Best Bets: Kites, NIGHT LIGHT and an Underwater Film Festival
Celebrate the end of the first week of April by checking out our best bets. This week, we’ve got a much beloved opera, a regional theater premiere, celebrations of kites and underwater filmmaking, and much more. Keep reading for our picks down below. Opera in the Heights will take Giacomo... The Houston Chronicle highlights its top five picks for the first week of April, including opera in the Heights, a regional theater premiere of Giacomo Puccini's classic La bohème, and underwater filmmaking at the Houston Underwater Film Festival. The Houston Symphony presents 21st Century Broadway at Jones Hall, featuring vocalists Rodney Ingram, Hailey Kilgore, Derek Klena and Ali Stroker. The Catastrophic Theatre will premiere Sarah Kane's Cleansed at 8 p.m. on April 5, with Raymond Compton, who will play the lead role in the play, believes the dark content of the play is used to help its main message that love can power through and survive in the bleakest, most disturbing situations. The festival will continue at the MATCH on Saturday, April 6, with individual screenings for $15 and $35. Tickets can be purchased for individual screenings or special ticket packages for VOD access from April 9 to 14.
Published : 4 weeks ago by Natalie de la Garza in Entertainment
Celebrate the end of the first week of April by checking out our best bets. This week, we’ve got a much beloved opera, a regional theater premiere, celebrations of kites and underwater filmmaking, and much more. Keep reading for our picks down below.
Opera in the Heights will take Giacomo Puccini’s classic La bohème to 1920s-era Paris when they open their latest production on Friday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m. at Lambert Hall. Nicole Kenley-Miller, who serves as stage director for the production, recently told the Houston Press that the intimate setting of Lambert Hall will allow audiences to “be up close to the actors and the singers,” adding they will “not only hear Puccini and to see it but also to feel it in your body is also going to be a different experience than I think you might have if you're in a larger theater.” Performances will continue at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 7 and 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 12, and Saturday, April 13. Tickets to the performances can be purchased here for $29 to $85.
Late British playwright Sarah Kane’s Cleansed will finally make its regional premiere on Friday, April 5, at 8 p.m., courtesy of The Catastrophic Theatre. Raymond Compton, who will play the role of Woman, recently told the Houston Press that they think the play’s dark content is “to help the plot toward the main message, which is that love really does power through and survive in the bleakest, most disturbing situations. I think they use that plot and play with the imagery of flowers sprouting through even with rubble and destruction; they find their ways to grow again.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through April 27 at the MATCH. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, with a suggested price of $35, and can be purchased here.
Broadway comes to Jones Hall on Friday, April 5, at 8 p.m. when the Houston Symphony presents 21st Century Broadway . The concert, led by conductor Steven Reineke, will see vocalists Rodney Ingram, Hailey Kilgore, Derek Klena and Ali Stroker will join the Symphony to perform selections what today’s hottest Broadway shows, such as, and more. Stephanie Alla, the Symphony’s associate director of artistic planning, has said that the program “ really highlights the diverse styles of music that you can find within the genre. ” The concert will also be presented at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 6, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 7. Tickets to in-hall performances can be purchased here for $34 to $110, or you can access the livestream of Saturday night’s show here for $20.
Back in 1914, J.E. Williamson took his self-invented “ photosphere ” to the Bahamas to film under the sea, the result being “ the world’s first underwater movie. ” Technology has come a long way since, and you can celebrate the beauty of underwater filmmaking today when the Houston Underwater Photographic Society opens the Houston Underwater Film Festival at the MATCH on Saturday, April 6, at 3 p.m.The two-day festival – featuring categories like dance, Texas-made and animation – continues on Sunday, April 7, at 3 p.m. with an awards reception following at 5:30 p.m. Individual screening tickets are available here for $15, with special ticket packages also available for $25 to $75. If you can’t make it, you can also get the video-on-demand package for $15, which will get you VOD access from April 9 to April 14.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston , will feature the “Hero’s Journey” during Moonlight Movies , their new series of outdoor screenings which kicks off on Saturday, April 6, at 8 p.m. with. You can enjoy Judy Garland’s classic turn as Dorothy, a young girl from Kansas trying to find her way home from the magical land of Oz, in the Victor Fleming-directed film from the roof of the Glassell School of Art in the Amphitheater on The Brown Foundation, Inc. Plaza . And don’t worry, the museum is providing the popcorn. The outdoor screenings will continue on April 13 withand April 20 with. Tickets are available here for $15 to $20.
Head down to Tony Marron Park in Houston's East End on Saturday, April 6, from 8 to 10 p.m. for NIGHT LIGHT 2024. Buffalo Bayou Partnership and Aurora Picture Show team up again for the third time to present new, site-specific video art installations projected along a half-mile stretch of waterfront trails. Work from Houston-based artists Ronald Llewellyn Jones, Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin and Violette Bule will be displayed as well as the premiere of New York-based, Ethiopian-born artist Ezra Wube’s HomeBayou, a stop-motion animated film made in collaboration with folks from the Greater East End and Fifth Ward. In addition to the art, be sure to check out the market, with food trucks, vendors, artisans, and music by DJ Gracie Chavez. Register online here (registration requested, but not required).
We may not know exactly when the kite was invented, but we do know that the “earliest written account of kite flying” dates back to China in 200 BC, when General Han Hsin used a kite to see “how far his army would have to tunnel to reach past the defenses” of the city he was attacking. Nowadays, kite-flying is more a leisure activity, one you can enjoy on Sunday, April 7, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the Hermann Park Conservancy's Kite Festival. Head over to Miller Hill and the Jones Reflection Pool in Hermann Park for the free, open-to-the-public event, which includes not only plenty of kites but live music, jugglers, stilt walkers, games, face painting and more. You can see the full performance schedule here and a map here.