It’s Be an Angel Day, and what better way to be an angel than to spend some time with your friends and loved ones at some of our picks for best bets. (At your expense, of course.) This week, we’ve got world premiere dance, a showcase of short plays, and much more. Keep reading to see what we’re looking forward to over the next week.

An impressive display of approximately 175 objects from Japan’s Meiji era, a period from 1868 to 1912 that saw the confluence of traditional Japanese and Western influences, is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In response to the exhibition, Creative Minds Collaborative, under artistic director Nao Kusuzaki, has created a new dance work, Meiji Dances, which will premiere at the museum on Thursday, August 22, at 7 p.m. Kusuzaki recently told the Houston Press that “a lot of confusion in that era gets overlooked sometimes,” and that is what inspired her work. The program is included with museum admission, which on Thursdays is free. But if you’d like admission to the special exhibitions, including “Meiji Modern – Fifty Years of New Japan,” you can get a discounted, all access ticket for $10 here.

Early this year, the Houston Chronicle named Houston jazz singer Tianna Hall’s latest album, The Vintage Jukebox – which features songs from every decade of the last 100 years, from Charlie Chaplin to Bruno Mars – one of the “Houston music releases you need to hear in 2024.” On Thursday, August 22, from 7 to 9 p.m., you just might get to hear some of the songs off Hall’s album when she swings by Trebly Park to perform as part of Downtown Houston’s Sounds of the City Music Series, which brings a different local artist to the park every Thursday night in the summer. You can enjoy the show for free, but register here, and don’t forget to grab some food from one of the nearby eateries.

In Republic, Plato famously used the idea of the cave to symbolically represent how human beings experience the world versus the reality of the world. On Thursday, August 22, at 7 p.m. at the MATCH, NobleMotion Dance draws from Plato’s cave allegory in their newest work, Stalactites, to respond to the growing advances in AI technology. Co-artistic directors Andy and Dionne Noble were inspired by the visit to the United Nations AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, back in May to create this evening-length work, which will open NobleMotion’s 16th season and turn the MATCH’s theater into a futuristic, industrial cave for the performers. Stalactites will be performed again at 7 p.m. on Friday, August 23, and 7 and 9 p.m. on Saturday, August 24. Tickets can be purchased here for $35.

The longest-running and the oldest 10x10 festival in town on Thursday, August 22, at 8 p.m. when the 32nd Annual ScriptWriters/Houston 10x10 Play Festival, showcasing ten 10-minute long plays from local playwrights, opens at Theatre Suburbia. Leslie Barrera, the vice president of ScriptWriters/Houston and the festival’s artistic director, recently told the Houston Press that though “ten minutes is not a lot of time,” each play features “characters that are fully fleshed out” facing conflicts and using “their skills and their humanity to find a good resolution at the end of it. The audience is going to laugh; they're going to cry; and, in some cases, they're going to roll on the floor because it's so hilarious.” Tickets to the festival, which continues at 8 p.m. August 23 and 24, are available here for $20 to $50.
Oscar De La Rosa, the lead singer of the multi-Grammy-winning Tejano group La Mafia, will kick off the 5th Annual Mariachi Festival, a celebration of Hispanic culture, at the Wortham Theater Center on Friday, August 23, at 7 p.m. with Mariachi 7 Leguas, the University of Texas Rio Grande Ballet Folklórico, and Carolina Rodriguez. The festival, presented by Performing Arts Houston and Houston Mariachi Festival, will continue on Saturday, August 24, at 7 p.m. with all-female ensemble Mariachi Mariposas, the University of Houston’s Mariachi Pumas, the Ballet Folklórico of South Texas College, and Yasmine Dueñes. Don your traditional Mexican dresses and guayaberas for the festival’s close on Sunday, August 25, at 3 p.m. for Mariachi Imperial de America, 12-year-old Eduardo Antonio Treviño of America’s Got Talent, and México en Danzas Grupo Folklórico. Tickets are available here for $19 to $155.

The jazzy, rockabilly sounds of Phat Cat Swinger and The Wonderful World of Swing will come to Miller Outdoor Theatre on Friday, August 23, at 8:30 p.m. Marco Palos, the founder of Phat Cat Swinger, has said that the 11-piece group, formed in 2005, likes “to merge influences from original swing to modern pop,” adding that they were “in this funny place where it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what we do, other than just saying that ‘it’s really fun.’” Tickets for the covered seating area can be reserved here today, August 22, starting at 10 a.m. Of course, you can always sit on the Hill, where no ticket is required. As always, shows at Miller are free, but if you can’t make it, you can catch the livestream on the Miller Outdoor Theatre website, YouTube channel, or Facebook page.

Life on the Mekong River in Southeast Asia will be explored through music, dance, and spoken word at Miller Outdoor Theatre on Saturday, August 24, at 8 p.m. in Mekong: SOUL, produced by Apollo Chamber Players. Last year, ahead of a performance of Mekong: SOUL at Asia Society Texas, Apollo Chamber Players’ founder, Matthew Detrick, described the multi-disciplinary work to the Houston Press as “a completely new world for us from a music and aesthetic standpoint,” but that also connected to Houston “on a larger, grander, macro scale.”  You can reserve tickets to the free program, which also features Connor Walsh and Chae Eun Yang of Houston Ballet and a work by composer and Vietnam veteran J. Kimo Williams, here starting at 10 a.m. on Friday, August 23, or you can sit on the Hill – no ticket required.

Take a break from RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars – the first time RuPaul and co. have searched for a global all-star – to see the queens of the recently completed all-star season when RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars LIVE comes to 713 Music Hall on Saturday, August 24, at 8 p.m. The Lone Star State is represented by the San Antonio-born Jorgeous and Plastique Tiara from Dallas, with Roxxxy Andrews, Shannel, Vanessa Vanjie and, of course, the winner of the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, the “southern belle from ATL” Angeria Paris VanMicheals, also set to appear in the Werk Room to show Houstonians just what it takes to be an all-star queen. Tickets can be purchased here from $53 to $169.