We don’t need an excuse to have a good time, but if you do, it’s Cinco de Mayo weekend. Of course, we’ve got some suggestions to help you celebrate, but we also got some a lot more in terms of music and theater to muse on over the next few days. Keep reading for our pick of best bets.
The arrival of Syrian refugees in a decaying village outside of Durham, England, in the year of Brexit serves as the source of tension in Ken Loach’s moving drama The Old Oak, which will screen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Thursday, May 2, at 7 p.m. The New York Times noted that the film is unmistakably Loach’s, saying that the director’s “late work is unmistakable, driven by fierce moral clarity and outrage on behalf of the people whom capitalism and Britain’s government, supposedly constructed for citizens’ benefit, have left behind.” But the film is also “a plea for open-hearted compassion” with a “final message of hope” that “is resolutely upbeat and desperately needed.” Additional screenings are scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, May 3, and 5 p.m. Sunday, May 5, and tickets can be purchased here for $7 to $9.
Playwright Joshua Sobol’s Ghetto, “one of his first plays — and still his most famous — examines the Holocaust through a surreal lens,” that of the people working in a theater in a Jewish ghetto in Lithuania circa 1942. On Thursday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m. a staged reading of the play will be performed at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center. Of theater and the arts, Sobol has said that “when they make a common effort and they join forces, they can change the discourse in a society…I am not exaggerating in estimating the power of theater or of art to change political trends, but you can do something.” The staged reading will also be presented on Saturday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here for $15 to $21.
Works from “one of the most significant, if not overlooked, Italian composers of the 20th century,” Ottorino Respighi, come to Jones Hall on Thursday, May 2, at 8 p.m. when the Houston Symphony performs two pieces from Respighi’s Roman Triptych during Pines of Rome + Grieg's Piano Concerto. Guest conductor Fabien Gabel will be at the podium for Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome during the concert, which will also feature pianist Alexandra Dariescu in Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto. The concert will also be performed in-hall on Saturday, May 4, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 5, at 2:30 p.m. and tickets can be purchased here for $34 to $120. The Sunday performance will also be livestreamed and access to the stream can be purchased here for $20.
It’s a tradition to celebrate Cinco de Mayo at Miller Outdoor Theatre and this year you can enjoy it with the folks behind the viral mariachi rendition of Beauty and the Beast’s “A Tale as Old as Time” sequence during Cinco de Mayo at Miller ¡Viva Mexico¡ Viva America! on Friday, May 3, at 8:15 p.m. This year’s festivities, presented in partnership with the Consulate General of Mexico in Houston, will feature performances by Ballet Folklorico de Los Angeles and Mariachi Garibaldi de Jaime Cuéllar, whose collaborative reimagining of the classic Disney moment has racked up 15 million views on Facebook since its premiere in 2017. The show is free, and you can get reserve your tickets here starting at 10 a.m. today, Thursday, May 2, or you can sit on the no-ticket-required Hill.
In Urdu, the word “rūng” means “color,” and the word lends itself to the title of Indus Arts Council’s film festival, Rūng Film Fest. The festival, which begins at the MATCH on Saturday, May 4, at 11 a.m., centers the work of Pakistani and Pakistani-American filmmakers across two days of film screenings, spread across four blocks and two grand features, and panels on topics like women in film, making films in Texas, and more. Tickets to each film block are available here for $15 (with each ticket including panel admission for both days). Tickets are also available to Ramadan America Anthology, a collection of shorts about Ramadan and Eid, for $10 and the grand features for $50.
There’s no need to stop the Cinco de Mayo party when you can continue the celebration on the Esplanade on Navigation Boulevard on Saturday, May 4, from 12 to 6 p.m. during the 2024 East End Street Fest. The festival, put on by the East End Improvement Corporation and the East End Houston Cultural District, will showcase Mexican and Chicano music, food, art and culture with more than 30 food and art vendors scheduled to be on hand, and music and dance acts playing multiple stages across the festival, including Los Skarnales, Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl, Chicano Boulevard, and more. There will also be a lowrider car collection for car lovers to appreciate. Admission to the fest is free, and you can view the full lineup, along with performance times, here.
On Tuesday, May 7, at 7:30 p.m. DACAMERA will welcome pianist Adam Tendler, the former artistic director of Houston's Foundation for Modern Music, to The Menil Collection to perform his show Inheritances. The project was conceived following the death of Tendler’s father, a point in which he used the “manila envelope full of cash” that his father left him “to commission a program of new piano works about inheritance itself.” In an essay for The New York Times, Tendler wrote that the goal of the project was to “provide a vessel through which I could connect to my elusive father, process my grief and reconcile with my past,” while also hoping “these pieces would provide a similar vessel for the composers, and ultimately that this shared experience would extend to our listeners.”
