It must have been a grand celebration when the Coconut Grove Theater first opened. In 1927, most buildings in the area didn’t have electricity, let alone air conditioning. The three-story baby-blue building, with its Mediterranean columns and lush proscenium archway, was a shining example of architect Richard Kiehnel’s celebrated designs…
In the 1960s, Tiffany Madera’s parents fled Cuba during the revolution. Like many other refugees, they landed in Miami and started a family. Madera and her bother were born in Miami and grew up in Coconut Grove. But when she was a young child, her family returned to Cuba to…
In 1992, “Weird Al” Yankovic released the single “You Don’t Love Me Anymore,” a song about a homicidal ex-girlfriend and a dope who isn’t sure if the relationship is over despite her repeated attempts to kill him, at one point cutting his brakes and later pushing him down an elevator…
Film died and nobody cared. It was a deliberate, efficient, cancerous sort of death. George Lucas planted the first tumor in 2002 when he shot Star Wars: Episode II digitally, but the disease didn’t begin to infect the more than 39,000 cinemas in the United States until 2010. The digital…
Director R.B. Schlather, in a joint effort with the vocal chamber group IlluminArts, presents a weeklong rendition of David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Little Match Girl Passion, at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The performance marks the latest in a series of collaborations with local museums and galleries to…
When The Royale begins, Jay, a heavyweight champion boxer, and Fish, his amateur opponent, line up next to each other. Spotlights shine on both, leaving the rest of the sparse set in the dark. But instead of squaring off against each other in the ring, the two stare straight at…
Ilisa Rosal founded Ballet Flamenco La Rosa in 1985 and the company soon cultivated a renowned reputation for presenting flamenco, in all its forms, to local, national, and international audiences. This weekend it will premiere “La Gaviota,” a flamenco ballet and “Al Grano.” The program showcases the talent of artists…
Dance Now! Miami brings choreographer Edward Stierle’s evocative Lacrymosa home to South Florida this weekend. The performance comes more than 20 years after its premiere with the Joffrey Ballet and since the untimely death (at age 23) of Stierle, a Hollywood, Forida native. In Lacrymosa, the work and the life…
“I was dead for ten days, so I can tell you from the horse’s mouth: I got closer to God than you ever will. I was on the other side. And you know what He said to me? He said, ‘I forgive you, my son. Now go back home because…
Whether it’s riffing on model and Kardashian-to-be Blac Chyna’s two “baby bumps” or upsetting black women with vaguely misogynistic jokes, Marlon Wayans has managed to stay in the spotlight and on top of current events throughout his career. The 43 year-old actor, comedian, and writer long ago broke free from…
Miami’s Karen Peterson and Dancers company brings its 26th season to a close this weekend with a series of premieres as well as collaborations with two of Portugal’s leading dance companies, Amalgama Companhia de Danca and Plural. These groups, like Peterson’s, are committed to exploring what physicality and mixed-ability are…
Whenever a character in popular fiction is named “Joy,” you should assume there’s some irony involved. She’s probably destitute or depressed or mentally unstable or otherwise joyless. Such is the case with the lead character of Sean Grennan’s recent play, The Tin Woman, a probing affair from this accessible chronicler…
Twenty-year-old Chris Silio grew up in Miami and has lived in Kendall all his life. He remembers wanting to be a professional comedian from a very young age. “I would tell my elementary school teachers I wanted to be a standup comic and be on Comedy Central,” says Silio. “My…
Founded in 1988 in Havana, the DanzAbierta company began under the direction of Marianela Boan. Considered a precursor to Cuba’s avant-garde dance movement, the company was known for its experimental stance towards cultural identity. In 2003, the group came under the artistic direction of Guido Gali, and later, Barcelona native…
A Special Day is definitively multicultural. The play is based on an Italian text, performed by Mexican actors, and spoken in English. Two stage companies — New York’s The Play Company and Mexico City’s Por Piedad Teatro — co-present the work. It’s set to take place in Miami Beach, one…
Them Beaux is an upcoming Miami Theater Center play that touches on themes of sexual identity, racial issues, and gender equality. In other words, it’s a socially relevant tale — despite the fact that it takes place in America during the 1800s. A period piece can be stressful to produce…
The world is filled with long-winded storytellers and boring status updates about babies and dinner. Unless you’re Keith Richards, Ozzy Osbourne, Richard Branson, or some other filthy-rich British person, there’s a good chance your life is pretty mundane. Still, there are the rare few who can take a seemingly unexceptional…
The Teatro Cinema theater company is one of the most genre-breaking groups to present their work in South Florida. Frustrated by the limits of both stage and screen, they fuse them. Although it isn’t as simple as using background images as stage sets. For one, they use a scrim between stage…
If Dale Andree could come back as an animal in her next life, she’d be a seal. The National Water Dance founder and artistic director, a self-confessed “water baby,” has a kinship with h20. Is is that connection that helped her to realize an artistic vision that has now become…
In the early 2000s, Randy Harrison starred in one of the most addictive, engaging, and subversive comi-dramas on American television. Eleven years after Showtime’s Queer as Folk ended, the actor is back to revealing the lives of complex individuals and complicated ideals. This time, however, he’s onstage. And singing. And wearing very, very…
“In my act, for a long time, I used to say that Copenhagen was considered the nicest place in the world to live and it’s a Socialist country,” says comedian Lewis Black. “It gets a certain kind of backlash with Facebook crap and stuff, I mean nothing major, but just enough…
For Michael Yawney, director of the one-man show PET at Miami Light Box at Goldman Warehouse this weekend, the most difficult question to answer is the most elemental: What is the show? “I think of it as a big cornucopia of stuff,” Yawney says. “There’s dance, there’s music, it’s funny,…
