Photo by Paul Kolnik

Everyone's favorite blue men return to Houston for an eight-performance engagement at Jones Hall from June 4 to June 9. Blue Man Group's touring production brings together all of its trademark elements: original instrumental rhythms, mind-altering video projections and unforgettable sound design. Part music concert, part multimedia art project, Blue Man Group is all parts theatrical spectacle. As any iPhone user knows, all things tech become dated, but there's a reason why this performing troupe has stayed a hot ticket since the early '90s. Underneath all that blue paint and computer-generated imagery, Blue Man Group has a heart.

"We say that no matter how high-tech things get, there's still something human there. We'll always need others, always need to collaborate," says co-founder and original Blue Man Philip Stanton via press materials." People still need to come together and look each other in the eye. Through the Blue Man's connection with the audience, we hope to encourage this human-to-human interaction, while helping people reconnect with their own sense of wonder and discovery, with their own sense of what is possible in their lives."

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Your humble narrator was part of a Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow cast for the better part of a decade. I spent every Saturday night in Frank-n-Furter's fishnets singing "Sweet Transvestite" and soaking up the unique ambience of carnival and cabaret that comes from the experience. There is simply nothing like it. They don't call it a cult classic for nothing.

You can get the same experience once a month at the River Oaks Theatre here in Houston, but the After Midnight Cast specializes in rolling road shows that bring the magic and mockery to wherever it might be appropriate. This weekend at Comicpalooza they'll set-up shop with three different performances.

Of course they'll do Rocky, but the experience is somewhat different than the one people have been flocking to at midnight for the last three decades.

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Photo by Julie Lemberger

In Underland, eclectic videography, movement, and costume work together to build a world onstage

The Setup
In 2003, Sydney Dance Company commissioned Steven Petronio to create a ballet for them. Inspired by the music of Australian musician Nick Cave, his collaborator on this work, Petronio conceived Underland, a chilling piece exploring the dark motifs of Cave's music. The Sydney Dance Company's license on Underland recently ended, and last Friday evening, thanks to the Society of the Performing Arts, Petronio's own company brought this world to life in the Wortham Theater Center.

The Execution
A web of ropes hangs from the rafters, motionless. Three rectangular screens loom in the background. As light creeps onto the stage, so creeps a man slowly down the web, his legs bent out like a frog's. The screen farthest from him shows a close-up of him in his descent, while sped-up clips of fire, marches, funerals, and streets sputter across the adjacent two. It's enchanting, yet disorienting - it's our welcome to Underland.

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Monica Fuentes

Daytime commuters downtown got a surprise this afternoon thanks to Theatre Under the Stars. That's because Peter Pan (and nemesis Captain Hook) opted to ride the light rail to Neverland instead of flying.

The ride was coordinated by TUTS to help drum up excitement for the Emmy Award-winning musical, which opens December 11 at the Hobby Center.

Last month, editor Margaret Downing talked to legendary actress Cathy Rigby, who, at age 60, is still performing as Peter Pan. On this ride, Peter and Captain Hook managed to get along pretty well, minus a brief skirmish at the Main Street stop. (That's TUTS actress and teacher Kristin Warren as Peter Pan and Sam Byrd, TUTS PR manager, as Hook, in the photo above.)

Check out the video after the jump.

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Photo by David Bullanday Photography

The Setup
On November 9 and 10, Revolve Dance Company takes over Barnevelder Theater to present its fall concert Nexus, a collection of new pieces imagined by a variety of choreographers, including its co-directors and founding members.

The Execution
The pieces comprising Nexus were an eclectic bunch, spanning a variety of genres and themes. While they did not deliberately share a narrative, these pieces aligned themselves in order of increasing sophistication in movement quality and staging.

The first piece, "Let's Go for a Ride," was energetic on the surface, as women in brightly colored flapper dresses took turns seducing (man)nequins on roller skates to the tune of a pop song laced with Andrews Sisters riffs. Beyond its novelty, however, it felt somewhat underdeveloped. The movement held extremely tightly to the music, feeling more like a direct translation than an interpretation. Orders of solos and movement phrases became quickly predictable, and the dancers threw a number of smiles at the audience which, while cute at first, came across as needy by the end of the piece.

An issue that arose in "Ride" and also in the third piece, "Sound of Silence," was the sheer number of dancers on stage. It should be noted that managing 12 dancers on stage in an intimate venue is no small feat. If there is no focal point, unison movement can look very blurry, and if spacings are not exaggerated, the density of dancers on stage can appear to remain the same throughout the piece. In both of these works, there were times when the movement and staging may have been crisper on three or four dancers instead of a dozen.

That said, there are also incredibly powerful and sophisticated ways to use 12 dancers on stage, and these are what Revolve spent the last two-thirds of the show exploring to remarkable ends.

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You too could be this gorgeous

This video was shot and edited by Norma Vasquez. It's the first of three we'll be posting on consecutive Tuesdays.

The second annual Zombie Walk Downtown is approaching and we wanted to help you represent well on the journey. It's a chance to do good while looking grotesquely great.

The October 27 walk benefits the Houston Children's Charity, the Houston Humane Society and Dove Key Ranch Wildlife Rehab.

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Tom Stell, a man of many talents

What He Does:
Tom Stell does a lot of creative things; most of them are specifically related to theater, but not all. He is a writer, director, actor and he also paints. Stell is also one of the reasons so much theater is produced in Houston; he is the Executive Director of Obsidian Art Space, which boasts a packed schedule of local theatrical performances as well as being named Houston Press' "Best New Arts Venue" of 2011.

Tom's acting and playwriting has also gotten him some street cred. He produced, directed and acted in his original full-length production Republic Day, which reviewer Jim J. Tommaney deemed "an ambitiously epic drama." Stell has acted and directed numerous works over the years, most previously in Big Head Productions' collection of shorts "And I Feel Fine."

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Photo by Lynn Lane

Damian Robichaux of Karen Stokes Dance

The Hobby Center teemed with people and activity on Sunday afternoon. Lines packed the lobby as anxious Les Misérables fans vied for tickets. A trio of food trucks stood outside the front doors, motors grumbling, doling out cake balls and burritos. Trolleys unloaded dozens of theater-goers only to pack in dozens more, and theater employees passed out handbags and samples of lemonade and iced tea to passers-by. It was 12:30 p.m., and the 19th Annual Theater District Open House was in full swing.

Meanwhile, samples of a more artistic variety were being distributed inside Zilkha and Sarofim Halls. Every year, Open House features brief performances by some of Houston's finest arts groups, taking place not only at the Hobby Center, but also at the Alley Theatre, Jones Hall, and the Wortham Theater Center. All performances are free to the public, which makes Open House a wonderful opportunity for those unfamiliar with certain aspects of Houston performance art to taste it themselves.

This is a unique opportunity for the arts groups as well, since Open House can serve as a venue to introduce work to uninitiated audiences. That said, the event poses its own set of challenges to some of these groups. Audience members move in and out of the performance spaces constantly. Transitions must happen quickly, so sets and props must be kept to a minimum. Not to mention, the entire audience may be brand new to your work.

That's not to say that these constraints cannot be handled gracefully - they certainly were by Karen Stokes Dance.

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Courtesy of Fresh Arts

Lisa Chow + Y.E. Torres = awesome

Once upon a time a salacious, R-rated performance artist who calls herself a "bad unicorn" hijacked a PG-rated visual artist notorious for her sweet-as-pie creations. The result of this artistic commandeering is a visual and performance-based collaboration to end all collaborations.

Meet Lisa Chow. She is a Houston-based illustrator with an overactive imagination that you might liken to that of a child. Her work is described as "delicate, surreal and strange." Imagine pastel-colored Easter bunnies wrapped in sparkles and hugs. Since graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Chow has been spreading her fantastical paintings and drawings all across Texas. But when she applied for a show at the coveted Spacetaker Gallery, something magical happened, and this magic comes to fruition Sunday, July 29, with an afternoon tea party.

"The idea was actually conceived by Jenni and K.C. at Fresh Arts (née Spacetaker)," Chow tells us of the grand scheme in a recent interview. "And I thought it was awesome!"

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Photo by Lisa Ramirez

Comedian Chris Trew air-sexes up an invisible lady.

Check out our slideshow of the Houston Air Sex Championships

I got a lot of puzzled looks when I told people I was going to cover the Houston Air Sex Championships at Fitzgerald's last night. Don't pretend like you've never played air guitar or air drums. Well, air sex is the same thing: making love to an imaginary object of passion.

The competition was sponsored by The New Movement, an improv comedy conservatory based in New Orleans, Houston and Austin, and was hosted by New Movement co-founder Chris Trew. Trew explained the rules: "You either have to be fucking, or working towards fucking, someone or something invisible." That means foreplay! It also means you can't just get up onstage and dance all sexy-like, as was the case with one female contestant whom Trew had to keep reminding to return to the task at, ahem, hand.

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