The two faces of theater, as most everyone knows, are the masks of tragedy and comedy. But perhaps a better bifurcation would be between the theater of challenge and that of tradition. The theater of tradition promotes cultural assumptions. The best of this celebrates enduring values and communities, the worst…
What is it about the theater that attracts so many filmmakers? The actor’s paradoxical task — to tell the truth while pretending to be someone else — is usually at the heart of this fascination. Not a year goes by without a movie about actors and live performance, from big-studio…
In this age of celebrity and relentless hype, it’s hard to recall a time when dedicated, internationally renowned artists often lived and worked apart from the media’s gaze. That certainly was the case of Maya Deren, an influential filmmaker whose dreams had a profound influence on experimental cinema in the…
“It’s smart, sassy, very Jewish, and rings true in a lot of ways,” says Florence Kaufman, not about the Miami Jewish Film Festival, which she founded six years ago under the umbrella of the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education, but about Amy’s Orgasm, one of the 30 movies…
After more than twenty years, one of Miami’s original b-boys, Richard “Speedy Legs” Fernandez, is beginning to feel the toll of the countless contortions he’s performed while break dancing. At 36 years old, the local dance guru admits he has trouble with his ligaments and his lower extremities may not…
Broadway musicals and rodeo bull riding are more similar than you might think. Trying to ride a rodeo bull basically means two things. First, you have to stay on for eight full seconds to succeed, with no second chance. Second, the bull doesn’t care whether you’re a pro or a…
In the past three years Miami has experienced a remarkable development in the arts, which brings new challenges for art education. New Times decided to take the pulse of academia by sitting down with Michael Carlebach and Carol Damian, chairs from the art departments at the University of Miami and…
The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically speaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film at all, but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a Polish novel penned by Stanislaw Lem. Nonetheless the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. If someone attempted to make…
“Can somebody pinch me,” requests director Wilkenson Bruna, nervously speaking moments before his first feature film, Wind of Desire, premieres at the Intracoastal Theater in North Miami Beach. “I’m still dreaming.” Before him, the seats are packed with the movers and shakers of Miami’s Haitian community dressed in their finest…
Ten thousand years ago, when mastodon, woolly mammoths, and a fifteen-foot creature known as the dire wolf roamed the land, what we know as Biscayne Bay was a grassy valley about ten miles away from the Atlantic Ocean. A tribe of people known as Paleo Indians wandered here, hunting and…
When Catalan artist Luis Vidal last showed here, his work — wallpaper patterned with drawings of pedophilic acts — was the sensation of Art Miami 2002, drawing not only collectors and curious spectators but prompting visits from Miami Beach police. Vidal, who says the work is meant to inspire reflections…
Christ is sexy. There, got your attention. But honestly, think about it: nice guy, pretty hair, carpentry skills, puts loaves (and fishes) on the table. Plus all that doing miracles and rising from the dead and being the Son of God business. Heck, he’d be a prime catch for any…
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hello, Mr. Hundert. If we can judge by the new Kevin Kline vehicle, The Emperor’s Club, the notions remain alive (if not particularly well) that a self-sacrificing boarding school teacher can enrich the lives of his students while subsisting in relative emotional misery himself — and that…
“Everybody hits on me. Everyone from gay men to bisexual men to straight women to, of course, lesbians,” quips Maureen (Mo) Fischer, the pretty bisexual woman behind the brazen, blue-eyed drag king known as Mo B. Dick. But let Fischer switch into full Dick mode, and things get raunchy. “I’m…
Imagine scheduling an arts event right after September 11, 2001. Certainly not the brightest idea. Crowds, frightened for their safety and feeling a bit guilty, wouldn’t be in the mood to whup it up and have fun. But some presenters like artist/gallery owner Franklin Goldman, director of The Spanish Monastery…
When a play by Neil LaBute hits town, any town, the specifics of the production usually take a back seat to the force of the writer’s personality. LaBute’s plays and films are biting, challenging, often cruel — and by comparison, most other scripts seem bland and polite. His debut film…
Picture this: You have been invited to a party on a dark night in a strange neighborhood, and you have no idea how to get there. The host offers to meet you and lead the way. But he drives so fast, it’s hard to keep up with him. He makes…
Under blue skies, gabled and pitched roofs top bright symmetric façades, shutter windows are protected by delicate canopies, and spacious verandas and plenty of light and space render the essential building details. Careful distribution of planes and volumes are bounded by nuances of shadows and sunlight. That’s Emilio Sanchez’s “Works…
Miami film fans have long complained about the difficulty in catching offbeat independent films. The local art house cinemas — the Cosford, Soyka, the Absinthe, Intracoastal, and the Miami-based microcinema group www.straightawaymovies.com — serve up indie fare, but many hot films never make it to South Florida and those that…
Miamians have been hearing the same promise for years: The city is a certifiable and important center for the arts. It is on the cusp of greatness, as far as an arts scene is concerned. The city has culture, with artists, musicians, and filmmakers of diverse backgrounds creating a new…
“I had the whole nine yards — the tunnel, the colors, and the lights,” recalls actor/director Adalberto J. Acevedo. Not of his illustrious stage debut but of a difficult time in the hospital two years ago; after enduring open-heart surgery, he suffered a bout of ventricular tachycardia and nearly took…
Jesus is big. He always has been. The subject of songs, musical plays, books, and movies. His catchy handle used in the name of bands and once tactlessly uttered as a basis for comparison by John Lennon, bragging about the Beatles’ level of fame. Six or seven years ago, after…
