Ancient festivals served as markers for human progress, celebrating the passing of time and the progression of the community. Although seasonal changes, harvests, and rites of passage are not the focus of today’s festivals, these celebrations still provide a forum for assessing a community’s evolution. Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life must…
In dramaturgical terms, a play by a man about men is called theater — from Hamlet to Nixon’s Nixon, male playwrights, actors, and themes are not distinguished as “men’s theater” (and thankfully so). In contrast a play by a woman about women is frequently dubbed “women’s theater,” “touchy-feely,” “man hating,”…
In an ongoing endeavor to develop, understand, and communicate “art,” our definitions are constantly morphing. At the speed that we identify and recognize, we deny and re-create, each time pushing the walls of the “white box” to a point of distension. Since the advent of modernity — when artists decided…
Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy, Billy Madison) for Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe), and director Steven Brill (Little Nicky) for the immortal Frank Capra. The mind reels at the…
One hundred five years: Not long in the life of most cities, except if you’re Miami. Our town has changed radically over its brief lifespan. A glance at area buildings that reflect our history reveals just that. Dade County pine houses and bungalows offering porches and expanses of windows exemplify…
When Maria Stevenson learned about John Feight’s Foundation for Hospital Art, inspiration struck. According to www.hospitalart.org, since founding the organization in 1984, the Atlanta-based artist — with help from more than 100,000 volunteers — has completed in excess of 20,000 paintings for nonprofit/charity hospitals and nursing homes in 165 countries…
Steven Spielberg just might turn into a great director if only he’d stop sabotaging his movies. For the second time in as many films, he demolishes his product with a third act that renders all that’s come before it void. It’s as though Minority Report, set in a near future…
If it’s possible for a film to be simultaneously ambitious and banal, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is it. There’s little here we haven’t seen repeatedly in some form or another — growing up Catholic is popular fodder for filmmakers, as is growing up in the American South, usually…
In Miami the chances of a low-budget theater company finding a permanent home are as good as discovering a ramshackle HUD house in ritzy CocoPlum, but seven-year-old, Spanish-language troupe La Má Teodora has done just that. It opened La Magagna, a 150-seat warehouse space off Bird Road and SW 74th…
Shouldn’t have said yes, couldn’t say no. The deal was simple, and those who chose to accept it had made their own private pact with the showbiz-journalism devil. “You will spend an hour with Tom Cruise and an hour with Steven Spielberg,” said the publicist, a lovely woman from 20th…
When a historical play has done its work, one can expect to hear one of two exclamations from audience members as they file out: the ever-popular “My, how times have changed!” or the unforgettable “Oh, how history repeats itself!” GableStage’s production of Russell Lees’s Nixon’s Nixon might inspire both utterances…
A recent e-mail inquiry sent to “fine art landscape photographer and natural history author” Jeff Ripple — as he bills himself — triggered the automatic response: “In the field. Please leave a message at … ” Hardly a surprise, since the Gainesville-based Ripple, camera and notepad at the ready, has…
Beware of backhanded compliments. If you heed the critics and the advance press, you might have heard that the Stage Door Theatre’s Our Sinatra, the long-running musical imported from New York, is a stylish cabaret revue. This is true and that’s good, and it’s also not so good. Our Sinatra…
Artist Cesar Trasobares is the co-curator of “That Place,” an exhibit-installation involving paintings, photographs, and multimedia culled from prominent local collectors, and some site-specific works by local artists. Like a number of shows over the past few years, the art was picked and arranged to fit with a particular space,…
The plot of The Bourne Identity is astonishingly straightforward. It is bereft of twists (instead we’re offered tangible explanations), free of the gaping plot holes that swallow confused viewers, and absent the cynical machinations of filmmakers who believe that to entertain it’s necessary to also bamboozle. This adaptation of Robert…
The opening-credit sequence of Windtalkers — a montage of Monument Valley — instantly invokes memories of the opening of John Woo’s immediately previous film, Mission: Impossible 2, in which Tom Cruise was dangling off a rock. It is the last moment of similarity between the two. Windtalkers is a World…
It’s tough being a dad in this world of uncertainties and expectations. Alimony keeps the ex-wife at bay, and tuition payments keep your ungrateful offspring from dissing you outright 24/7. But there is one little loved one in your life who will always consider you the supreme daddy numero uno,…
The seemingly endless cycle of arts events, though slowing, has yet to cease. As one festival (the International Hispanic Theatre Festival) ends, another (the Florida Dance Festival) begins. For the next seventeen days expect this town to be overrun with hardbodied, expressive types when dancers of all kinds begin to…
In the end is a beginning, as the saying goes. And so it is with Apartment 3A, a romantic comedy with a Hollywood ending that marks a Hollywood beginning: the Acting Studio Stage Company’s new space on Hollywood Boulevard. While there are certain drawbacks to this production, plenty of encouraging…
It’s no surprise that the Louisiana-born novelist Rebecca Wells has seen her wildly popular books translated into eighteen languages, with no less than six million copies in print. She’s no deep-thinking stylist, but she has an unfailing gift for injecting Southern sentimentality, low-grade neurosis, and mischievous charm into stories that…
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who’ve missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Ernest (Colin…
“It’s not like I’m going to be sitting there and balancing eggs on spoons,” says actor/playwright Bill Spring about his new performance piece Miss Vanilla and the Hustler, debuting this weekend on Miami Beach. “It’s accessible material.” Set on South Beach, where the Atlanta native has resided for the past…
