Burlesque dancers are sexy all on their own. But throw in walking on glass and plate twirling, and you’ve just witnessed a new breed of theatre performance. This Thursday, the Front Yard Theatre Collective (FYTC) will showcase its original improv sketches with a twist and a burlesque bump, for one…
When the curtain rises on Antony and Cleopatra at GableStage next year, audiences will be able to say they’ve witnessed the work of a bona fide genius. That’s because Miami playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, who reimagined the Shakespeare classic set in the late 18th Century tropics on the eve of…
According to Carol Burnett’s oft-quoted epigram, comedy is tragedy plus time. That witticism has held up for more than 20 years, though today I would excise the “plus time” part. In the age of Twitter, tragedy instantaneously becomes comedy. “Too soon” is too quaint a complaint: Comedy and tragedy always…
About 20 women strong, the Venus Rising Drum and Dance Ensemble is the local cultural dance scene’s female empowerment movement expressed through West African movement and rhythms. The group will headline this year’s Miami World Music Festival, held from Sept. 19 to 22 at Florida International University’s Wertheim Center for…
For aesthetic and economic reasons, musical bilingualism between jazz and classical music is not the rarity — or the scandal — it once was. But few can master and dazzle in both idioms like Brazilian pianist and composer André Mehmari, who will be appearing for one night during DWNTWN Art…
Marlins fans already have March 31, 2014 in their calendars as the start of pre-season baseball. But the most masochistic of Marlins fans — a group that would buy Cracker Jacks at their own beheadings — have March 21 reserved with a blood-red X. That’s the date that Miami Marlins…
It’s like that moment at a family party when your cousin Nena brings her new boyfriend from Boston: Everyone stops to scrutinize the out-of-town stranger. Does he even know how to dance merengue? Will he get all weird when your Tio Pepe starts to serve the caja china? Will he…
The name might not be familiar to circus laymen, but Mexican’s Vazquez brothers are like the Ringlings of Mexico, founding a circus in 1969 with nothing but a handmade tarp and rented equipment and emerging as one of the most powerful entertainment brands in their country. After nearly four decades…
Like Michael Apted’s series of 7 Up documentaries — in which the director revisits the same people every seven years — Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries captures the maturation (or lack thereof) of two people from age 8 to 38, jumping forward (or backward) in time. Only in this case,…
The Pelican Playhouse has made a point to single out its current production as a “PG-rated” play — a lurch toward somewhat adult material for a family-friendly community theater that prides itself on its all-ages productions. The work in question is a caustically funny satire of backward culture that has…
Pedro Pablo Peña, founder and artistic director of the International Ballet Festival of Miami, has had to do more than pirouettes to make sure the dance celebration he started almost two decades ago continues and thrives, in spite of rough economic times. But the Cuban choreographer and former ballet dancer…
In Mad Cat Theatre Company’s new bio-play about late British fashion muse Isabella Blow, all the world’s a stage, but not a very glamorous one. The intimate theater-in-the-round set design is a harsh runway that juts out from tattered curtains. It’s framed by an antlered mannequin, a worn speaker, and…
For supporters of a plan to reopen the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the countdown has begun. On Tuesday, Florida Governor Rick Scott and his cabinet approved a proposal by FIU and Miami-Dade County to lease the playhouse from the state. But the property is still mired in debt, and Tuesday’s decision…
Gabriel Iglesias has made a career out of a very simple, self-mocking nickname: Fluffy. Fans and celebrities alike yell it at him in the oddest moments. “Fluffy”, a 1940s euphemistic reference for fat, is now so associated with Iglesias that even his Magic Mike co-star Channing Tatum yelled it at…
This past April, South Beach Comedy Festival-goers were treated to an eccentric tragicomedy about an eccentric celebrity, Isabella Blow, the British fashion muse and magazine editor known for her keen eye (she discovered Alexander McQueen) and ostentatious headwear. Exploring Issi’s wit, style, and death wish – she attempted suicide six…
Flesh and Blooders is a new play about puppets, but it’s more Being John Malkovich than Avenue Q — an eccentric love triangle where egos clash, mad puppets attack, and amnesiacs and runaway brides find common ground. Written by local theater entrepreneur Cynthia Joyce Clay and recently opened as the…
When Ifé-Ile dancers transition from contemporary to traditional Afro-Cuban motion on stage and petition the Yoruba gods for protection in a foreign land, choreographer Neri Torres will have revealed yet another poignant element of the emotional trials, triumphs and cultural evolution that is Cuban immigrant life — and dance. “The…
Inside Grand Central nightclub, the lights are dim, and the music is throbbing. On the dance floor, beat freaks jump, bounce, and flail around to the rhythms of the live DJ on the decks. In the corners of the room, onlookers belly up the the bar and sip their drinks…
When he’s not performing, Slava Polunin looks like an off-season Santa Claus or an aging wizard from a fantasy-movie franchise. Onstage, in his yellow parka, oversize red shoes, giant strawberry nose, and electrified white hair, he is no less fantastical. A versatile performance artist who once organized a street march…
In this Pulitzer Prize winner, the story’s leading actors have to emotionally conjure the most unthinkable type of mourning: the death of a child. Howie and Becky, parents in their late 30s, lose their 4-year-old son Denny after he is accidentally struck by a 17-year-old’s car. The play’s drama focuses…
Is there a bigger demographic than parents? Like the undead in a zombie apocalypse, there are more of them every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Normal people become parents just like that. If you’ve become one of them or know anyone who is, you’re part of the ever-expanding…
It’s summertime in Miami, and everybody hates everything. The weather’s either searingly humid or fun-cancelingly rainy. The Zimmerman verdict has most people rightly pissed off. The Marlins are a joke. Local weirdos keep doing crazy shit like stealing money from dying people and having sex with housepets. It’s so bad,…
