Like our Best Actress choice, Ricky Waugh took on the challenge of more than one character in Mosaic's difficult antiwar drama; like Bridge and Tunnel, it's a clear showcase role. Waugh made a seamless transition between two characters — a jocular gay actor and his estranged twin brother, an Iraq War soldier with a demeanor as serious as an IED. Each character has the complexity of multiple people, and Waugh's transformation from one to the other and back again was miraculous in its dedication to realism. As Craig, the troubled soldier, Waugh needed few lines of dialogue to transmit his emotions. The monstrous glare from his eyes pierced through us like a bayonet, and his twitchy upper lip suggested a fount of instability that no wife, even one as patient as costar Erin Joy Schmidt, could alleviate.
The term Renaissance man was invented to describe guys who have so much more going on than the rest of us. Guys so engaged with the world around them that you wonder how they do it all with just 24 hours a day. Guys like Timothy Leistner. Sometimes it seems the Toledo-born Leistner has a finger in every pie. He has a wall full of degrees, including a bachelor's from Ohio University and a master's and a doctorate from Nova Southeastern University, all put to use in his current job teaching at United Cerebral Palsy. He has also taught art privately and currently teaches evenings at the university level, and he recently collaborated with another artist on a series of storytelling workshops for children. When he's not teaching, he's participating in exhibitions from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Pierce, racking up awards in the process. Even when his own work — oil and acrylic paintings, watercolors, mixed-media sculptures, and photography — isn't included in a given show (which is rare), he shows up at openings in support of his fellow artists, many of whom he mentors. Did we mention that he has his own little commercial gallery in Dania Beach, the better to showcase artists he believes in? Hey, ease up, Tim; you're making the rest of us look like slackers.
The Caldwell's Clybourne Park cast was an embarrassment of riches, chockablock with so much A-list local talent that it almost didn't know what to do with all of it. The play looked at the shifting tides of racism in two acts separated by a generation of time, a conceit that gave the seven-piece cast 14 characters to portray. The ensemble included Gregg Weiner, imposing as ever as a bespectacled, overtly racist stuffed suit turned frustrated Everyman; Cliff Burgess as a boisterous reverend turned gay realtor; Margery Lowe as a deaf-mute housewife turned politically correct liberal mouthpiece; Karen Stephens as an obedient housemaid turned homeowner in "postracial" America; and Kenneth Kay as an American Dream-embodying 1950s nuclear dad turned modern-day construction worker. In a play about hidden bigotry and racial discord, the cast was nothing less than unified, harmonious in their characters' un-P.C. squabbles.
Who is Elvire Emanuelle? The young Virginia Commonwealth University grad who studied acting with Richard Zavaglia stunned audiences at the Women's Theatre Project, more than holding her own against South Florida acting heavyweights such as Lela Elam and Karen Stephens. Set against the ruthless backdrop of Liberian civil war, Emanuelle portrayed a 15-year-old captive — the initially helpless fourth "wife" of a rebel officer — who develops the capacity to kill, over the play's grim and exhausting duration. Her character is the crux of the play's unsettling commentary on the human capacity for violence, and her transformation brings the playwright's frightening ideas to vivid fruition.
The Mosaic Theatre turned 10 this past season, and what a birthday celebration it's been. In early 2010, the theater suffered a rare misfire in the form of the musical Make Me a Song: The Music of William Finn. Since then, it has been one winner after another, like Dying City, the South African diamond-diving drama Groundswell, the energetic and absurdist hilarity of Completely Hollywood, the witty and moving award contender Collected Stories, and the uproarious ensemble piece The Irish Curse. The latter broke attendance records for the theater and prompted the playwright, Martin Casella, to book a flight down here to see it. With Dusk Rings a Bell, the latest from The Laramie Project's Stephen Belber, and Sam Shepard's newest work Ages of the Moon this summer, Broward County's most provocative theater shows no signs of resting.
When Christopher Shinn's Dying City — a difficult and sobering triangle among the widow of an Iraq War veteran, the dead soldier himself, and the soldier's identical twin brother — debuted at Mosaic Theatre last spring, audiences and critics were divided over the source material. It wasn't exactly a fun, joyous night at the theater, and some found the material heavy-handed. But there was something of a consensus when it came to the production itself, which artistic director Richard Jay Simon handled with tenderness, sensitivity, and palm-sweating intensity. Erin Joy Schmidt and Ricky Waugh both spelunked their characters to previously unseen dramatic depths, and Mosaic's technical team created authentic ambiance all around the elegant set.
That Motherhood: The Musical actually stood out as the best musical in Broward or Palm Beach counties over the past 12 months is a genuine shocker. On paper, it's hardly impressive; it's produced by the same team that gave us Menopause: The Musical, and the play's references are as dated as the jokes are corny. But the production was Broadway-ready, with top-shelf lighting, sound design, and props presented with effortless aplomb. The songs were belted out with such gusto by the outstanding four-piece "momsemble" that you could overlook the fact that they were about Costco and "leaking."
Here was a set that said a lot by saying very little. Mosaic is best-known for its sprawling set designs, like the ones for Dead Man's Cell Phone and Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. These are tours de force of horizontal continuity that stretch across multiple locations. In its compact confinement, Collected Stories couldn't be more opposite. The majority of the work takes place in a cramped Greenwich Village apartment beginning in the 1980s. Douglas Grinn evokes this setting with loving accuracy, down to such quotidian details as the type of magazines that would rest atop the coffee table and the squeaky, perpetually jammed windows, to which anyone who has ever lived in the Village — which no doubt includes many South Florida theatergoers — can relate. You could practically reach out and feel the dust clinging to the letter-bound tomes stuffing the living room's bookshelves. All of this combined to exude a romantic feeling, appropriate for a play set in what was, for writers both aspiring and established, very much a romantic place at a romantic time.
It's rare to find two artists whose styles are as in tune as Jan Kolenda and Bob Bagley's, and it's rarer still to run across a museum show that plays them off each other as well as this joint exhibition at the Coral Springs Museum. Kolenda works with clay. Bagley is a woodworker. Each had segments of the exhibition devoted to his or her own work, along with a handful of pieces the two artists collaborated on. The marvel, though, is that the works mingled as freely as if they had sprung from the same sensibility — one that prizes the organic over the inorganic, form over function, beauty over practicality.
Photography is all about capturing the moment, and no show this year captured its cultural moment as well as this collection of photographs from 1956. That's when a beautiful young man named Elvis Presley was just two years into his soon-to-be tumultuous career and poised to change American pop forever. Alfred Wertheimer was a young photographer-for-hire who had never even heard of Elvis when he spent two brief periods with the singer. But the lensman's instincts were such that his hungry eye was able to catch images that resonate to this day. The exhibition was full of privileged moments filtered through a photographer who knew he was onto something, such as the justly famous image of the singer kissing a young woman he had just met in a hotel diner. The show let us bask in the idea of Elvis as an avatar of potential — Elvis caught in the process of becoming himself.
The best photographers succeed at freezing highly specific instants — arresting the flow of time and isolating fragments that refine and define it. Richard Avedon, who was one of the best of the best, defined whole eras of our visual culture through his camera lens. This retrospective at the Norton included more than 150 photographs he took for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and the New Yorker (where he was, amazingly, the first staff photographer). The focus may be fashion, but the exhibition and its hefty catalog handily transcend that rarefied world to preserve glimpses of crystallized history. Starting on location in the 1950s and later moving into the studio environment, Avedon rightly realized that fashion isn't just about the clothes; it's about the personalities that inhabit them, and over the course of decades, he mastered the art of distilling personality to its ineffable essence.
It could be said that we have two seasons in Florida — Hurricane Season and Not Hurricane Season. But that would be leaving out an important time of year: Festival Season. Our great festivals include the likes of SunFest, Beerfest, and Garlic Fest, but the art festivals have never been highlights. Stitch Rock set out to change that. With crafts that would give Grandma fits — made by tattooed grrls who would give her nightmares — Stitch Rock provides a venue for the next generation of crafters. Indie shoppers form a line around the Old School Square in Delray Beach hoping to get a free door prize. For the unlucky ones, the vintage goods, upcycled crafts, and gourmet cupcakes make everything OK again. And although it may be only 4 years old, Stitch Rock is already a Festival Season fixture, with the fifth installment already scheduled for October 1.
History joined forces with art to make this show at the Norton more than just a bunch of paintings. The 40 works included were part of the enormous collection of Jacques Goudstikker, a prosperous Dutch dealer whose inventory was confiscated during World War II by Nazis under second-in-command Hermann Göring. Among Goudstikker's specialties were works from the Italian Renaissance, early Dutch and German paintings, Dutch and Flemish paintings from the 17th Century, French and Italian rococo works, and 19th-century northern European paintings. It took more than half a century for a fraction of the looted art to be returned to the dealer's estate, and fortunately works by such masters as Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob van Ruisdael survived to become part of Goudstikker's Hollywood-worthy adventure story.
A great museum must perform a delicate balancing act of satisfying the public while also expanding and enhancing that same public's cultural literacy. The Boca Museum has long done an exceptionally fine job of giving the public both what it wants and what it doesn't even know it needs. That has especially been true under the leadership of Executive Director George S. Bolge, who is leaving this summer after roughly 16 years at the museum. During his tenure, Bolge has programmed his share of crowd pleasers, including artists as disparate as Picasso, Duane Hanson, and Purvis Young. But he has invariably emphasized less-familiar artists as well. In the past year alone, he has paired an exhibition of Alfred Wertheimer's photographs of Elvis Presley at 21 with a retrospective of relatively obscure American painter Stanley Boxer; coupled a blockbuster M.C. Escher show with a much smaller one focusing on impressionist Mary Cassatt's works on paper; and juxtaposed Italian artist Valerio Adami with well-known American photorealist painter Robert Cottingham. Most recently, he coupled a flashy "CUT! Costume and the Cinema" show with a horizon-expanding look at California impressionism. Let's hope the museum carries on the great tradition he established.
Approached individually, either one of these two ambitious surveys of Latin American art would be a force to reckon with. Seen together as essentially one big show, which is how the museum presented them, they achieved even greater breadth and depth. The breadth came from the historical context provided by the Goodmans' collection, here represented by 74 works by 46 artists. Dr. and Mrs. Goodman have been seriously collecting Latin American art for roughly two decades; their abundant taste and discernment are evident in the choices they've made, from great Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros to such surrealist masters as Cuban Wifredo Lam and Chilean Roberto Matta. The smaller, ostensibly secondary show of 56 works by 41 artists, assembled by in-house curator Jorge Hilker Santis from the museum's sizable permanent collection, provided depth as well as an emphasis on more contemporary work. As a sweeping study in contrasts and comparisons, the two exhibitions constituted an unbeatable combination.
For starters, there were no actual paintings in this daring little show at the equally daring little downtown Fort Lauderdale gallery known as Girls' Club. Instead, Frances Trombly's installation, which takes up the gallery's entire first-floor display space, is a suite of pieces designed to make us think about painting. Each of the linked works is a blank "canvas" made of hand-stitched fabric and either placed face-down on the floor or propped against a wall, back to us. Like a Zen koan, the title "Frances Trombly: Paintings" is meant to jar us onto another plane of awareness, where we start thinking about (and questioning) our ideas about what constitutes art and what does not.
It's lively, it happens every month, and you've probably never heard of it. When you're done explaining to your skeptical friends what FAT stands for (Flagler Arts and Technology — any questions?), stop by the intersection of NW Fifth Street and NW First Avenue and get ready to explore the Wild West of the Florida art world. Gawk at the scale of the Project Lofts, which houses big-name temporary exhibitions; release your inner child at the Puppet Network headquarters across the street. Get your yipster-bobo thrills at Collide Factory (at First and Sistrunk), where lively music and art meets a Google-cool office environment. Two black-box theaters within clapping distance premiere new shows. Even the neighborhood holdouts get in on the action: Paul Fioretti at South Florida Window Lift (First and Fifth) shows off the sculptures he welds from discarded machine parts. When you're done, head to Maguires for a heady pint and talk about what that looping video of a screaming naked man really meant.
Once a year, renowned artists crouch down on the asphalt alongside high school kids and amateurs, everyone covered in chalk and happily sunburned. The streets of downtown Lake Worth are filled with crowds guzzling funnel cake and beer, watching wide-eyed as the painters coax magic from the pavement. While admiring the brilliant artwork, you might also spot belly-dancing hippies, a musician playing a hand saw, kids in strollers, and anarchists sipping kava. Welcome to the glory that is Lake Worth.
After a considerable number of personnel shakeups behind the scenes during its two years in business, Lake Worth's Propaganda has managed to keep its footing and its finger on the pulse. The legendary South Florida emocore act Further Seems Forever chose the spot to host its first show in six years, and countless local acts have relied on the tried-and-true sound in the room to show off their best live traits on a stage that's visible from every vantage point. With a new emphasis on craft beers, the dark and smoky room can easily stake a claim to an environment just as refined for drinking as it is for listening.
The Bamboo Room closed in '08, and we lost a live-music venue that felt more like a neighborhood watering hole. Luckily, the once-beloved club returned in February, and again we have a music venue with no groupies blocking our view of the stage and no clouds of smoke choking the air. A high, peaked ceiling with wooden beams makes the place feel spacious and airy. There's a generous bar in the back, with Cheers-style chandeliers and a mounted deer head on the wall. Roughly 50 tables provide comfortable seats while allowing plenty of room to dance on the varnished pine floor. Outside, a narrow deck is lit with colored paper lanterns, and palm trees lean their leafy branches over the rails. On stage, pink and blue lights illuminate exposed brick. A painted city skyline evokes memories of Chicago or maybe Detroit. When the guitar begins to wail, remember how much we've been missing the blues.
Nothing much musical happens in December, so the off-kilter rock festival Zitfest was a fantastic diversion from the local winter blahs. Conceived and organized by members of Lake Worth experimental trio the Jameses, 17 local bands filled two long days with punk attitude, PBR, and camaraderie for a tidy $12 ticket. Lake Park's the Orange Door normally hosts blues acts, but the weekend glut of garage rock, postpunk, and experimental tunes from South Florida (and beyond) proved to be a zesty enterprise for area music fans on any budget. Are smiles good for the complexion?
Just like those jiggling blobs of fat hanging off countless lower backs, an initial grip is all it takes to seize onto Lake Worth's psychedelic punk act Love Handles. With Faith, Hope & Love Handles, vocalist/guitarist C.J. Jankow and drummer/keyboardist Jordan Pettingill focus their unpredictable live antics into an even-keel collection of two-minute slacker devotionals. Leading the album's stomp through South Florida enclosures with no air conditioning but great acoustics is the call and response of "Take It." All in all, it's a record raw and rousing enough to shake a few pounds off that sagging midsection.
In terms of decibels, sweat, and determination, Lavola's got South Florida by the balls. Led by Julian Cires' soaring, unparalleled vocals and similarly acrobatic guitar work, the trio provides a sonically complex experience on par with the Mars Volta and occasionally even Radiohead. Ably filled out with bassist Matt Hanser and drummer Brian Weinthal, this is a group that's always on the brink of complete thudding and screeching chaos, but it never loses the handle. Each one of its EPs — Black Sea of Trees, Live at Propaganda, and Leaving Paris — has proved to be better than the last.
Between the free wine, the lurid red lobby atmosphere, and the scandalous, nudity-filled programming, there was always something potentially dangerous about Fort Lauderdale's Sol Theatre; it was a venue whose shock potential was limitless. Before its 2010 closure, the playhouse serviced an edgy LGBT audience, and Empire Stage, which launched its first show in the former Sol space in January 2010, has maintained Sol's beloved ambiance while improving on some of its deficiencies. Since taking over the Flagler Drive hole-in-the-wall, artistic director and New York-based bartender and actor David Gordon has installed a better lighting system and finally fixed the leaky roof. You can still pour yourself some free wine, collapse into the comfortable couch seating, and see envelope-pushing fare you won't find anywhere else, including the gay-pornography comedy Making Porn, the campy favorite He's Coming Up the Stairs!, and the offbeat dramedy Sex and Violence. "We are interested in making people laugh," Gordon says about his theater's mission. "We're not looking to do heavy dramas; it's most fun as an actor to be onstage while people are laughing."
Having helmed one of the hippest dance floors in Palm Beach County, Flaunt Thursdays at Respectable Street, "Marvelous" Kendall Courtney has built up considerable favor among discerning indie electro fans. This turntable whiz can go lowbrow too, though; on Friday nights, he DJs to suburbanites in an open-format style at Margate sports bar O'Malley's. Marvelous Kendall knows no bounds, easily transitioning from a deep pulsating Chromeo remix into a funky take of the Outfield's arena-rock classic "Your Love" with ease — all without a touch of irony to boot. At one point this year, this mishmash mastermind was behind the decks at four different debauched parties — no small feat and many a hangover, we imagine. Although some of those nights have gone by the wayside and others — i.e., "Flaunt" — will probably remain until oblivion, Marvelous Kendall keeps on with his prodigious beat skills. The talented DJ has big plans for the summer, we hear.
It recently inked a two-year deal with Ocean Front Records — a former subsidiary of influential soul label Motown Records — and now, the all-girl group the New stands to be one of South Florida's breakout stars. This half Broward/half Miami-Dade band's potential success owes a lot to lead vocalist and guitarist Lori Garrote. Many would say she is the principal reason the New might just be the newest thing on everybody's lips in 2011. Garrote has a delivery that is deliciously inviting, a subtle snarl that verifies, "Yeah, I'm punk rock gal" while somehow still conveying a confectionery-schoolgirl bubblegum-pop sensibility. Garrote is the perfect union of Bikini Kill and Michelle Branch — if ever such an inexplicable union of disparate worlds could exist. Over the group's chunky Breeders-esque riffs, Garrote's voice is an irresistible force. To add fuel to the fire, Garrote possesses an alluring pout that harks back to the Bangles' sexpot, Susanna Hoffs, and the composure of someone twice her age. She is, in essence, an A&R rep's dream.
Julian Cires, lead singer for cacophonous Northern Palm Beach three-piece Lavola, possesses the kind of vocals that command attention. He has dexterity in range, for one, taking his voice on adventurous turns that vacillate from ear-piercing howls one minute to soothing, velvety coos the next. Cires, a rather handsome Latin man, can also take his delivery in intriguing androgynous directions. He has Aimee Mann and Björk listed as influences on his band's profile page, and his more effeminate vocal skills are evident on the more tender dips in his trio's sonic roller coaster. Thom Yorke and his haunting and bewitching voice, however, is Cires' number-one inspiration.
After a few years of relative quiet from the Lake Worth singer/songwriter, it's a relief to hear that John Ralston can still fill a single tenor note with vulnerability and hope, glee and introspection, or wisdom and bitterness. His latest album, Shadows of the Summertime, proves to be one of the finest alt-country/roots collections the area has ever heard, and above all, it's his relaxed vocal style — a tad like Tom Petty, a smidge of Jeff Tweedy, but mostly just uniquely Ralston — that makes it definitive. His recent recordings with Invisible Music show an equal amount of polish, so he might not only be the best vocalist but the hardest-working one as well.
Is it possible to make music that sounds like the craziest party a coral reef has ever seen? Sumsun sure thinks so. With keyboards, samples, and a dash of guitar, Judson Rogers builds vivid soundscapes that are perfect for daydreaming, slow-dancing, and providing the background for creative endeavors. Samo Milagro is the official document of Rogers' musical endeavors, but a steady stream of remixes of other artists' songs — ANR, Sleigh Bells, and Guy Harvey among them — shows he's listening to as much music as he's creating.
With a pack of backup musicians or just as a pair, Wellington's Anthony and Zachary Dewar have never fallen into old habits as a live folk-rock act. Can a pair of twins barely into their 20s really have old habits yet? The charismatic brothers tear through originals like "The Noise Boys" and "Sunshine" with considerable aplomb and even throw in an occasional Leonard Cohen cover. Sardonic banter, outlandish thrift-store fashion, and sweet harmonies dot every appearance — no two are alike. They're entertaining enough that Surfer Blood even brought them out on the road.
Quirky West Palm Beach indie group the Clementines embodied everything we loved about postpunk rock. Tracks like the bubbly "Chandelier" and the shimmering "Everything Will Be Okay" had us salivating, yearning for the atmospheric glory of '80s British dream-pop bands like the Chameleons and Echo and the Bunnymen. These songs captured a melancholic and nostalgic feel that was far removed for the band's sunny, palm-tree-laden home of West Palm Beach. The quartet's bouncy, organ-led tracks exhibited a lot of dazzling indie-rock promise, we thought; we gave them many a kudo on our blog pages. Alas, we were saddened to hear the news that the four members decided to go their separate ways at the start of the year. There is a flicker of hope at the end of this tunnel, however; the group's lead vocalist, guitarist, and keyboardist, Andrew Marr, is keeping the bittersweet-pop torch alive with another project he is calling Ski Lodge. He's traipsing similar terrain as his defunct four-piece and will be unveiling many unreleased Clementines songs with this new unit.
Boy, did the Broward County Commission need a bona fide Republican on the dais to offset the controlling — and incredibly corrupt — local Democratic Party. LaMarca, after defeating sitting Broward Mayor Ken Keechl, has played that role, questioning spending and pet projects. His defining moment came after Commissioner Ilene Lieberman missed numerous meetings (after apparently suffering a nervous breakdown while cooperating in a state corruption investigation against some of her former friends). While the public clamored for answers, the commission was silent — except for LaMarca. During one meeting, he had the guts to question what should be done about the AWOL commish. When he did so, Democrat Stacy Ritter, who for good reason is a target of the corruption investigation, gave LaMarca a stare as icy as a Chicago blizzard, and the other commissioners began tripping over themselves trying to defend Lieberman's inexcusable absences. Guess what happened the following week? Lieberman finally showed up at a meeting — and many credited LaMarca with giving her the push she needed to get back to work.
Enter any discussion about Hallandale Beach's city government and you'll find yourself surrounded by bickering. Taxes are going up and parks are going to ruin while the city manager makes a cool half-million a year. Mayor Joy Cooper is a polarizing figure, to put it nicely (she's one of the loudest boosters for red-light cameras), and Commissioner Keith London seems bent on making her life hell. Into all this enters Mike Butler, a soft-spoken, well-tanned resident who looks like he wandered off a yacht and into City Hall, where he relentlessly questions the city's business deals and posts damning information on his blog. "Mike Butler doesn't shoot from the hip; he shoots the facts," quips London, who often circulates Butler's posts at City Commission meetings. He doesn't look like your typical gadfly, and he doesn't shout like your typical Hallandalian. Which is, all in all, for the best.
What are activists if not simply the kinds of public citizens demanded of any good democracy? In a perfect world, all of us would be watching our local governments — and discovering their outrageous shenanigans. But it's amazing the kind of impact one good activist can have on a place. Look at Cal Deal in Fort Lauderdale. The graphics editor and former newspaperman keeps an eagle eye not only on local politicians but on every aspect of his city. When a road construction project unfairly hurt a neighborhood florist, it was Deal who stepped up to get the lackadaisical city officials to help her out. When a prescription pill mill was opened in his Fort Lauderdale neighborhood by a former heroin trafficker, it was Deal who got out his trusty camera and documented the comings and goings. And it was Deal who pointed out that the taxpayer-financed North Broward Hospital District actually gave the pill mill some extra parking spaces to use. In the end, the hospital district finally rescinded the spaces due to Deal's diligence. But it's not just the ugliness of Broward County that attracts Deal but its beauty as well. When the so-called "super moon" rose over the ocean, it was Deal sharing stunning photos of the event with media members and the public. And that's the key to understanding Cal Deal — he's just a guy who cares enough about the place he lives to do something about it.
Opening a new art gallery in South Florida might be likened to throwing yourself into a shark-filled tank — the odds are against you. Which makes what Jeremiah Jenner has done even more remarkable. First the photographer survived a lengthy waiting list to snag his own space at Fort Lauderdale's Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts. But instead of using that space as both studio and residence, the way his neighbors do, Jenner did something more daring, as in opening his own little gallery. And with just a handful of shows under his belt, he has established himself as a force to be reckoned with locally. Topnotch artists contribute to his exhibitions, which he hangs with as much attention to detail as any of his competition. And perhaps best of all, Jenner has resisted what must be an enormous temptation to make the gallery a showcase for his own work, instead focusing on attracting and nurturing as many artists as he can.
Too often, the single-actor, multicharacter show is a compromised novelty, inherently restricted by the limitations of both the performer — who can't handle the enormity of the undertaking — and the playwright, who doesn't spend enough time on each character to develop him or her in three dimensions. Sarah Jones' Bridge and Tunnel shattered both of these preconceived notions in its short run at the Women's Theatre Project. Karen Stephens was a revelation, portraying 14 characters inhabiting New York City's diverse melting pot. She played men and women, blacks and whites, Jews and Muslims, elderly yentas and aspiring rappers, all brought together under the creative auspices of an open-mic poetry night. Each of Stephens' avatars spoke, dressed, and emoted with the utmost authenticity, hoisting the bar for how successful these otherwise-gimmicky shows can be.
She plays often — but not often enough — at the National Lampoon Underground Comedy Club and at the Fort Lauderdale Improv. And she regularly gets more laughs than the touring headliners. "This is cozy," Jessica Gross recently told an audience at National Lampoon's. "I feel like we're on an awkward, uncomfortable orgy-date... where people come to talk about their problems onstage." Jessica is sweet in that unassuming-but-still-might-shank-you sort of way. And she's pretty: nearly six feet tall, with dark hair cropped at her shoulder; smart, rectangular-framed glasses; and usually some sort of brightly colored attire. But her jokes pack a brutal, hilarious punch. She moves graciously from the topic of midgets to poop to UTIs. She can make a frat boy blush and a grown woman shoot cranberry and vodka out of her nose. She also has her own web series, The Adventures of a Sexual Miscreant. If you enjoy laughing even when you think you probably shouldn't, it's definitely worth checking out.
The public bathroom is rarely a place to marvel. This one, however, has been modernized to fit its museum location. The sinks are sleek steel faucets that drip water onto a slab of pearly white marble. The water then disappears into an invisible drain, much like a water fountain. The bathroom walls and floors are made out of Formica, and the toilets flush themselves. At the far end of the bathroom is a frosty glass door, but it's suspected that it is not a magical portal, though it is a little mesmerizing.
Mark Twain once said that when your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. That might serve as a credo for Art and Culture Center curator Jane Hart. Like most of her counterparts at other museums and galleries, Hart keeps a low profile. You won't find her name plastered on the wall at the entrance to the shows she puts together, although you will find her slipping quietly in and out of exhibitions, receptions, and other art-related events all over South Florida, keeping her finger on the pulse of the artistic community she both serves and observes. She's easily the most adventurous curator on the scene at the moment, pulling in such challenging figures as Croatian artist Sinisa Kukec, Turkish-American Stephan Turgel, and regional artists like Michelle Weinberg, Louise Erhard, and Cristina Lei Rodriguez. She's also a pivotal player in the center's big annual fundraising raffle, "Abracadabra," which this year she staged with great flair in collaboration with Miami gallery owner Anthony Spinello.
Richard Jay Simon directs most plays at Mosaic, but this stellar work about two ambitious, jealous, female frenemies required the directorial hand of the fairer sex. So Simon called upon Margaret Ledford, resident director at Davie's Promethean Theatre, to helm this stunner, heralded by most area critics as one of the best productions of the year. Barbara Bradshaw, as the play's aging author and literature professor whose young protégé covertly mines her life for material, could probably read an entire Senate bill and make it compelling. But Ledford deserves credit for maintaining interest in every second of this play, from the way the two performers carried themselves to the silences between exchanges to the subtlest character-building gestures. That she can go from her last work, the hectic and ridiculous Cannibal! The Musical, to an intimate chamber piece such as this is a testament to one of the community's most unsung talents.
Michael McKeever earned the Caldwell Theatre's sole award nomination in the Carbonell, the local yearly awards for theater. And for good reason. In an imperfect supporting cast — some of whom phoned in their performances — McKeever was the anchor of the unsteady ensemble. Like many in the cast, he played multiple parts, all of them doctors, all of them convincing, all of them chattering through obtuse psychological and medical jargon with convincing, Kafkaesque absurdity. His pièce de résistance, and the highlight of the entire show, occurs when one of his doctor characters removes his hairpiece and breaks the fourth wall, addressing the audience about his personal history with attention-deficit disorder. "He really does have ADD," a woman in the audience whispered. McKeever doesn't, though — he's just that good an actor.
In October, the Broward County Historical Commission got a new sign on the front of its newly renovated home at the old West Side School. That same week, the County Commission finalized a budget that axed its funding, laid off its staff, and consolidated it with the county libraries. Fortunately, the commission's museum stayed open: Exhibits highlight photographs and maps from when Broward was mostly swampland, and extensive archives are guarded by a state-of-the-art waterless sprinkler system. The thought of Broward County doesn't usually evoke much of an idea of "history," unless you mean "recent history of corruption." But the real history is accessible, at least for now.
If you try to learn Buddhism on your own, even the most basic information can get complicated. Your mind and body are not one. Your mind and body are not two. They are both one and two — "nonduality." What you need is a teacher, a person guiding you to enlightenment. Tubten Kunga Center for Wisdom Culture and the Study of Tibetan Buddhism offers the following classes: "Overview of the Buddhist Path, Mind and Awareness (Lo Rik)," "Buddhism for Beginners" (yay!), "Introduction to Meditation" (here we go!), "Tara Puja," "Medicine Buddha Puja" (think the Healing Buddha), "Lama Choepa Tsog," "Purification Practice" (nice!). You sit down in a cozy room full of gold decorations, Buddhas, and a portrait of the Dalai Lama himself, learning to keep your mind in the present. It helps to have a practice support group. You get that? Practice. Support. Group. Following the Dalai Lama on Twitter just ain't going to cut it, but do that anyway.
The silk-screened concert poster lives, and it's a sight to behold. Long after their neighbors in Fort Lauderdale's budding FAT Village arts district have gone to sleep, Chuck Loose and Ian Rowan crank out original designs showcasing South Florida's hottest touring acts (they have an exclusive contract with LiveNation, the country's largest concert promoter). On FAT Village's art walks, you can tour the studio. It smells like ink and vinyl and is bedecked with posters for sale: a perfect and inexpensive way to ease your apartment walls into cultured adulthood. Two years after they nabbed our first Best Silk Screening award, they're still the best little print shop in town.