Performing Arts

Miami theater this week: Summer Shorts, good vibrations, desire, and love

Because he hasn’t yet had an icky cameo on Glee, you might not realize that actor and comedian Joel McHale’s star is cresting. He plays heartthrob Jeff Winger, a lawyer forced to go back to junior college, on NBC’s Community. And he hosts E!’s The Soup, a clip show that…

Summer Shorts 2011: No shortage of comedy, drama, and the provocative

In addition to last year’s annual Summer Shorts festival, City Theatre premiered Camp Kappawanna, the family rock musical penned by Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb (the show is back for a return engagement this year). This year’s festivities, however, is not so kid-friendly. The 16th anniversary of Summer Shorts calls for…

The national tour of Hair arrived full-force in Miami last night at the Ziff Opera House. People familiar with the show will recognize classic songs like “Aquarius,” “Hair” and “Let the Sun Shine In” that had many fans dancing in their seats. This 1967 musical, deemed the first “tribal love-rock…

Performer/dancer/writer/director Teo Castellanos is back. His new piece, Fat Boy, which opens tomorrow, is unlike anything the hometown homeboy has done before — and anything you’ve seen before. With his troupe D-Projects and accompanied by original music from another local favorite DJ Le Spam, Castellanos mines dance and cultural traditions…

Last week, we gave a preview of the New Theatre’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire, charging that “a theater troupe really has to have guts to take on” Tennessee Williams’ most celebrated work. Well, in the premier of the show last night, the performers and director Ricky J. Martinez…

It’s the timeless tale of fading beauty, the working class of old New Orleans, rape, and a dude in a wife beater shirt who belts out one of the most famous scenes in stage and film history (“Stella!”). A Streetcar Named Desire was the play (and film) that launched Marlon…

Shawn and Marlon Wayans have played characters with names like Ashtray, Slim, Cheapie, Gawain, Snails, and Homeless Guy during the four-year run of their homegrown sitcom in the late ’90s. As the youngsters in their successful comedic blood line, they’ve stuck together through thick and thin, bad movies and worse…

Miami theater this week: Hitchcock, Streetcar, and vibrators

Behind the bright lights and red velvet curtains of “professional theater” is an alternative that is challenging the norm. House Next Door Productions is a group of students from the Miami area looking to spread awareness of so-called “alternative theater” throughout the city. They’re hoping that their production of Stephen…

Last week a man told his 81-year-old father that making tweets was how to search things on Google. The result was the hilarious @oldmansearch.The tweets reflect the mind of a confused (but adorable) old coot: how do you pronounce juan, cold toes, is alex trebek really smart, national geographic dinosaur…

Can you imagine what dinner was like at the Wayans household in the 1980s? You probably had Keenen Ivory Wayans doing his Mike Tyson imitation, while Damon developed his Homey the Clown or Men on Film schtick, and then the babies of the family, Shawn and Marlon Wayans, were developing…

The 39 Steps at Actors’ Playhouse crams an entire film onto the stage

Writer, dancer, and, although he doesn’t like to admit it — actor, Rudi Goblen has performed with The Roots, Mos Def, and De La Soul, just to name a few. The acclaimed B-Boy and his crew, the Flipside Kings, perform, compete, and judge events all over the world. You may…

Kids often forget that their parents existed as real people before having them. Kids also think they know everything. These two facts are the reasoning behind Three Days of Rain, which premieres Friday at the Black Box Theatre at Nova Southeastern University.Richard Greenberg, a Tony Award winner and Pulitzer Prize…

Talk about the creative struggle. This weekend, Miami will play host to a group of dancers, known as Ayikodans, who have overcome obstacles more challenging than what most of us can imagine. The company, led by choreographer Jeanguy Saintus, is based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Their facility was partially destroyed in…

Led by Cuban-born and trained stars of international repute hailing from top-tier companies including the San Francisco Ballet and the English National Ballet, the Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami (CCBM) presents traditional ballet at its most grandiose. The Cuban-flavored classical ballet takes the stage at the Fillmore Miami Beach at…

The Victorian age was a confusing time. The Industrial Revolution sprung up many technological innovations, people figured out the importance of clean water (like that it’s important for not dying), and medicine proposed new solutions to everyone’s problems. But lost in all the progress were some less positive developments. Like,…

Celebrity Autobiography at the Arsht Center May 12-15

​Choreographer, director, and all-around multimedia artist Yara Travieso got her start dancing here relatively late, at age 13, and not in the usual realms of jazz, modern, or ballet. Rather, the self-described “super-sassy” teen was drawn instead to the flamboyance of flamenco. And though she later attended the New World…

Sam Shepard and Patti Smith performed Cowboy Mouth back in 1971. The play follows two sad sacks, Cavale and Slim. She’s kidnapped him at gunpoint in order to make him a rock ‘n’ roll star, but they’re just wasting away in a messy room. Sounds like college a little, no?This…