New York’s wittiest culture critic visits Boca, Theatre Lab hosts a jam-packed play festival, and one of 2022’s best films gets an encore screening. Plus, Rita Rudner, the NewLife Expo, and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
What: Rita Rudner
When: 2 p.m.
Where: B’Nai Torah Congregation, 6261 S.W. 18th St., Boca Raton
Cost: $25
Contact: 561/852-3200, levisjcc.org
In her eclectic, five-decade-spanning career, Rita Rudner has brought her talents to the Broadway stage, as a dancer; to the small and Silver Screens, as an actor; and to the recesses of her mind, as an author and writer for the Academy Awards. She’s most famous as a comedian, a skill she’s honed since the late 1970s, when she noticed the dearth of female comics at the New York comedy clubs. But it’s in her authorial capacity that she makes this appearance in Boca, part of a tour to support her sixth book, My Life in Dog Years: A Memoir. Rudner, who will turn 70 in September, looks back on her rich life in entertainment through the prism of the various four-legged friends with whom she’s shared her journey, in a book that will appeal to dog lovers as well as comedy aficionados.
What: Screening of “EO”
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Aventura Arts & Cultural Center, 3385 N.E. 188th St., Aventura
Cost: $12
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
One of the best films of 2022 is back for an encore screening, and it is very much the definition of a big-screen experience. The episodic film follows a donkey, christened EO, as he is transferred, through human involvement and life’s currents, to sundry owners and locales: among them a circus troupe, a farm, a rowdy soccer team and the palatial estate of a bitter countess (Isabelle Huppert, in the movie’s lone celebrity cameo). From its immersive cinematography to its unsettling score, EO is a cinematic journey like no other. EO looks at humanity’s cruelties and absurdities through the eyes of its mute protagonist, and it’s a jaundiced gaze. The movie’s toughest pill to swallow may be that even when we try and help our fellow beasts, our interventions only hasten their suffering. Local film expert Shelly Isaacs will introduce the movie and lead a post-film discussion.
WEDNESDAY
What: Fran Lebowitz
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
Cost: $45-$65
Contact: 561/757-4762, festivalboca.org
Fran Lebowitz has always been something of a disobedient iconoclast. Take her teenage years, for instance, when she was expelled from her high school because, as she told Mo Rocca on CBS earlier this year, the headmaster claimed she was “usurping his power.” Certainly, when Lebowitz is in a room, most of its oxygen drifts her way. A naturally acerbic wit on whatever platform she embraces—public speaking, her legendary comic essays, her Netflix-hosted, Martin Scorsese-directed series “Pretend It’s a City”—Lebowitz’s filterlessness, and her ability to fire off a one-liner about any topic imaginable, have made her a magnetic presence on stages like this one. Appropriately titled “Fran Lebowitz Would Like a Word,” this discussion, part of Festival of the Arts Boca, will be moderated by WLRN’s Christine DiMattei.
THURSDAY
What: Opening night of “Defacing Michael Jackson”
When: 8 p.m.
Where: The Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
Cost: $46.50-$76.50
Contact: 305/674-1040, miaminewdrama.org
Playwright and screenwriter Aurin Squire’s most familiar credit may be as story editor and writer on the first season of NBC’s “This Is Us,” but his most personal work literally hits close to home. In “Defacing Michael Jackson,” his fourth collaboration with Miami New Drama, the Opa-Locka native explores a coming-of-age story of sexual discovery set in his own hardscrabble Miami neighborhood circa 1984. The play is about an age of innocence, or perhaps innocence lost: The title subject reigns over popular culture, still a decade from any allegations of sexual abuse, and he may as well be a deity to a group of young Opa-Locka locals aspiring to be the “gloved one.” But it’s also a time of incipient gentrification and drug trafficking. As the cocaine cowboys ride into town and a white family moves into the protagonists’ Black neighborhood, Squire’s play captures a moment in history that continues to resonate. The production runs through April 2.
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY
What: Theatre Lab 2023 New Play Festival
When: Various show times
Where: FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
Cost: $99 for six readings, $55 for three readings, $20 for one reading
Contact: 561/297-6124, fauevents.com
Part of Theatre Lab’s mission as a new-play incubator is to provide the launch pad for world-premiere works in their most embryonic forms: as readings. To that end, the Lab will present readings of five new full-length plays and a handful of student-penned shorts, all performed by professional South Florida actors. The festival starts at 7:30 p.m. Friday with “The Last Yiddish Speaker,” a coming-of-age story about the past colliding with the present, from the prolific Deborah Zoe Laufer. It continues at 12:30 p.m. Saturday with Jeff Bower’s “The Impossible Task,” about an agoraphobic online instructor who endeavors to change his life; 3:30 p.m. Saturday with Steve McMahon’s “two of us on the run,” about a pair of teenage girls’ fantastical escape from small-town America; and 7:30 p.m. Saturday with Johnny G. Lloyd’s “love is hard and absolutely (probably) worth it,” a same-sex relationship story set during the COVID gloom of 2020. The students’ short-play readings will be presented at 1 p.m. Sunday, and the festival concludes at 3:30 p.m. Sunday with Andie Arthur’s “La Paloma,” a history play about the Ku Klux Klan’s 1937 attack on an inclusive Dade County nightclub.
SATURDAY
What: National Geographic Live: Dr. Kara Cooney
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
Cost: $35-$45
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
There are few American professionals better equipped to present on ancient Egypt than Dr. Kara Cooney, archaeologist and professor of Egyptology at UCLA, whose desire to uncover the intricacies of the country’s ancient past is both vocation and passion project. She has hosted two Egypt specials on the Discovery Channel, and she co-curated the famous “Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibition, whose tour in the 2000s renewed interest in Egyptian royalty for generations. In this multimedia TED-style presentation, Cooney will lecture on her 2018 book When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, in which she explores how rulers such as Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Cleopatra were able to wield immense power at a time when other empires, before and since, treated women as second-class citizens.
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
What: NewLife Expo
When: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Where: DoubleTree, 10 Fairway Drive, Deerfield Beach
Cost: $15-$100
Contact: newlifeexpo.com
Billing itself as “America’s largest mind, body and spirit expo,” The NewLife Expo returns for its 34th year of bringing rejuvenation and enlightenment to devotees of metaphysics, self-development and well-being. Some 100 speakers and vendors will offer insights and lead seminars/classes on topics ranging from yoga to spirit communication to energy healing to channeling to crystals to hypnosis to ancient history, sound healing and much, much more. Headline speakers for this year’s expo include Dannion Brinkley, who has been struck by lightning and endured three near-death experiences, who will speak about “What Dying Teaches You About the Living” at 10 a.m. Saturday; and Gail Thackery, a success coach with a national platform, who will speak on “Energy Healing—Remove Pain and Emotional Blocks” at 2 p.m. Saturday.
For more of Boca magazine’s arts and entertainment coverage, click here.
