The month of February is quickly coming to a close, but one thing that doesn’t change is the multitude of offerings from our city’s arts community. Keep reading for our picks of the best of the best over the coming week, including a fairy-tale ballet, a festival of Indian film, and much more.
It’s bad news when art gallery owner Mariana, the main character of playwright Alexis Scheer’s Laughs in Spanish, gets to work and finds that the gallery’s been robbed – all of the artwork stolen right before an international art fair that’s kind of a big deal. Scheer has said that the comedy, which opens at Stages on Thursday, February 22, at 7 p.m., is “the most unapologetically Miami-thing” she’s written, adding that the show is “about people who make art, who are surrounded by it, and are defined by it,” as well as “a play about Latinas with agency.” Performances continue at 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; and 2 p.m. Sundays through March 17. Tickets can be purchased here for $48 to $88.
On the Verge Theatre made waves last season with its production of Crystal Rae’s Tied: A One-Man Play. The one-act monologue claimed last year’s Houston Press Theater Awards for Best New Play/Production, with Jason E. Carmichael taking Best Actor for his “tour de force performance” in the role of Daniel, the father of one of the four little girls killed when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The show returns on Thursday, February 22, at 7:30 p.m., with Carmichael reprising his award-winning role, for a brief run continuing this weekend at Bering Memorial United Church of Christ. Additional performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday, February 23, and Saturday, February 24, and 3 p.m. on Sunday, February 25. Tickets can be purchased here for $25 and $35.
It’s not quite Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm – and it’s definitely not Disney – but you’ll recognize the story all the same when Stanton Welch’s Cinderella returns to the Houston Ballet on Thursday, February 22, at 7:30 p.m. Houston Ballet demi soloist Elivelton Tomazi, who will don a dress and pointe shoes to dance the roles of both of Cinderella’s stepsisters at points throughout the show’s run, recently told the Houston Press that Welch’s take on the classic fairy tale is “a different idea” and “a beautiful version,” adding that Welch has created “a deep meeting of love and friendship and family.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Friday, 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays through March 3 at the Wortham Theater Center. Tickets can be purchased here for $25 to $220.
Atul Sabharwal’s thriller Berlin, about a deaf-mute man accused of being a spy in early ‘90s New Delhi, will be the first feature film to be screened during the 16th Indian Film Festival of Houston at Asia Society Texas. The two-day-long festival, running from 4 to 9:30 p.m. on Friday, February 23, and Saturday, February 24, will include documentaries Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen, which follows the filmmaker as she visits past filming locations, and Praveen Morchhale’s Colours of Life, a follow-up to his National Film Award-winning Walking with the Wind; short films Ghost Walk and Naam (Identity), and Saturday night’s feature Kabuliwala. Single screening tickets can be purchased for $10 to $20, or you can get a Friday or Saturday day pass (including the day’s films, reception and musical performance) for $50, here.
Hear what American-ness sounds like to eight different immigrant and first-generation American composers when Aperio, Music of the Americas, welcomes Boston-based cellist Leo Eguchi to the MATCH at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 23, for Eguchi’s latest project titled Unaccompanied. The evening will see Eguchi, himself a first-generation Japanese-American, play eight new short solos, all commissioned from composers from a variety of backgrounds including from the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. Each piece will also be introduced by a short film about each of the composers. One of the solos Eguchi will perform is a world premiere from Peruvian-American pianist Gabriela Lena Frank, a Rice University alum whose name you may recognize from her time as Composer-in-Residence at the Houston Symphony. Tickets can be purchased here for $15 to $30.
The Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theater, one of the oldest political puppet troupes in the U.S., will swing by Houston on their Tiny Texas Tour this weekend, bringing their new show, The Palestine Emergency Mass, to 14 Pews on Friday, February 23, at 8 p.m. The approximately-hour-long show looks at the crisis in Palestine and is structured in eight chapters, combining both elements of a Catholic funeral mass with, of course, paper mâché puppets. Following each performance, stick around for the “bread” part of the evening – a serving of sourdough bread and garlic aioli. Additional performances are scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, February 24, and 2 and 8 p.m. Sunday, February 25. Tickets can be purchased here for $20.
Playwright Rajiv Joseph’s King James, a two-hander exploring the relationship between two basketball fans, makes its regional premiere at Rec Room Arts on Saturday, February 24, at 7:30 p.m. Philip Kershaw, who’s directing the play for Rec Room, recently told the Houston Press that the way King James “brilliantly functions is that we get these flashpoints of LeBron’s storied career through the lens of these two friends and their friendship,” adding that there’s “something really funny and insightful about the nature of male friendships in the sense that we don’t always talk about ‘the thing, the actual thing.’ We kind of talk about it through the lens of sports. And talk around it.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays through March 16. Tickets can be purchased here for $5 to $40.
When the “lost” manuscript for the “Easter Sonata” was found in 1970 – signed with the name “F Mendelssohn” – it was wrongly assumed to be the work of Felix Mendelssohn. It took a Duke University graduate student in 2010 to prove that it was, in fact, written by his sister, Fanny, herself “a virtuosic, prolific, and vastly underappreciated pianist.” The piece finally premiered under Fanny’s name on International Women’s Day in 2017, and on Saturday, February 24, at 8 p.m. DACAMERA will welcome pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason to the Wortham Theater Center to premiere the “complex four-movement piano composition” to Houston audiences. Kanneh-Mason, who is making her Houston debut, will also perform works from Joseph Haydn, Robert Schumann, and Frédéric Chopin. Tickets for the recital are available here for $41 to $71.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
