Arts & Entertainment

With canvases measuring up to 16 feet by eight feet, British artist Jenny Saville's eponymous retrospective at the Norton was literally the biggest show of the year. But what really makes Saville's art big, aside from its sheer scale, is its emotional content. Her images of haunted, fleshy, sometimes physically battered faces speak to a culture that gorges on itself even as it registers the traumas of the postmodern world. It's no surprise that her work fit in perfectly at the Royal Academy of the Arts' landmark, controversial, 1997 show, "Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection" — Saville's paintings are both sensational, as in creating a sensation, and all about sensation, as in dealing with the senses. The large-scale emotions also extend to her pencil-and-charcoal drawings, which took up two galleries in the Norton exhibition and focused mostly on her mesmerizing obsession with a famous Leonardo da Vinci cartoon of the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus, Saint Anne, and John the Baptist. Saville is only 42, so presumably there's much more to come.

Finding a cool dance club nowadays isn't the easiest thing, especially in Fort Lauderdale. Often, as soon as one opens up is as quick as it closes down. Occupying the old Automatic Slim's venue in Riverfront is Fifteen West, a hipper alternative to the velvet-roped clubs filled with snooty clubgoers. There is bottle service and VIP, but the dress code is relaxed. The DJs don't spin bad techno remixes, and the door guy isn't a total ass. In addition to dancing and drinking, the club has also started to host a slew of indie art shows. From preppy folks to tattooed crowds, the patrons at 15 West are an eclectic bunch.

At Swarm, which pops up every few months, there are no special invitations, dress-code requirements, overpriced cover fees, or strict rules to abide by. As event organizers Black Locust Society says, "Come one, come all. It's just about bringing people together. This is just what we do." Housed in a warehouse away from the madness of the downtown bar scene, Swarm is the place where partygoers go to let loose, listen to an assortment of live music — the lineup is always different — and take in a bit of local art. The Swarm crowd is completely diverse. Nobody cares about your race, musical interests, financial situation, or what you're wearing. It's all about the experience, and that it certainly is.

The DIY, Lake Park, music-focused venue brilliantly named the Snooze Theatre started life as a blues club called the Orange Door. C.J. Jankow and Jordan Pettingill of Cop City Chill Pillars and Love Handles began throwing events there before it graduated from blues to experimental. They currently run the place with Ed and Dan McHugh, the latter of the band the Jameses, and a bunch of supportive friends from the West Palm Beach and Lake Worth areas. The Snooze opened up a seat for the ass of a scene that needed a place to sit and grow after the closing of Club Sandwich. Sure, down south Churchill's has been friendly to quality and experimental music of all sorts, but this area needed its own spot to squat. The biggest indicator of the direction in which the venue would go was Zitfest, which featured two days of Florida's finest garage acts like the Jameses, Guy Harvey, and Jacuzzi Boys. The venue showcases local musicians and touring acts, and it's even doing yoga there and mixtape exchanges. The ladies of the Snooze have gathered forces to host their own getty, aptly titled That Time of the Month. Though the Snooze was closed for a few months after being raided by the Palm Beach Police County Sheriff's Office in January, it reopened with a vengeance and tons of noise. The red-checkered floor remains the same. There's the pink glowing bathroom and cheap drinks. And now you can tell the Snooze how much you love it by writing on the walls with chalk. How sweet.

If there is one area where many jam bands are lacking, it certainly wouldn't be in the hair department. Most of them have plenty of that, though it's often of the shaggy, unkempt variety. Rather, many jam bands are missing a good singer. Local jam heroes the Heavy Pets are not lacking in either of those categories thanks to frontman Jeff Lloyd. Lloyd not only has the prettiest head of hair this side of Terrapin Station but he's got a voice that ought to be welcomed on whatever cloud Jerry Garcia currently resides on. It is soulful, well-exercised, and, like his mane, quite pretty. Nowhere does Lloyd's voice ring out more beautifully than on the Pets' 2011 release, Swim Out Past the Sun. The album is stripped-down and acoustic, which not only makes it a wonderful, mellow addition to their catalog but also allows Lloyd's vocals to stand out and dazzle.

You might recognize James "Scarecrow" Jenkins as the former bull fiddler of Lake Worth's punkabilly band Viva Le Vox, but you also might recognize him because he's got a lotta look. Nowadays, Jenkins heads his own outfit, Loxahatchee Sinners Union, a rootsy Americana act that came about by accident. In an attempt to set out on his own, he ended up bringing in too good a cast of backup musicians for a performance. Thus, the band was born. He calls the sound "swamp gospel." With him at the helm, singing with the charisma and enthusiasm of a preacher, it's hard not to hear what he means. As a singer, he knows exactly how to manage his vocals, creating an emotional plane, complementing the jangle of the banjo and the wail of the accordion with either excited exuberance or with the haunting howl and growl of a campfire storyteller.

From the magical, otherworldly sounds created by Astrea Corporation's Mike Astrea and Sandor Davidson arises the strange, mystical, and powerful vocals of Carly Astrea. Her look is majestic. She's always dressed to kill and crowned with great, big, loose curls. She's the siren to their song. Astrea's voice is often compared to that of Beth Gibbons of Portishead, the trip-hop goddess. Astrea says of first joining the act, which was already in place, that her partner Mike caught her randomly harmonizing with the sounds he made. "Whatever rolled into my head began rolling off my tongue," she says. "Shortly after this, I began laying down vocals for tracks and performing with the group, which ultimately led to me becoming a member of  Astrea Corp." And we're glad she did.

Dooms de Pop is what you might call a new kind of rock band. Its music sounds familiar, but it's a whole 'nother animal creeping around, banging up the menagerie. It's like mainstream power pop and heavy rock with tasty touches of Flaming Lips and They Might Be Giants. Garo Gallo, who leads the act, is also founder of the Bubble, the Independent Working Artist Network concept facility located in Fort Lauderdale. "I'm just paying homage to the pop bands that I've loved my whole life and trying to re-create that feeling of comfort and nostalgia," he says. "But as soon as you get as comfortable as you're going to be, I like to take a left turn and take you somewhere you didn't expect and make that comfortable too." Gallo's band mates are musical veterans, and all take part in the creative process. There's Darryl Bonebrake on drums and Brady Newbill on bass. They have yet to release their LP Ticker, but no worries; it's definitely on the way.

If you wolfed down a handful of mushrooms and then sort of sat in the sun for too long without drinking water, what might appear before you in all of its glory is the two-man act Tumbleweave. These trippy mammajammas take our crazed, otherworldly hallucinations and actualize them onstage. Dressed in what is part Hershey kiss, part metallic Snork, Matt Cutler and Ben Mendelewicz bring performance and sound to the next level, the outer-space level. While costumes make them 100 percent fascinating and their unusual body movements 100 percent fabulous, the sounds from their synths, live drums, and even the ear-grinding feedback make their stage show some next-level shit that is best consumed live.

The term slacker has been hurled at tie-dye-wearing, Grateful Dead-loving folks for the past half century. No description, though, could be less true of Brotherly Love Productions, the most important force in the growing jam-band scene in South Florida. BLP organizes regular and sporadic events that bring together bands from South Florida and beyond with the dancing folks who love them. The comprehensive weekly e-newsletter that the group sends out is highly recommended for anyone looking to share in the groove.

The smell of the swamp, the slick of sawgrass, the chomp of the alligator. That's the kind of authentic South Florida shit you experience with Boise Bob and His Backyard Band. Their songs take a humorous approach to country music. He talks about eating 'possum and getting shitfaced at a bar he loves more than he loves you. The act isn't made up just of Boise Bob — his Backyard Band includes a host of musicians jamming on backwoods instruments you'll rarely see around these parts. There's an electric washboard, a washtub bass, a harp, a banjo, kick drum, slide guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and, whew, the occasional pig and bird sounds. Boise Bob is a longtime Broward County resident whose music represents this swampy cityscape like no other. And damn, can these guys deliver some motherfuckin', fun-timesy, country-twanged dance songs, perfectly suited for anyone who knows the feel of the hot Florida sun on their backs and of gators nipping at their ass.

With a name like Chrome Dick, you might think this guy'd be spitting rhymes about his genitals and how strong and shiny they are. But Chrome Dick is actually Raphael Alvarez, a musician who's been involved for years in popular Broward bands like .ihatejulie, Traded to Racine, Harvey and the Buckets, and now Suede Dudes. As Chrome Dick, though, pop leaves the room and noise enters. His EP Portal Between Heaven and Hell actually sounds like the space between the celestial and the satanic. There's nothing regular about Chrome Dick's sound. He creates haunting soundscapes and abrasive soundtracks simply with pedals, guitars, and a mic. Inspired by books on noise and experimental acts like Throbbing Gristle, in 2008, this musician became an experimental musician and a performance artist. Noise is more than just creating a cacophony of disruptive sounds; for Alvarez, it's about emotion, concept, and intellect.

Robb Bank$ has a serious gold grill and looks as young as 15. But his sound is savage and his voice smooth. The music is trippy. It's like he's laying rhymes over ethereal experimental soundscapes. Robb Bank$ is likely to catch the eye and ear of the industry, and soon. This jit is half of the group Tuesday Thru Sunday with partner Matt Meyer Lansky. His mixtape Calendars marks his solo debut. The South Florida boy sings about everything, from Pokémon and oral sex to hipster girls and smoking pot. He just about has the male experience covered.

It has been several years since the utopian Deadhead night at Fisherman's Wharf on Pompano Pier went the way of Jerry Garcia when the bar/restaurant gave way to new ideas for "development." In the period since, South Florida heads have followed Crazy Fingers, the well-loved Grateful Dead tribute act, around to a few new Thursday-night spots. But none has felt quite as homey as the old Wharf used to, until now. With the jam-band scene in South Florida growing more energized, the landscape is prime for the weekly Deadhead night at Boca Muse, where Crazy Fingers throws down two sets for the patchouli-loving folks and straight-from-the-office, undercover heads alike. Crazy Fingers is as reliable as always these days, paying homage to the band that set so much good energy into motion while being faithful to their own groove at the same time. For now, SoFla heads have plenty of reason to be Grateful, at least once a week. Keep on truckin', Crazy Fingers.

Paper Chaser Committee, or PCC, began in 2003 as a clique only. It has since grown to a five-man crew, consisting of some recognizable names in the underground hip-hop scene in West Palm Beach. There's Cookem Up — the CEO — then a mix of rappers including Vandam Bodyslam, Mic Check, A.I., Breezy, and Moneyman. They came together in 2008 to take danceable beats and lay down hard-core lyrics over them, already putting out a few mixtapes and more than 30 YouTube videos. Their single "Club Scene" has been on heavy rotation on turntables around South Florida. This is a big leap since Mic Check first was simply making beats at home. PCC is still a group that feels like a family. Members stay true to one another even when their jams are blowing up stereos all over town. Hopefully, they'll remain tight even after stereos are blowing up with their sound all over the world.

Orbweaver describes a common group of spiders. Spiders spin webs, and in these webs, they catch their dinner. Orbweaver is an experimental psych-metal band created by its singer, Broward native and main songwriter Randy Piro. He's been weaving tales and catching ideas in them, creating music that is as heavy as it is deadly. Piro once played with Gigan and Hate Eternal, and then in late 2010, he wrote all of the music for Orbweaver himself. He then decided to weave together something akin to a supergroup, hand-picking musicians he discovered around South Florida. It all began with drummer Mike Pena, who performed with Nuclear Infantry; then came Sally Gates, formerly of Gigan and Success Will Write the Apocalypse Across the Sky; Brad Lovett, currently with Slashpine; and bassist Jason Ledgard. They've been playing Piro's music live and are planning to record an album this year. Orbweaver is a concept band, and that concept is trippy as shit. Most of Piro's songs revolve around fictional character the Zone Tripper, an occult magician. The lyrics are a fantasy excursion that bring the listener out of this world and into one crazy/cool place in Piro's head.

It's difficult to lump the musical group Astrea Corporation into just one category, as the group's talent and sound break the barriers of any one genre. In a world that's flooded with dubstep and iPod DJs, the trip-hop beats made by Michael Bachman and Sander Davidson, complemented by the sultry voice of frontwoman Carly Astrea, are refreshing. It's safe to say Astrea Corporation brings a sound to the local music scene that nobody is making. Seeing the group's live show is a different experience each time; it's often intimate and soulfully haunting. To describe it in words almost feels like not giving the group enough credit. Constantly growing and evolving its sound, the Astrea Corporation is certainly one local act to keep an eye on.

Can you imagine what the body of South Florida would look like without its soul, the flamboyant fabulous hometown boy Clarence Reid? It'd be sad, skinny, serious, and sour. A body no one'd wanna bang. Reid, better-known as Blowfly, is a pervy old performer who knows a thing or two about keeping feet tapping and hearts beating heavy. His filthy lyrics will get even the grumpiest old grouch to at least crack a smile. He's a crafty wordsmith of the raunchiest sort, easily turning "Should I Stay or Should I Go" into "Should I Fuck This Big Fat Ho." His repertoire as Blowfly is as foul as the scribbles on a boy's bathroom wall. As Clarence Reid, he was a TK Records' guy: the creator of the first rap song in 1965, "Rap Dirty," and the man who penned tunes for Sam and Dave, Gwen McCrae, KC & the Sunshine Band, and Betty Wright. Despite personal tragedies and professional pitfalls, Blowfly remains. He's the bright, burning, and brash soul of this whole South Florida area.

Scuzzy, fuzzy, psychedelic. You can use all of these words to describe the Band in Heaven's new four-track EP featuring A-side "Sleazy Dreams." The first 475 copies of this seven-inch were pressed in February by a garage, noise, psych, and punk underground label out of Chicago called HoZac Records. The band creates not so much celestial sounds but more like the cries of a fallen angel. The EP is dark and disorienting. It has an experimental heart with a dirty rock body. Play these songs when experiencing the freedom of riding your bike on a particularly sunny afternoon or while driving home late at night, getting ready to do very bad things. The Band in Heaven represents a larger movement of experimental psych sounds coming out of its hometown of West Palm Beach. Appearances at South by Southwest and Austin Psych Fest solidify it as an act on the brink of breaking, in the good way. Breaking outward and upward.

Just last year, the readers (that's you) chose the New as the best local band. The alt-pop outfit isn't done entirely, but a break from its label and a switched-up lineup leaves the New in the hands of lead singer and guitarist Lori Garrote, and in her hands alone. Her off-again, on-again bandmate is now officially no longer part of the pack. Currently, she's playing with breakout garage act Beach Day. Members Giz Forte and Jordan Calloway have also moved on. But no fear! Girl rock isn't dead. Garotte is working with the former manager of the Mavericks and Marilyn Manson, John Tovar. Garotte says of the fresh sound, "With the addition of keyboards and adding two more background vocals, it certainly started sounding more feminine and more harmonic." Who knows? Maybe the new the New will put the girl back in grrrl.

OK. Get stoned, sit back, press play, and try to figure out what videogames were sampled in each of the 12 tracks of the Benchwarmers Clique's The Adventures in 8bit: Cartridge 1. For so many — mostly stoners and boys, but in many ways for all of us — the first electronic music we listened to was the soundtrack to our videogames. Local hip-hoppers Joka Wild and Travisty the Lazy MC took these familiar sounds and, with the help of British producer Jewbei, created a sweet locus for nostalgia. This shit will access all those Nintendo dreams and Sega nightmares of your youth. Your old friends Super Mario and Zelda will return but with sick rhyming blanketing them. Besides the Benchwarmers Clique, guest MCs on the album include Melodik, Lex One, Llamabeats, Kyllabus, and Reks. Hopefully, a Cartridge Two hits the web before we crack the code on this Adventure in 8bit.

Like Jesus Christ himself, this festival has died, resurrected, and, unlike JC, died again. In 2003, the inaugural fest made us feel warm and fuzzy. In 2006, the event made us swoon with Florida musical lovin'. Just two years later, we were still gaga for Langerado, but in 2009, it died in the planning stages. In 2011, it looked like it was back, and we were feeling good about it. Our credit cards were out, and we were ready to buy our tickets and head up to Markham Park for some Death Cab, Ween, and Thievery Corp. But alas, before it began, it died again. We bid thee a solemn farewell, Langerado. Perhaps next year, we'll be able to welcome you back? But maybe that'd be a bit much. You can't break our hearts a third time. That would just be cruel.

For two consecutive days in April, Bryant Park in Lake Worth was as bright as could be with smiles, sunshine, and irie vibes. Ya mon! The inaugural Lake Worth Reggae Fest went off splendidly, bringing together a diverse crowd, stellar bands, and quality vendors for a weekend full of Jah-loving fun. Rastas coursed the scene as boomers relaxed in beach chairs sipping cold beer and little tykes blew bubbles, barefoot in the lawn. The seawall overlooking the Intracoastal was used as a pristine sideline bench, where festgoers took breaks from the action as well as lovely photos. Meanwhile, the stage was rocked by a strong lineup of reggae bands, ranging from local and regional up-and-comers like Deerfield's Resolvers and Gainesville's 3rd Stone to some of the most venerable elders in the reggae world, like Aston "Family Man" Barrett, who played bass for Bob Marley for many years and now anchors the current iteration of the Wailers. With so much sunshine and enthusiasm for reggae in South Florida, this was a festival waiting to happen, and it did not disappoint.

Last year, we spotted this crew of performers and teachers and declared them Best Nonprofit. The queens at Drag It Out aren't just hams in a lotta lipstick and heels; this is a caring group of motherly ladies and gents and gender nonspecifics. They teach the art of drag to young drag aficionados, mentoring and inspiring them. Their workshops are free, but the results are priceless. Participants enter rough around the edges and come out smooth as a bouffant. The "draguates" performing? It's fab-u-lous. Burgeoning drag kings and queens show off their new (or true) personalities in a safe and encouraging place. A sea of colored wigs and rhinestones, the room is filled with glamour, and it's all for charity. How can we not give it up for Drag It Out's Epic Draguation? It's called a draguation, for God's sake.

What's the sexiest area of a woman's body? Her brain. So where does one find a sexy female brain in the land of beaches and liposuction? The Girls' Club Collection is an art space created, curated, and managed by women featuring art photography by female artists. The gallery itself was designed by a female architect, and it shows in the grace of the angles and fluidity of the movable walls. Films by female filmmakers are screened. Workshops are held by female artists. So if you're looking for a woman of substance, attend the next event at the Girls' Club. But please, while all those sexy female brains might drive you to it, no wolf whistling. Smart girls don't like that.

Not to discount installation art or performance art or conceptual art or any other kind of art that has trended upward in recent years, but there are times when you just want to look at a bunch of paintings. For those times, there are shows like this one at the Boca Museum, made available to South Florida courtesy of Ohio's Butler Institute, which opened in 1919 as the country's first museum devoted exclusively to American art. The exhibition included only 36 works, but most of them were paintings that lived up to their billing as "masterworks." Where else, outside of a museum comparable to New York's Metropolitan, would you find a roll call that includes Edward Hopper, Robert Motherwell, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Andrew Wyeth, and Andy Warhol, to name but a few? Where else, indeed, would significant works by such major artists be overshadowed by paintings like Albert Bierstadt's The Oregon Trail and Thomas Cole's Italian Landscape, which almost stole the show?

Sometimes the best shows sneak up on you, registering only faintly while you're still in the museum or gallery and then later coming together in your head as a cohesive whole. The Boca Museum's 60th-annual "All Florida" was such a show. First there's the scale of the exhibition to consider: 101 artists represented, out of the nearly 600 who submitted close to 2,000 works. That juror Valerie Ann Leeds — a veteran of the Orlando, Tampa, and Whitney museums — managed to make sense of it at all is no small wonder. Leeds, however, not only culled judiciously; she also found a common thread running through so much diverse work, in the form of what might be called "the Florida experience," or, as she memorably put it, "a collective response to the environment and the bounty of natural resources found within Florida's borders." By taking the "All Florida" designation seriously, she assembled a show that somehow encompassed the Sunshine State's past, present, and future.

In 1955, photographer and curator Edward Steichen organized more than 500 images into "The Family of Man," which traveled to 37 countries and reached about 10 million people. In 2008, New York-based teacher and photographer Oliver Wasow and South Carolina painter John D. Monteith began assembling a collection of "found" or vernacular photography that now includes roughly 20,000 pictures. The sampling of their vast archive that was on display at Hollywood's Art and Culture Center represents a world in which an estimated 750 million people upload and share something like 100 million photos on their Facebook pages daily. What a difference half a century or so makes. The point of Wasow and Monteith's enterprise is that we are bombarded by so much imagery on a continuing basis that it's almost impossible to keep track of it, much less make sense of it. And yet they take on the daunting challenge of doing so, combing the internet for photographs — portraiture, mostly — that, taken together, form their own variation on "The Family of Man," one that speaks volumes about life in that long-ago time, the 20th Century.

When casting like this falls into your lap, it's a gift. Deborah L. Sherman has said she has a history of mental illness in her family, including bipolar disorder, which undoubtedly helped her absorb the dangerous mood swings of Melinda, the bipolar wife of a pandering politician in Side Effects. Whether she was slinking about their immaculate living room with misplaced carnality, making surreptitious phone calls to a former lover, or using black humor as a defense mechanism, Sherman's Melinda was a fragile creature, uncomfortable in her own skin, her own home, her own marriage. The actress remained always a paragon of subtlety, never overplaying her character's emotional extremities. When she exuded, finally, a sense of self-actualized confidence after the disintegration of the marriage, it's like we were watching another person altogether — not exactly cured but visibly healthier. Sherman portrayed both Melindas with unflinching accuracy.

Six Years was one of the more underrated productions of the past year, especially for the colossal performance of Todd Allen Durkin. He essentially carried the entire play on his shoulders, discovering a complete spectrum of human emotion in an otherwise imperfect postwar panorama. Many months later, it's difficult to recall the goings-on in Six Years, which followed the tumultuous marriage of two people, in six-year increments, from the end of World War II to Vietnam. But Durkin's individual actions remain vivid, lodged in permanent residency in memory: his shell-shocked eyes staring with zombified vacancy at the motel interior in front of him; his jolting eruptions of anger over such inconsequential subjects as neckties and the volume of music; his shattering, tear-stained breakdown on a business trip. This was Durkin's debut performance at the Caldwell; here's hoping there are many more to come.

Alvarez is onstage only for a few minutes in each of the two scenes in The Unseen, but he dominates — nay, towers over — both of them like a mad, yet-to-be-deposed dictator. As a secret prison's brutal guard with a heart of... something, he hulks back and forth between two crude cells, and you can't take your eyes off him: a blocky refrigerator of intimidation, shaking the rafters with brutal curses that sound as if it's the first time we've ever heard these words. In Alvarez's grungy toolbox, they have a gripping power that puts most of David Mamet's artful profaners to shame. When he speaks, we all listen, even if we don't want to, as with his squeamish description of the murder of an inmate by removing his eyes and tongue, single-handedly. He still manages to make us laugh, uttering some of the funniest exclamations in this dark comedy; but if you saw this, chances are you slept with one eye open that night.

Laura Turnbull's Marie Lombardi was a grounding force, the ego that kept a raging id in check. She was wife to Ray Abruzzo's larger-than-life title character in Mosaic's winning drama. And while Abruzzo's performance was all jazz, flash, and volume, Turnbull had an arguably greater challenge: to remain compelling while keeping everything low key. In a convincing wig and period clothes, Turnbull completed her transformation into the self-sacrificing Marie Lombardi with the utmost authenticity, transcending a role that could have been swallowed up if performed by a lesser talent. She expressed pain, anger, melancholy acceptance, wry humor, and even control over her relationship with Vince. She operated mostly under the surface, conveying her truest emotions through her movements and expressions as much as her words. And it's worth mentioning that she maintained her character's particular accent from beginning to end, which can't be said for a handful of our great actors.

Palm Beach Dramaworks' first production in the Don and Ann Brown Theatre proved to be an embarrassment of riches — an opening salvo that turned a corner in the company's history. No more was Dramaworks limited to cramped sets with small casts. To wit, this ambitious 1947 drama by Arthur Miller featured an ensemble of 11 actors from South Florida and beyond. Kenneth Tigar and Elizabeth Dimon did the heaviest lifting as the leaders of an emotionally shattered family, with Jim Ballard pouring out his soul as its only living son. The remaining members of the cast — neighbors and relatives of the central three characters — did their best to ensure that each of their personalities shone through, no matter how small their roles. With today's justifiable concerns over budgets and funding, no modern playwright would even script parts for half of the cast of All My Sons, which lives out of abundance.

The set design in the first act of this elaborate comedic drama about the proto-pack-rats Homer and Langley Collyer is impressive enough, a stately Brooklyn mansion oozing wealth and containing the subtlest, earliest signs of hoarderdom. By the time you return to your seat after an unusually lengthy intermission, you witness an epic transformation that looks like it was an art project months in the making. The act takes place nearly two decades later, and instead of anachronistic opulence, the Collyer abode is a nightmare of domestic debris: Filthy newspapers stacked to the heavens, broken lamps scattered about, furniture completely inaccessible. The clutter is convincing, the detritus staggering, the result almost magical. Michael McKeever, Nicholas Richberg, and Marckenson Charles do a fine job of performing in a claustrophobic space in front of this display, but the set was the show.

At one point during Cleansed, I felt like throwing up, and I almost had to look away. If this feeling swelled up in my throat while watching, say, a Neil Simon comedy, then the direction that inspired it would be considered rather poor. But in a play by Sarah Kane, the late British chronicler of life's most sordid and deviant alleyways, nausea is a compliment. For the record, the sickening scene in question was the one in which Jim Gibbons tosses down an entire box of chocolates, piece by piece, for Robert Alter to eat like a tortured, subservient pet, only to upchuck them onto the dirty floor in a mass of half-digested chocolate. It's one of the tamer scenes in a play full of all sorts of boundary-pushing degradation. But by wallowing in the X-rated material, it's easy to overlook the beautiful subtleties of Stodard's direction. The resources at Empire Stage, her company's host venue, are more limited than any other theater space, prompting Stodard to generate a lot from very little: Rubber dismembered body parts, strips of red ribbons to indicate blood, creepy sound design, a minimal set that exudes existential despair, pitch-perfect song transitions from Metallica and Joy Division. She helmed a difficult play, making it impossible to forget.

This past year saw Herculean achievements in set design, sound design, costume design, prop-heavy novelties, and large-cast spectacles. But none of them topped the simply staged Side Effects and the emotional, comedic, and dramatic magic it created with two people, a single set, and a narrative that explores mental illness in a modern marriage with profound insight. Universally, it was a play about the difficulty and fragility of relationships; specifically, it was about bipolar disorder and politics and the effect both have on human connection and disconnection. Playwright Michael Weller is one of the most talented writers in the country, and he couldn't have asked for a better director than Richard Jay Simon, who guided Deborah L. Sherman to the best performance of her career and Jim Ballard to one of three solid performances in his banner 2011 year. When everything comes together this well, a show like Side Effects raises the standards for every production around it.

For the third year in a row, the Promethean Theatre made the summertime fun, funny, and pleasantly disgusting by mounting a musical grounded in cult cinema. Song of the Living Dead was arguably the most accomplished of them all, a pop-savvy, self-deprecating, and surprisingly sophisticated satire. Margaret Ledford directed the action with loopy abandon and excess energy, and the choreography and musical direction expressed the kind of talent and polish usually reserved for Broadway-level works. Indeed, Song of the Living Dead worked as flawlessly as it did only because of the commitment of everyone involved, from the artistic director to the live band, the first and only in the Promethean's history. The cast approached this ridiculous, South Parkian satire like it was Les Miserables, with Clay Cartland and Noah Levine turning the most heads. The question is, with the Promethean closing this year, what other company will take on shows with "splash zones"?

The Caldwell Theatre may be South Florida's oldest theater company still in operation, but there was a time when it didn't have the esteem of the county's dramatic powerhouses, Mosaic and Dramaworks. In the mid- to late '00s, the theater's forte seemed to be conventional, familiar audience pleasers rather than provocative think pieces — a pair of Steel Magnolias for every Doubt. This is no longer the case, particularly since Clive Cholerton took over the reins as artistic director. After a bumpy first season beset with actor injuries and less-than-stellar selections, Cholerton turned the Caldwell into a regular hit factory in 2011 and 2012. It offered hip and thoughtful shows like the fact-based hoarding dramedy Stuff, the American postwar panorama Six Years, the political domestic drama After the Revolution, the satiric pro-wrestling comedy The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, and the of-the-moment and pro-labor musical Working. The fact that the Caldwell is heading toward bankruptcy protection from unpaid loans at the height of its artistic success is a tragic irony.

Where else can you find the Air Force Thunderbirds, the Navy Hornets, the Coast Guard search-and-rescue team, and the Navy SEALs parachute team all gathered in one place? While liberals might dismiss this as a showy recruiting tool, a fossil-fuel-powered display of machismo, or an I-don't-wanna-know-how-costly waste of taxpayer dollars, the Fort Lauderdale Air & Sea Show is quite a mind-blowing spectacle. After a five-year hiatus, it returned in April. Throw in a lot of CGI effects and a little bit of plot and you've got yourself a blockbuster.

Flaunt is one of South Florida's longest-running dance parties. Housed in West Palm Beach's Respectable Street, Flaunt is the dance floor to hit to let loose, down a whole lot of booze, and forget about all your cares. The DJs spin the best of electro-dance and new wave, the bartenders serve heavy shots, and the crowd ain't so bad-looking either.

You've got on tight pants, and so does he. You're drinking PBR, and so is she. You both share a few flirty smiles on the dance floor as you booty-dance ironically to the "Tootsie Roll." It's hipster love at first sight. This type of love connection can occur only underneath the glittering chandelier at the Green Room at one of its various hipster dance nights during the week. Week after week, the too-cool-for-school 20-something crowd flocks to the dance floor at the Green Room to shake its hips to MGMT, the Faint, and Notorious B.I.G. — ironically, of course. Whether it's a Thursday night or Saturday night, the Green Room is the place to meet your fixed-gear bike-riding, PBR-drinking, tattooed dream lover.

Located out in our version of the west, in Davie, just off of State Road 84, Round Up offers South Florida country lovers a big ol' break from the bustle of electronic and booty music and a place to line up and show off their slick moves. You'll find gunslingers in cowboy boots and country girls in daisy dukes. Round Up's huge dance floor accommodates the regular twinkle toes and newcomers looking for a rollicking party. There's also a number of big-name country-friendly acts that stop through to perform, like Uncle Kracker. Come on; where else can you get bottle service and dance lessons all while dressed like John Wayne?

Each week at Digital Love Thursdays, the fashion-savvy indie dance crowd bounced, grinned, and threw back PBRs as DJs Mig and Sweetswirl served up just the right jams. Mixing tracks freshly picked out of the blogosphere with old-school classics, Mig and Sweetswirl never ceased to give the room the beat it needs: When it was time for a sing-along, a Smiths tune inevitably took over the room. When it was time for something new, a track from a local artist made its way into the mix. Always exciting and with a great feel for the room, the DJ duo were the right folks to have at the helm of the party. With Digital Love recently deceased, Mig and Sweetswirl's skills will now be lent to helping the booties shake on Saturday nights at Green Room instead.

The Green Room has taken downtown Fort Lauderdale and slapped it upside the head with good music and a helluva lotta dancing. The rise of hip-hop haven Brown Bag Wednesdays sweetens the tragic loss of the once-popular dance party Digital Love at the same spot. Sweetens it with quarts of Colt 45 and impromptu dance-offs. Not only do Brown Bag Wednesdays bring the malt liquor; they bring cozies that resemble brown bags. How's that for almost authentic? Kicking off this one-nighter — one that's demonstrated that it is constant with quality — was a DJ set and a bit of an off-the-cuff live performance by Talib Kweli. The night brings together the brightest rhymers from the tricounty area and some national acts like Dead Prez. For those who claim there's no hip-hop scene in South Florida, Brown Bag is taking you out to lunch and feeding you the delicious truth. We've got it, and we've got it good.

As the night winds down and the bars close, you're still drunk, you haven't blown all your cash, and you kind of wanna see some titties. Where do you go? You grab your thick-rimmed-glasses-wearing girlfriend and drag your tatted-up ass over to Scarlett's. Duh. Scarlett's not only has nude ladies dancing away way early into the morning but also free lunch. Sure, you're thinking, eating in a strip club is icky, but didn't you catch the part that it's free? The dancers are all nude, and you can even score a two-for-one dance. It's a couples-friendly joint, not high class but not sleazy, so maybe you get a dance for the lady friend too. No? The girls here are chill, so you don't feel pressured to let it rain your entire income on their nude booties. Just sit back, grab a glass of booze, and enjoy the show.

Throw out everything you knew about pub quizzes and bands of cardiganed hipsters competing rabidly to nail a question on a technicality. In fact, don't call this light-beer-fueled questionfest a "pub quiz" at all. It's Trivia Night, plain and simple, and it goes down every Wednesday at 8 p.m. Your down-to-earth and occasionally lewd hosts, Dawn and Ken, holler out questions between loud plays of all the crappy songs you love. Be warned, though, that when the stakes get high, she'll trick you: "Uganda... is not the correct answer!" As for the bar, it's smoker-friendly (so bring your disgusting friends along), and the burgers and wings are decent. It's a sports bar owned by Packers fans, and it's full of TVs, so you just might decide to stick around to watch a game (or, as happened this year, one of the Trivia Night regulars competing on Jeopardy).

Whether you're into Mr. Universe types or prefer cherub-faced boys who look like they ought to be at home studying for an algebra test, a trip to Boardwalk on the right night will have you tingling below the belt. Show up on Wednesday for the "new meat amateur" contest or on Friday and Saturday for "packed porn star weekends," hosted by the delightfully entertaining Tiffany Arieagus and Misty Eyes. Boardwalk welcomes special visits from famously hung fellows like the Broke Straight Boys and boasts resident studs as well, like 21-year-old Cuban twins Arielle and George. One night with the oiled-up studs at Boardwalk and you're likely to realize that it would take a long (ahem), hard search to find a better spot to stuff bulging banana hammocks with stiff dollar bills.

For more than two decades, Rob Van Winkle has been the butt of jokes and the subject of parody. But the man responsible for the 1991 Grammy-nominated "Ice Ice Baby" has surged back to relevancy in recent years by branding himself as a fun-loving, dirt-bike-jumping, bong-ripping renegade of home renovation. When his music career hit a lull, he stacked cash by buying homes on the cheap, fancying them up, and then flipping them. That eventually became the premise of his award-winning reality show, The Vanilla Ice Project, which the DIY Network renewed earlier this year for a third season. B-list success begets B-list success. In recent months, he has been a judge on Canada Sings, worked his way into a feud between WWE's the Rock and John Cena, performed at halftime of a Minnesota Timberwolves game, and gone back to the studio — albeit with Psychopathic Records and the Insane Clown Posse. He's living the American juggalo dream.

Visiting the 122,500-square-foot Norton is like shopping at an enormous department store: The most pressing question is where to stop off first. The permanent collection alone, which comes to more than 7,000 works of art, includes five sections — American, Chinese, contemporary, and European art, along with photography — any one of which could occupy you for an hour or two. Then there are the special exhibitions, which are like big "for a limited time only" sales. A recent lineup featured seven running simultaneously: two photography exhibits, two showcasing glass art, one drawn from the Chinese collection, another with two big-name painters (Clyfford Still and Joan Mitchell), and one held-over extravaganza documenting America's cocktail culture. It was a typical roster. This past year, the museum's 70th, saw a string of winners, from the four artists who made up the trippy "Altered States" to the massive oil paintings of Jenny Saville to the gimmicky but gratifying "A to Z: 26 Great Photographs From the Norton Collection." And if the aesthetic equivalent of power shopping wears you down, you can always stop off for lunch at the café or take in the gift shop. Cash or credit?

For anyone who finds an art gallery espousing "Contemporary Art by Women" a quaint, anachronistic throwback to the early days of feminism, it's worth remembering that one of the most surprising developments in the current political climate is a debate over contraception for women. In other words, women's issues still matter mightily. Not that Girls' Club features art by and about women exclusively, even though a recent show, "Re-Framing the Feminine," focuses on work by women photographers. No, what sets the mostly privately funded Girls' Club apart from your average commercial gallery is an emphasis not on sales but on programming. A recent four-week workshop, for instance, brought together artists and writers of both genders to look at, discuss, and write about photography. Add to that lectures, film series, and audience-participation events, as well as participation in the Third Avenue Art District and FAT Village art walks, and you have a gallery fully engaged with the communities it serves. You go, Girls' Club.

It's worth remembering, as Jorge Hilker Santis edges closer to retirement after 20-plus years at the Museum of Art|Fort Lauderdale, that often the people with the most impact are the ones who keep a low profile. As the museum's unassuming but rigorous curator and head of collection research, the Cuban-born Santis has maintained strong ties to his cultural heritage. He was the guiding force behind the museum's landmark Cuban shows, 1997's "Breaking Barriers" and 2008's "Unbroken Ties." His expertise has been critical to the institution's continuing accumulation of a world-class and heavily Cuban collection of Latin American art. The Cuban and Latin American connections are not surprising, but the versatile Santis also presides over the museum's formidable William Glackens Collection and Archives, which has its own wing and includes more than 500 works by the influential American artist and his contemporaries. Santis regularly raids that collection for in-house exhibitions that are invariably crowd pleasers. He'll leave large shoes to fill, along with a rich legacy.

Artists don't come much more quintessentially Floridian than Bonnie Shapiro. Born and raised in South Florida and educated at the University of Florida, Shapiro has lived here all her life. More to the point, her art is infused with a sense of what it's like to live in the Sunshine State. Her canvases often capture that dusky, indefinable moment when day transitions into evening, the twilit in-between time when hints of Old Florida creep into our consciousness. Her work leaves us with a vague yearning for something we can't quite pinpoint but we know is probably on the verge of disappearing. A trailer park at the edge of the Everglades, an old-fashioned diner nestled in a shopping center, a pull-off along some less-traveled back road — these are the things Shapiro typically trains her meticulous eye on. Yes, she regularly appears in all the right group shows around town (and frequently wins awards), and she's invariably there when a fellow artist needs a show of support or a word of encouragement. But it's her work itself that speaks so eloquently for her, and she's smart enough not to interrupt.

For Brooklyn artists Molly Crabapple and A.V. Phibes, life drawing classes had become snoozeworthy: Sure, there was a naked model in the room, but said room was cold, fluorescent-lit, and filled with strangers. The experience would be so much better with friends. And alcohol. Thus, the two wizards birthed Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School — a cure for the common, drab, drawing-class environment. The alternative art craze swept the nation, finally landing itself a home in South Florida at Stage 84. Once a month, creative folk gather at the cozy hangout and feast their eyes on busty burlesque babes waiting to be sketched. The alcoholic drinks flow, cheering and shouting ensues, and five-foot-long balloons get swallowed by amazonian beauties. This anything-goes artistic atmosphere certainly draws a unique crowd and has no room for snobby folk just looking to place a red dot on an expensive painting.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a nude woman's body painted as Superman? For more than a decade, the whimsical Keegan Hitchcock has been beautifying the world, one brush stroke at a time. She's transformed humans into zombies, bare-breasted Mardi Gras-goers into ravenous tigers, and even a pregnant belly into an ocean-view sunset. However, it's not only birthday parties and nightlife events for Hitchcock: She's also part of a breast-cancer awareness project that's raising funds for the Kristy Lasch Miracle Foundation. Hand this girl a paintbrush and there is no telling what she will come up with.

The move had been anticipated for well over a year, with news that Palm Beach Dramaworks would be relocating from its sardine-can space off Banyan Boulevard to the former Cuillo Theater, the empty landmark at the end of Clematis Street. It was funded in part by a $2 million grant from Palm Beach Gardens philanthropists Don and Ann Brown, and the vestiges of the Cuillo are mostly absent in the completely refurbished theater space, with everything from the auditorium chamber to the administrative offices and the costume shop undergoing a face-lift. The 218-seat black-box theater is the most impressive revision of all. Somehow, the intimacy that defined the old space is fully retained, while the room to play and build onstage has been enhanced beyond belief.