Love the Bayou City Art Festival? Of course you do, and we do too. It’s taken the title of “Best Festival" or “Best Arts Festival” more than once in our annual Best of Houston® awards (and most recently was named Readers’ Choice just this year). This Thursday, August 20, at 6 p.m., the festival's producer, the Art Colony Association, Inc., will host their first virtual "Art Talk," a Virtual Happy Hour Series that is part of the festival's "Save Our Art" fundraising initiative. Each week for five weeks, they will welcome an artist to talk about their craft, their process, and their inspirations, along with some planned live demonstrations, auctions, prizes, and audience questions all broadcast on YouTube and Facebook. Graffiti and street artist Gonzo247 will be featured in the first hour-long installment this week, with guests Amanda Bennett, Jennifer Lashbrook, Tony Paraná, and DonkeeBoy to follow in the coming weeks. There is a suggested donation of $10 to the Bayou City Art Festival, which can be done online or by texting "SaveOurArt" to 243725.
If lockdown has somehow caused you to forget just what kind of talent Houston is home to, Stages is ready to remind you. Starting on Friday, August 21, Stages will highlight local performers each week in a new performance series called Stages Studio Sessions. The one-hour programs, which will premiere on YouTube each Friday at 7:30 p.m. and be available on demand for 48 hours, will give these local talents a chance to share a program they themselves create. Holland Vavra will lead off the series, with later installments featuring Outspoken Bean, Kelley Peters, Tamara Siler, Raven Justine Troup, LaBraska Washington, Jasminne and Lupe Mendez, and Mark Ivy. The series will run through October 11, and though it’s free, registration is required.
Speaking of Stages, don’t miss your chance to see their production of MJ Kaufman’s Sensitive Guys. The 90-minute-long, Zoom-captured performance will end its virtual run on August 23, so register today for the free streaming performance before it’s too late. And those who have already caught the performance are encouraged to join the cast and Stages Artistic Director Kenn McLaughlin for an hour-long virtual talkback on Sunday, August 23, at 6:30 p.m. It’s free, but reserve your spot here.

The escape room geniuses over at Strange Bird Immersive have set the standards high for immersive theater in Houston, and the move to virtual experiences hasn’t seemed to slow them down one bit. If you’re looking for proof, check out our recent review of their Zoom-based Tarot readings with Madame Daphne (which are still available, by the way). This Saturday, August 22, Strange Bird will open a new immersive mystery, The Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook, a 90-minute cross between online multi-player “game” and the most sophisticated murder-mystery dinner theater piece you could imagine. In it, the titular Adrian Rook, the secretary to the Raven Queen, has turned up missing, and up to eight guests will get the chance to meet and talk to six different company actors before taking a stab at solving the puzzle at the end. Tickets can be purchased here for $30, and the experience is currently scheduled to run through September 12.
Despite only a nine-show run in Vienna due to sabotage attempts from rivals, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) was popular enough that the emperor still had to limit encores just so people could eventually go home. Luckily, the opera moved away from saboteurs and to an even more receptive audience in Prague, and he followed to not only conduct a performance (maybe more) himself, but to premiere his Symphony No. 38, known as “Prague.” It’s fitting that this Saturday, August 22, at 8 p.m. the Houston Symphony will pair the Suite for Winds from Le Nozze di Figaro and Symphony No. 38 together during Live From Jones Hall: Mozart & Mazzoli. Also on the program is the composer Time Out New York dubbed “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart,” Missy Mazzoli, and her double bass concerto, Dark with Excessive Bright, a title you may recognize from Milton's Paradise Lost. Tickets to the livestream are $10 and can be purchased here.

This coming Monday, August 24, at 7 p.m. the Landing Theatre Company will present a reading of a new play set during the Agricultural Revolution, The Seed Becomes by Mik C. Moats, as part of Landing Local: New Works Initiatives. Bree Bridger will direct a cast that includes Rachel Cendrick, Amy Guerin, Golbanoo Setayesh, Herut Ashkenazi, Jordan Tannous, Guy Cohen, Hannah Fadal, and Mohammad Rashid. You can register here, and remember that this is a developmental reading series with the goal of giving playwrights feedback, so be sure to complete the audience feedback survey after the reading.