Carlos Mencia has never been so uncontroversial. For years, the comedian navigated the seas of mainstream success with his show Mind of Mencia while being thrashed by storms of criticism for allegations of stealing material within the community. It’s rare for a comedian to experience soaring adoration or scathing hate,…
Dear Amy, Like most other critics, feminists, and fans of funny things, I’ve been devouring the second season of your show, Inside Amy Schumer, with a relish I typically reserve for garlic bread pizza. It’s smart, insightful, and funny enough to make everyone love it even though it’s nice to…
To create, nourish, and promote art that speaks to South Florida, with an emphasis on Ibero-American culture. That has been the goal of Miami Beach’s FUNDarte since day one. Such an effort got a major boost in 2012, when the non-profit arts organization became one of 34 Knight Arts Challenge…
Ritualistic writing, interdisciplinary theater, phosphorescent paintings, and sexual reassignment surgery come together to form the backbone for the 15th annual Here & Now: 2014, A Knight Emerging Artist Series. Here & Now is where and when the Miami Light Project commissions new performance work by innovative South Florida artists. The…
This past weekend, Miami Theater Center opened Everybody Drinks the Same Water, a decorous world premiere written by MTC artistic director Stephanie Ansin and resident artist Fernando Calzadilla. It’s set in 13th century Cordoba, Spain, a fractious cauldron of faiths and cultures lorded over by a bigoted Christian queen (Barbara…
The Main Street Players, Miami Lakes’ resident community theater company, departs from its tradition of producing Broadway or off-Broadway hits to mount the world premiere of an early work by one of South Florida’s best playwrights, David Michael Sirois. A two-time Carbonell Award nominee for his plays Brothers Beckett and…
The scene opens backstage at a red-curtain theater in Miami. Cast and crew scurry about prepping for the big show. A bubbly starlet babbles to a nervous Pakistani academic. A Cuban exile laments about Havana to a swagged-out YOLO bro. A European art snob throws shade at a closeted Southern…
Love. Lust. Spirituality. Peace. Thaïs encompasses all of this and then some. The Florida Grand Opera’s (FGO) production of Jules Massenet and Louis Gallet’s story of an ancient Egyptian courtesan who finds peace from a troubled monk is set to astound Saturday, May 3, through Sunday, May 10. The two…
To close its 16th season, the Arts Ballet Theatre of Florida is dedicating its finale performance to ballet’s Russian forefathers and to Venezuela, which has heavily influenced the company’s neo-classical repertoire. The shows will be held Saturday, May 3, at the Aventura Arts and Cultural Center and Sunday, May 4,…
What do fairy tales, botany, Jungian psychology, musicals, and New York City all have in common? Seemingly nothing, but if you allow yourself to go just a little bit insane, you’ll find they all can all come together quite beautifully on stage. At least, that’s the goal of Fairy Tales:…
The House Theatre of Chicago has little interest in producing traditional plays. The previous productions it has taken to the Adrienne Arsht Center — such as The Sparrow, about a girl who develops special powers after surviving a tragic bus accident, and the sold-out engagements of Death and Harry Houdini,…
Shaping Miami into the artistic hub that it’s become couldn’t have been done without the steady, decades-long priming by The Performing Arts Network (PAN) in North Miami. PAN’s founders have been on the frontlines of Miami’s dance and performance scene since the 1980s. Nestled in a narrow commercial strip along…
Set aside for a moment any preconceived notions you may have about the French arts and culture. Toss out the idea of the beret with a striped shirt and a baguette stuck underneath an arm. So much more happens creatively in France and the French diaspora, but it seldom reaches…
The House Theatre of Chicago has little interest in producing traditional plays. The previous productions it has taken to the Adrienne Arsht Center — such as The Sparrow, about a girl who develops special powers after surviving a tragic bus accident, and the sold-out engagements of Death and Harry Houdini,…
Recently, the Miami New Times published the results of a study from The Humor Research Lab and the authors of The Humor Code, Peter McGraw and Joel Warner, the findings of which claimed Miami as the 48th least funny out of America’s top 50 largest Metro areas. As the head…
When Steve-O, the most infamous member of MTV’s Jackass, announced he was going to do stand-up, we worried it might be like the time Daffy Duck blew himself up to prove he had the best act ever. Thankfully, Steve-O has shown a remarkable amount of self-control and hasn’t tried many…
One of the first lines in Not Ready for Primetime, a patchy chronicle of the tumultuous inception of Saturday Night Live, is a pithy mission statement delivered by its creator, Lorne Michaels. He says his new variety show will be “absurd, young, and hip — and if you don’t like…
Little Eve is taking a bath with her father and playing with her rubber ducky. She sees something in the water that looks odd. “Daddy, Daddy, is that your rubber ducky?” she asks, eyes wide, in her baby voice. Then she tugs on it. “It becomes a moment of oops,”…
One of the first lines in Not Ready for Primetime, a patchy chronicle of the tumultuous inception of Saturday Night Live, is a pithy mission statement delivered by its creator, Lorne Michaels. He says his new variety show will be “absurd, young, and hip — and if you don’t like…
The standing ovation at the matinee of Miami City Ballet’s season closer, Don Quixote, Saturday, March 22, at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts was a good indication that classical ballet lives and breathes in South Florida. Furthermore, it showed that it holds its own against the Ultra/WMC/MMW fests…
At the January Young Arts Foundation annual gala, Chanel Da Silva, dancer with the Trey McIntyre Project (TMP), kicked off her heels and broke it down on the temporary dance floor to Michael Jackson’s “Startin’ Somethin’.” Da Silva, a 2004 Young Arts Winner and Presidential Scholar in the Arts, wasn’t…
Little Eve is taking a bath with her father and playing with her rubber ducky. She sees something in the water that looks odd, “Daddy, daddy, is that your rubber ducky?” she asks, eyes wide, in her baby voice. Then she tugs on it and realizes it’s attached. “It becomes…
