Today is International Skeptics Day, and if you have any doubt that the coming week will be anything but entertaining, let us reassure you. On this week’s list of best bets, you’ll find film festivals, new music and old masterworks, ghosts and sea creatures. Keep reading for more on what you should be checking out over the next seven days.
Ever conducted the Bechdel Test on a film? It checks whether or not a movie has at least two named female characters who talk to each other about anything other than a man. Unsurprisingly, many films fail, but try the ones you’ll find at this weekend’s Bechdel Film Festival. The festival, founded by Cressandra Thibodeaux, opens Friday, October 14, at 6:30 p.m. with a screening of A Woman on the Outside, directed by Zara Katz and Lisa Riordan Seville. Programming on Saturday, October 15, begins at 3 p.m. with a workshop screening, followed by two blocks of shorts at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., a free happy hour and panel discussion at 8 p.m., and ends at 9 p.m. with Jenny Waldo’s feature debut, Acid Test. Sunday, October 16, starts at 1 p.m. with a third block of shorts and ends at 8 p.m. with a closing party at Lei Low. Between will be three films (each followed by a talkback): Musher at 2:30 p.m., Moondogs at 4 p.m. and Larry Flynt for President at 6 p.m. Screenings will be held at 14 Pews and tickets can be purchased for each here for $10.
Join MFAH Films, Rice Cinema, and Asia Society Texas Center over the next week to celebrate the chivalrous heroes of mythic proportions that populate Taiwan’s wuxia genre during Wuxia Cinema: The Magic of Martial Arts. The series begins at Rice Cinema on Friday, October 14, at 7 p.m. with The Assassin, followed by a double feature of Vengeance of the Phoenix Sisters at 7 p.m. and A City Called Dragon at 9 p.m. on Saturday, October 15. On Tuesday, October 18, Asia Society Texas Center hosts the centerpiece reception at 6 p.m. and a screening of King Hu’s Dragon Inn at 7 p.m. The “often-imitated” film, with “awe-inspiring wide-angle camerawork and graceful, still-unpredictable action scenes,” cemented Hu as “one of Chinese cinema’s most audacious innovators.” The series concludes with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on Friday, October 21, at 7 p.m. and A Touch of Zen on Sunday, October 23, at 2 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. All screenings are free, but you have to register for the films at Asia Society Texas Center and the MFAH.
Get into the Halloween spirit over at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Friday, October 14, at 7:30 p.m. when the Houston Symphony stops by with Hocus Pocus Pops. Give your Halloween costume a trial run at the family friendly show, or get some ideas from the Goblin Parade, and enjoy the surprise seasonally appropriate set list. To get an idea of what you might here, past programs have included classics such as the Hexenritt (Witch’s Ride) from Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (famous for its use in Fantasia), as well as music from popular films, television shows and Broadway shows, including Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The X-Files, and Wicked. Orchestra seating is available here for $25, and lawn and mezzanine seating is free.
If you happen to watch America’s Got Talent, you probably remember DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion, whose intense choreography on and around a 3,000 pound wooden boat, prompted Simon Cowell to say, “This is something I will remember. It was incredible.” At 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 14, and Saturday, October 15, DIAVOLO will return to Houston, courtesy of Performing Arts Houston, for a two-night stint at Jones Hall. DIAVOLO is bringing the boat, a part of their work Trajectoire, and will present the Houston premiere of S.O.S. Signs of Strength, a product of their Veterans Project which features military veterans and civilian performers in the cast. Tickets to the performances can be purchased here for $16.29 to $119. Retired and active military and their families should look out for a special discount. Also, at the Friday performance, DIAVOLO artistic director and choreographer Jacques Heim will be awarded the U.S. Army’s Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, and after you can join the opening night party and mingle with members of DIAVOLO as well as enjoy cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and an on-stage tour of the set. Tickets for the party are available for $100.
Over in Studio 101 on Spring Street, you will find a séance of sorts as 4th Wall Theatre Company opens Lucas Hnath’s The Thin Place on Friday, October 14, at 7:30 p.m. The New York Times says the one-act play “keeps on haunting because it presses against the deepest human longings not only for connection but also for exposure. We want to know what’s out there, yes, but we also want it to know us.” 4th Wall Artistic Director Philip Lehl, who will be directing the production as well as acting in it, recently told the Houston Press that though “it’s not a horror play,” he finds it deeply affecting. “Will you scream? I doubt it,” says Lehl. “Will you start to feel uneasy? I bet you $100 you will. It puts people in the thin place where you start to feel that ghosts or spirits could be with us.” Performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays (with a pay-what-you-can industry night on Monday, October 30) through November 5. Tickets can be purchased here for $17 to $53.
An older married couple facing the prospect of another of life’s chapters together – retirement – encounter a younger couple just starting out who happen to also be human-size reptilian sea creatures. Yes, it’s Edward Albee’s “happiest play, perhaps his only happy play,” the 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning Seascape, which the Alley Theatre will open on Friday, October 14, at 8 p.m. Exploring “some of the playwright’s signature themes in an unusually whimsical mode, albeit with typically sharp-edged wit and intelligence,” Albee’s “cosmic riddle of a play” is about “transition and evolution — both of the marital and Darwinian variety.” Performances are scheduled for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2:30 and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. through November 13. Tickets are available here for $51 to $74.
Musiqa looks to the future of concert music when it kicks off its 21st season at The MATCH on Friday, October 14, at 7:30 p.m. with New Voices, a program of three Musiqa-commissioned world premieres from three emerging composers: Flannery Cunningham, Will Healy, and Benjamin Horne. Both Cunningham and Healy are winners of Musiqa’s inaugural Emerging Composer Commission program, and Horne is the winner of the Cross-Country Chamber Consortium’s first Emerging Black, Latinx and Indigenous Composer Commission. In addition, Musiqa has commissioned poet J. Estanislao Lopez to create new poetry inspired by the themes present in the composers’ works. The program repeats at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 15, and tickets can be purchased for either performance here. Tickets are pay-what-you-can with a suggested price of $35.
Hand over your attention to a filmmaking master on Saturday, October 15, when the Indian Film Festival of Houston and Asia Society Texas Center present the 14th Indian Film Festival of Houston: Celebrating the Work of Satyajit Ray. The festival will begin at 4 p.m. with welcoming remarks followed by a screening of Charulata at 4:10 p.m. In Ray’s 1964 film, about a lonely wife who finds herself drawn to her husband’s visiting cousin, you’ll find “the effortless fluency and gaiety of a Shakespearean comedy.” After a reception at 6:30 p.m. with live music and food by Verandah, audiences will be treated to Ray’s 1977 film Shatranj Ke Khilari at 7:30 p.m. The “farcical film” is “implicitly political,” showcasing “Ray’s subtle use of chess as a metaphor parallels the cunning moves by the British to capture the King” on the “eve of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.” Tickets can be purchased here. It’s $20 for a single screening or $50 for a day pass, which includes both screenings, the reception, and musical performance.
Celebrate the tricentennial year of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, a “two-volume set of preludes and fugues written in each of the 24 musical keys, rising two-by-two through each of them, from C major to B minor.” It’s been said that the Well-Tempered Clavier offers “something like an architectural experience,” where “you wander through Bach’s arches, the keys catching and coloring the light,” and who better to lead you through such an experience than Jeremy Denk. DA CAMERA welcomes the pianist – recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant, winner of the Avery Fisher Prize, and claimer of the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s classical chart – at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, October 17, and Tuesday, October 18, to The Menil Collection. Denk will play Book 1, BWV 846-869 during each performance and tickets are available for $60.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
