It’s National Thesaurus Day, and you just might need to break out yours to best describe some of this week’s best bets. We’ve got an opera Houston hasn’t seen in more than 20 years, a world premiere reimagining of Homer’s Odyssey, and a whole slate of Iranian film. Keep reading to learn more.
Parsifal, Richard Wagner’s final opera, returns to Houston Grand Opera on Friday, January 19, at 6 p.m. for the first time since 1992 (and the second time ever). Tenor Russell Thomas, who takes on the role of Parsifal for the first time in the three-act production, told the Houston Press that “Parsifal is one of those operas that people have very strong opinions about,” adding that the “opera makes people think about purity and good versus evil and what that means. How it’s not always so black and white.” Performances, sung in German with projected English subtitles, will continue at 6 p.m. on Saturday and Wednesday, and 2 p.m. Sundays through February 4 at the Wortham Theater Center. Tickets can be purchased here for $25 to $280.
If you’ve always wanted to see what someone’s brain looks like while they’re dancing, you won’t want to miss the collision of dance and neuroscience during Meeting of Minds, a program from NobleMotion and Musiqa that builds on the continuing partnership the two organizations, Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal and the University of Houston BRAIN Center. Composer Anthony Brandt will contribute a score that dancers will perform to while wearing EEG caps. The caps will measure electrical activity in their brains, and projection designer Badie Khaleghian will represent that data with abstract visualizations. You can catch the program at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, January 19, or Saturday, January 20, at the MATCH. Tickets are pay-what-you-can with a suggested price of $35 and can be purchased here.
Iranian artist Nikzad “Nicky” Nodjoumi is the focus of A Revolution on Canvas, a documentary by Till Schauder and Nodjoumi’s daughter Sara Nodjoumi that is set to open the 31st Festival of Films from Iran at 7 p.m. on Friday, January 19, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The film is a “fascinating family drama” with “something of an international thriller” embedded in, as “the Nodzoumis’ attempts to retrieve some of Nikzad’s art from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.” A Revolution on Canvas will screen a second time at 5 p.m. on Saturday, January 27, with the Festival of Films from Iran continuing through January 27 at the MFAH with films like The Persian Version and Orca. Additional festival screenings are also scheduled at Asia Society Texas Center and Rice Cinema through February 3. Festival admission is $10.
A 40-something neurobiologist named O finds herself out in the cold when her husband tells her he wants a divorce and he’s staying in their house, leaving her to go on a couch-hopping journey that fans of Homer’s epic The Odyssey will recognize in O: A Rhapsody in Divorce by Jami Brandli. On Friday, January 19, at 8 p.m. Mildred’s Umbrella will close their season with the “rolling” world premiere of Brandli’s dramedy, which reimagines and reclaims Odysseus’s ten-year battle to get home after the Trojan War with musings on divorce, feminism, science and more. Performances will continue at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays through February 3 at Studio 101, Spring Street Studios. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with a minimum of $5) and can be purchased here.
Playwright Sharr White based the play Pictures from Home on a book written by Larry Sultan about the decade Sultan spent interviewing and photographing his parents. The play, developed during the Alley Theatre‘s All New Festival 2020, will returns to the Alley for a run that opens on Friday, January 19, at 8 p.m. White recently spoke with the Houston Press, saying that the play is “a multigenerational exploration of intimacy and ultimately mortality,” adding that “it’s about what we all are heading towards which is aging and our parents again and our questioning of what we have left behind us and our mark on the world.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through February 11. Tickets can be purchased here for $27 to $81.
Whether you know her best from her extensive theater resume and her Tony Award-winning performance in Hamilton or one her many television or film roles, on Saturday, January 20, at 8 p.m. you’ll have the chance to see Renée Elise Goldsberry right here in Houston at The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts as she takes the stage for Broadway at the Hobby Center’s new Beyond Broadway series. Goldsberry recently told the Houston Press that “[w]hat’s special about my performance in Houston is I really can perform all of this music from shows I’ve been in and share personal stories about those experiences. It’s a gift to be able to demystify the road to Broadway.” Tickets to the one-night-only performance can be purchased here for $44 to $124.
Whether or not you make it to Jones Hall for Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (see below), consider heading over to Discovery Green on Monday, January 22, at 7 p.m. when Discovery Green, Performing Arts Houston and Houston Cinema Arts Society present a free screening of Ballerina Boys. The 2021 documentary, directed and produced by Chana Gazit and Martie Barylick, follows The Trocks as they toured North and South Carolina and looks back at the group’s history since its post-Stonewall inception in 1974, which Gazit has called “a story about survival.” Performing Arts Houston’s director of education and community development, Raie Crawford, will take the stage following the film to lead a discussion about the company and its effect on gender issues, inclusion and social justice.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, or, as they are more commonly known, The Trocks, will return to Jones Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 23. For 50 years. the all-male company has brought their unique vision – i.e. men dancing classical ballet on pointe and in drag – to the masses, weaving together satire and comedy like parodies of classic ballets like Swan Lake . with technique and a true love of the art form. Peter Anastos, who co-founded the company with Natch Taylor and Anthony Bassae, told NPR in 2021 that “you have to have a complete working knowledge of what it is you’re making fund of and respect it and love it. Otherwise it doesn’t work.” Tickets are available here for $29 to $99.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
