help others live too. New Times newspapers in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach are presenting an event called…
Producing theater is something akin to surfing. Hard work and talent don’t always make for success — you gotta catch the right wave. Most of the time shows roll in and out of production with unremarkable regularity and less impact. But once in a while a tsunami hits. That’s a…
The Trickster archetype has been recognized by mythographers as one of the oldest expressions of humankind; a generator of forms, cultural concepts, and perhaps as enemy of boundaries. While laughter at the Trickster’s folly is didactic, it can also be fulfilling. It reminds us that cultural boundaries are arbitrary. The…
After several years spent slogging away, Miami drum and bass and meta-hop band Council of the Sun will finally celebrate the release of its debut album, Six Degrees of Culture, with a brief gig to bolster the birth of the Colusana Foundation, a nonprofit group that will benefit South Americans…
With beans or without? With meat or without? Sirloin, veal, how about pork? The great chili controversy rages on. It’s an argument not often heard in these parts, for chili is mostly thought of as a dish of the Southwest, a spicy comforting stew that warms one in cool weather,…
NOW 24/7 As we head into the campaign season, a time when politicians polish the art of the big and small lie, it’s reassuring to know that truth has sailed onto our shores. For the second time since 2002, thanks to our daily newsstand rag, the city, and the county,…
SUN 2/1 Sometimes you have to wonder if marathon runners are masochists. They endure long, strenuous exertions, flirt with dehydration, and pound city pavements until their joints give out. What’s the big thrill of running 26.2 miles? Pain? An obsessive need to be like P. Diddy or Oprah? The promise…
