SAT 5/7 Grab your partner, swing ’em ’round and bring ’em to the Barnacle Historic State Park (3485 Main Hwy., Miami) for a hoedown. Pack a picnic, your best twirling skirts, and dancing shoes and do-si-do the night away. What’s that you say? You can’t dance? No problem. Instructors will…
And spiral-bound memories FRI 5/6 What’s your best subject? Who gives the best tongue? Which superhero kicks ass? If you remember getting sent to detention for passing around slam books in middle school, the work of Michael Scoggins should ring a bell. His graphite and prisma drawings nail that sweaty-palmed…
One cast does double duty FRI 5/6 If you were one of Britain’s most prolific playwrights, you’d know too well the inflated egos of star directors and actors, not to mention the so-called talents in the lighting and scenery departments. With his House & Garden, Alan Ayckbourn seems to have…
Children’s theater isn’t given a lot of respect here in South Florida. First-class productions often receive very little public attention, and few shows are reviewed, much less considered for awards. Some sloppy performances by badly directed, inexperienced actors may have given the genre a bad reputation, but the Actors’ Playhouse…
Although the quality may fluctuate, EDGE Theatre productions are often doused with wit and commentary as they confront issues affecting our collective social psyche. Reality TV, in which writer/director Jim Tommaney challenges the corrupt television industry, is no exception. The result is a largely successful, thought-provoking, and satirical presentation of…
Derek Jarman’s Blue may be that weird and wonderful filmmaker’s weirdest and most wonderful film. Striking imagery informs all of his movies, from Sebastiane right through the queer classic Edward II, but Blue is literally about 80 minutes of nothing but a blue screen, with the bells and whispers of…
Aunt Dan and Lemon: Wallace Shawn’s dark, provocative tale of sex, nihilism, and the seductive appeal of raw power has to do with one woman’s malevolent influence on a reclusive young girl in the London of the swinging Sixties. The play is a talkathon, but an intriguing one, and there’s…
A timely and thoughtful exhibition, “The Art of Aggression” at the Moore Space refracts contemporary political art through a prism of global terrorism and conflict. Curators Jean Crutchfield and Robert Hobbs suggest that art can be subversive beyond a mere illustration depicting horror or violence. Artists Wayne Gonzales, Emily Jacir,…
Anne Chu: This exhibition begins with a wide tabletop full of short human figures based on funerary guardians from China’s T’ang Dynasty. Carved roughly from wood, the figures are then painted with casein in a style that seems to draw from Impressionist watercolors. Indeed Chu’s nearby watercolor studies, executed with…
Much of Crash, an LA-stories portmanteau about the suffocating embrace of racism, is hard to watch, harder still to listen to. Its characters — the creations of co-writer and director Paul Haggis but also representations of people who live next door to and perhaps even inside of you — say…
If you were ever in doubt about the theater’s ability to provoke, check out Aunt Dan and Lemon, a creepily ambivalent play about sex, fascism, and the malevolent power of ideas, now at the Sol Theatre in Fort Lauderdale. But be warned: Although the show asks some troubling questions, it’s…
Comedy of Errors: This uneven take on Shakespeare’s early comedy is an odd mingling of the hapless and the intriguing. The old tale of mistaken identity among not one but two sets of identical twins is given a film noir look from the Forties, a choice that has visual appeal…
The painter Lucian Freud once remarked that art derives from other art. But the artist himself must seek to reactivate the original so its power flows into the new creation. Good artists channel this wisdom into viable contemporary forms. Anne Chu, whose solo exhibition is showing at North Miami’s Museum…
The Artist’s Studio: Paintings, Photographs, and Sculptures by Joe Fig: Fig’s miniature constructions of artists’ studios encourage voyeurism. Viewers are invited to peek inside the cloistered areas where artists struggle with creativity in isolation, a kind of sacred atelier immune to the outside art world. Fig manages to respect his…
Don’t let the PG-13 rating fool you. Though it’s acted almost completely by children, Nobody Knows is not a film for children. A poignant, deeply affecting tale of child neglect and abandonment — all the more disturbing for being based on a true incident — this Japanese film (with English…
Agent Fox Mulder, the coolly instinctual sleuth of The X-Files, got pretty good at unraveling paranormal mysteries. If only the actor who played him were as adept at solving the riddle of his movie career. David Duchovny’s new vanity project, House of D, is the tortured tale of a thirteen-year-old…
It’s a little girl’s dream to be a princess, with flowing hair, creamy skin, and pretty dresses with matching sparkly tiaras. But what if you are a beautiful princess who is seen by everyone else as an ugly hag? You can see how the princess, her fairy godmother, and their…
THUR 28 Calling all filmmakers! Put down the projector and stop screening your celluloid labor of love for your friends. The Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive is seeking entries for its seventeenth annual film and video awards program. If your flick was made in or is about Florida,…
For those of us from the northern hemisphere who haven’t traveled much, Australia seems odd and amazing. Its seasons are reversed — Christmas is a perfect time to work on a tan, and winter is in July. Metropolises, deserts, rain forests, snowfields, and sandy beaches can all be found in…
Fast jets and big ships SAT 4/30 As the punk rockers say, loud fast rules. The McDonald’s Air & Sea Show is about as loud and fast as it gets. The two-day event (today and Sunday from 9:00 to 5:00) features enough firepower to turn a country like, say, Iraq…
Inside the Box SUN 5/1 The NFL preseason games are still a few months away, but the fast-paced and high-scoring action of indoor football is here to fulfill your needs. Coached by former Dolphin and Hall of Famer Larry Little, the Miami Morays are off to a winning season. Leading…
Video thrills the gallery crowd THUR 4/28 You’re not going to find a copy of Polaroid Cocaine at a neighborhood Blockbuster, that’s for sure. Michel Auder’s 1993 five-minute film, a montage of images laced with cabaret music celebrating addiction to the spectacle, is the type of work rarely seen outside…
