Comedian Kyle Grooms on Univision, Rick Sanchez, and John Mayer

It’s hard not to love a Jersey/Miami-brewed comedian. Especially one that makes jokes about white people’s response to his black family skiing (“Are those bears?”) and being mistaken as smart because of his glasses (“You look like you went to college. No, I went to Pearl Vision.”). And after years…

Kristina Wong Fails at Environmentalism in Going Green the Wong Way

A few years ago, porn-seeking perverts with colonialist ambitions began stumbling onto the wrong mail-order bride website. Presenting itself as a “source for meeting a nice, subservient Asian bride,” BigBadChineseMama.com proceeded to break down sexual politics, racial stereotypes, and power structure via pictures of ass-kicking females above testimonials such as,…

Harvest Voice: No Border Patrol for Dreams

When Miami Contemporary Dance Company artistic director Ray Sullivan decided to research the life of migrant workers for his new piece, Harvest Voice, he was more interested in the workers’ dreams than in the working conditions in the Homestead fields. “As we know there are no borders for dreams,” he…

Florida Grand Opera’s Turandot Is Ridiculous and Beautiful

This weekend, the Florida Grand Opera opened their season with Turandot. As the plot goes: In Peking, there’s a princess named Turandot who will wed the first royal suitor to answer three riddles correctly. Suitors who fail will be beheaded. The iffy cost-benefit analysis has, alas, not dissuaded many suitors. …

Catch Artful Dodgers at Actors’ Playhouse’s Oliver!

From Les Cage Aux Folles to Urinetown, Actor’s Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre puts on some pretty varied fare. Starting November 17, the theater is going old-school with Oliver!, a Tony Award-winning musical about that lovable little scamp, Oliver Twist. Stealing hearts as easily as he picks pockets, Oliver could…

Guess That Beard (or Mustache)

Choo! Choo! That’s the sound of the No Shave November train, and we’re riding it all month long. Last week, we met a dude who’ll outfit your cerveza bottle with a mini mustache, and today we’re testing your beard and/or mustache knowledge. The above four are no brainers, right? There’s…

Daniel Arsham Evokes Merce Cunningham in Replica at Arsht and MoCA

Merce Cunningham was hip before his time. The choreographer’s spectacular collaborations with off-the-mainstream-grid musicians and artists such as John Cage, Bruce Nauman, and Sonic Youth, broke all boundaries and changed dance forever. In one of his last multidisciplinary pieces before his death, Merce tapped Miami visual artist Daniel Arsham to…

Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza Opens Friday at Bicentennial Park

In the Cirque du Soleil production Kooza, an extremely naive, melancholy character known as the Innocent finds himself unable to launch a kite. Instead of giving up, he initiates a Fight Club-esque mental illusion in which a trickster appears in a box and begins to command the world using a…

Alice in Wonderland Opens Wednesday at PlayGround Theatre

You can view Lewis Carroll’s classic story Alice in Wonderland through many different lenses. There’s the Disney scope, which renders it an innocent, happily ending tale; the acid-laced goggles that focus on Alice’s trippy hallucinations of grinning cats and anxious white rabbits; and the philosopher’s view, which sees the deep…

Sartre’s No Exit Opens at Naked Stage on Friday

The folks at Naked Stage are always trying to one-up themselves. First, they held their innovative fourth annual 24-Hour Theatre Project, in which local thespians had 24 hours to write, rehearse, and present a play. They followed with the recent premiere of Flashlight Tales — an open-mike night for scary…

Jessica Gross and Andrew Hevia Present “Adventures of a Sexual Miscreant”

We would call New Times Best Comedian of 2010 Jessica Gross and Borscht Film Festival braintrust member Andrew Hevia a power couple in the Miami arts scene if we weren’t above such crass labeling. Luckily for us, their union has finally produced a creative endeavor: the hysterically raunchy Gross-produced, Hevia-written/directed…

Michael Tilson Thomas’s Last Performance at Lincoln Theatre

MTT and Ted Arison lighting the Lincoln’s marquee in 1989.​Think before you snub classical music. Researchers tracked a group of dementia patients and as their gray matter went limp, their musical tastes jumped from Beethoven to Beiber. Digging symphony is not only proof that have brains, though, it may also…