Many playwrights draw from their personal experiences, but Edward Albee appears downright obsessed by his. The veteran, venerable playwright returns again and again to familiar subjects: dysfunctional family dynamics and the inescapable isolation of human beings from one another. Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Tiny Alice, The Play About The…
Where in hell does all this stuff come from? That’s a question constantly posed by readers, moviegoers, and half-soused nightclub audiences. What are the sources of an artist’s art? What weird compulsion enables a performer to stand naked before the prying eye of a camera, an empty canvas, or a…
It was only in 1967 that Great Britain struck from its jurisprudence the “common scold,” essentially a crime of catty insolence for which the convicted party — almost always a woman disturbing the peace by nagging a man — was punished via a public ducking into cold water. Nobody likes…
Lili Renteria believes the stage doesn’t exist just to present theater. The stage exists to present possibilities. Hence the choice of an elegant hand fan as the logo of her brainchild Teatro Abanico, a 200-seat theater and gallery space in Coral Gables. “The fan is not just a visual symbol,”…
Thursday 3 Active girls and guys gone wild. Before the late 1980s, Ocean Drive’s Art Deco hotels boasted a slew of Jewish immigrant radicals, many of them retirees from New York City, where they had been active in the civil rights and labor movements and sometimes even in anarchist groups…
More than 40 years into her career, composer and performance artist Meredith Monk describes her intricate vocal arrangements and particular style of dance as primordial, raw, visceral, and tribal. Since the 1960s, the ever-braided artist has forged a unique niche for herself, writing and performing mostly a cappella works that…
SAT 4/5 Home to prehistoric Tequesta Indians, used as U.S. Army headquarters during wars against the Seminole Indians, the southernmost terminus for trade along the east coast of America, and a magnet for urban sprawl and drug-toting ships, the Miami River is also a prime party spot. And while rollin’…
MON 4/7 Frustrated golfers have rarely referred to the legendary course at the Doral Resort and Spa as “heavenly.” Indeed the challenging — often treacherous — 7125-yard course is commonly known by its decidedly unsaintly nickname: the Blue Monster. This week, though, the Monster should be on its best behavior…
SAT 4/5 Slobbering, roly-poly fatsos. Shrieking cherubs in poopy Pampers. Babies are every parent’s bundle of joy. They are also heaven-sent gold mines for manufacturers of infant wear, rattles, pacifiers, and child-safety equipment. In fact analysts predict Americans will spend about $29 billion on baby purchases this year. New mommies…
THUR 4/3 Too many worries about the war have your forehead in a constant furrow. The perpetual pout deepens your frown lines by the second. Worst of all, your utter disbelief in everything that is happening in Iraq has given you a permanent Donald Rumsfeld-style squint. Hello, crow’s feet!Yes, war…
SAT 4/5 The best crossbred bands in the city will mix it up at Cielo Lounge (66 SW Sixth St.) with Latin rhythms, funky grooves, electronica, rap, roots revivals, and other refried Afro beats at the Miami/New York Latin Funk Festival. The Spam Allstars, Lee Williams & the Square Egg,…
Architecture has become selfish and homogeneous — it lacks diversity and a genuine connection with nature.” — architect Lucien Kroll There’s so much wrong about Miami’s urban fabric: poor design, structural monotony, congestion. And a critical problem is our lack of green areas, for shade, for leisure. Perhaps our politicians…
In a hurry? Me too, so I’ll get to the point. This is a review of Floyd Collins, an innovative musical that’s got a week or two left in its run at Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables. The story is based on a real incident in the 1920s, when a…
War, as it turns out, is good for absolutely nothing when it comes to anti-war songs. At the risk of sounding like Bill O’Reilly (who, no doubt, listens only to Wagner), it’s time to protest the protesters, most of whom are blowin’, all right, just not in the wind. The…
You know how boys love to play soldier? How they get stern-faced and march out to destroy an enemy whom they believe needs destroying? Well, actors are into that too. Sometimes they soldier on even when Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson isn’t around to help them frown determinedly. Such is…
Director David Cronenberg has led his loyal fans down some pretty spooky corridors, including the telepathic netherworld of Scanners, the violent sibling rivalry of twin gynecologists in love with the same woman (Dead Ringers), and the drug-haunted imagination of William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch). So it comes as no surprise…
In nature, living things prey upon each other all the time. Humanity, on the other hand, has a choice. It is flouting this choice that excites director Gaspar Noé. In his latest project, Irréversible, he basically swipes Christopher Nolan’s backward-narrative structure from Memento to tell a lurid tale of rape…
In Ghana, the polyrhythmic drum-driven musical style known as takada is a woman’s cry to freedom. “To be a composer or drummer among the Anlo-Ewe people of Ghana was something reserved for men,” explains Corina Fitch, drummer, dancer, professional midwife, and the director of the Takada Women’s Ensemble. “But in…
Thursday, March 27 New World Symphony founder, artistic director, and recent Grammy Award winner (for a San Francisco Symphony recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6), Michael Tilson Thomas welcomes renowned soprano Ying Huang for a little more Mahler. This time the Romantic composer’s delicate Symphony No. 4 is on the…
Not long into George P. Pelecanos’s just-published crime novel Soul Circus, protagonist Derek Strange — black, mid-fifties, veteran private detective — and his partner Terry Quinn — white, early thirties, new to the business — cruise the streets of Washington, D.C., in Strange’s Chevy searching for a key witness in…
SUN 3/30 Every day, soldiers struggle in the “homeland” to keep a biological agent at bay. The agent is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that has infected almost 900,000 people domestically. Although effective treatments have reduced the epidemic to an afterthought in the American psyche, AIDS continues to spread and…
MON 3/31 Okay, so the Florida Marlins lost more games than they won last year, shed some of their most popular players, and — with the exception of one high-profile acquisition — have done little to improve themselves. And yes, they fired their mascot. But so what? Hope springs eternal…
