When Casa Valentina premiered on Broadway last year, it garnered four Tony nominations and numerous critical accolades. Seeing its regional theater premiere at GableStage, it’s hard to comprehend why. Harvey Fierstein’s first play in nearly 30 years examines the laughter, drama and gender crises of a community of heterosexual male…
As both Artistic Director and resident director of Actors’ Playhouse, David Arisco can claim the one thing most denizens of the theater world only dream of: a steady gig. An opportunity that arose purely by chance has now stretched into a 27 year tenure at one of Miami’s most prominent…
From time to time, Betrayal has the balls to be boring. One of the great ironic treatises on infidelity, Harold Pinter’s semiautobiographical 1978 mood piece is a play of little action. There is a series of scenes that reveal their purposes gradually, like yellowed photographs slowly coming into focus. It’s…
Local choreographer Rosie Herrera, one of Miami’s notable creative offspring, is known for a particular style of snarky and darkly humorous dance theater. But for Cookie’s Kid, her newest project with Miami Light Project opening this weekend, Herrera is turning inward to a more vulnerable creative space. We had a…
While the performance season is coming to a close, Miami still has more to celebrate as Augusto Soledade’s Brazzdance turns 10 years old. “Wow,” he says. He hopes Miami audiences will say the same when Brazzdance honors this anniversary with a program called “Oduns” — stories of finding one’s path…
Since ballet and high fashion make quite the formidable duo, its only fitting that Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Amy Astley marry the two art forms in Strictly Ballet, a web series that documents the lives of up-and-coming ballerinas vying for a coveted spot in a world-renowned ballet company. While the first…
In an interactive age of downloads and mobile devices that bring the world to any tiny cellphone screen, the idea of actually reading a book is rapidly become something of an anachronism. It’s little wonder then that the six characters that inhabit Karen Zacarias’ comedy The Book Club Play are…
Book clubs existed long before Oprah Winfrey started hers in 1996, but it’s fair to say the queen of television made them cool again. Reading novels used to be a solitary pastime, an experience shared by reader and author.
Karen Peterson and Dancers, one of Miami’s cultural treasures, is celebrating its 25th birthday this May. When the group was gathered together a quarter of a century ago, the idea of a “physically integrated” dance company — one comprised of both physically able and the so-called physically “disabled” — was…
When audiences see the two pieces Vladimir Issaev has planned for his Arts Ballet Theatre of Florida’s Spring Gala, it won’t be the first time the company has presented these ballets. However, the artistic director believes each time he and his company breathe new life into them. The traditional Spring…
Returning to her hometown after a 15 year stint in New York City, 34-year-old dancer/choreographer Hattie Mae Williams’ first year back in Miami has been marked with artistic achievements, including a grant from the Knight Foundation to develop site specific dance works at the Miami Marine Stadium and the Venetian…
Various performers this season have brought us thought-provoking takes on black masculinity. Both Nora Chipaumire’s powerful paean for her father, presented in December at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, and Shaneeka Harrell’s look at Cassius Clay, shown at the Miami Light Box during O, Miami, examined how the image of…
MDC Live Arts closes out their season on Saturday with the RUBBERBANDance Group, a Montreal-based dance company that seamlessly fuses hip hop and ballet aesthetics to create a unique movement experience. Speaking from his hotel room during a Philadelphia tour stop, company founder Victor Quijada speaks more like a scientist…
Tigertail Productions will present Ivory Coast dancer and choreographer Nadia Beugré in a solo performance this weekend at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, as its month long FLA-FRA festival approaches its end. And what a finale this will be. Beugré has been described by the New York Times as “wild like…
The Tennessee-based company Ballet Memphis will be serving up quite a feast, with a three-part program featuring works by exciting North American choreographers Trey McIntyre, Julia Adam and Matthew Neenan this Saturday at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center, presented by Culture Shock Miami. The company was founded in 1986…
This year’s Miami Dance Festival features an afternoon of new works this Sunday, covering a variety of dance forms during PAN (Performing Arts Network) Choreographers at Work. For instance, there’s Nina Martin’s tribute to Marcel Marceau. And there’s Colleen Farnum’s original work In Everything I See You, a dance piece…
The Magnificents, like many of the House Theatre of Chicago’s productions, is driven by its transformational set design, drop-down projection screen, and impressive aerial showmanship. The term “dog-and-pony show” applies, though in this case the live animals onstage are a rabbit and a parakeet.
Bill Burr is one angry and funny dude. At least that was the consensus from his new hour of comedy, which he let Miami in on Friday night during the South Beach Comedy Festival. Burr got noticed for his recurring role on the second season Chappelle’s Show and has since…
The South Beach Comedy Festival is here for four days, so we’ll have plenty of chances to practice our gleeful guffaws. This year’s lineup — Dave Chappelle, Patton Oswalt, Hannibal Buress, Bill Burr, Mark Normand, and others — is bound to incite a laugh riot.
Whether or not you have a background in modern dance, Delma Iles and her company of dancers at Momentum Dance Company want spectators to look beyond the movements they see on stage. Drawing inspiration from modernist paintings, classical music, and devastating real life experiences, the company’s artistic director and her…
Miami-based choreographer Pioneer Winter and visual artist Jared Sharon have invited us all to a “crazy space pirate Mean Girls and an operatic cyborg-like ship mixed with film projection, contemporary dance and extreme beauty regimens.” This new project, Sirens in Space, premiers on Thursday at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s versatile…
It takes a wise guy from Boston with a disregard for giving a crap to rant about Steve Jobs. “He told other people what to invent,” is comedian Bill Burr’s joke. For Burr, politically correct banter isn’t part of his nature, and it’s what makes him one of the best…
