Houston News Blog

Timothy Eric plays Blind Jordan in the current production of The Sty of the Blind Pig at the Ensemble Theatre. Blind Jordan is searching for a woman from his past when he knocks on the door of Alberta’s apartment. When Alberta decides to help Blind Jordan search for the woman he’s looking for, her domineering and manipulative mother starts scheming and plotting ways to stop the two from forming any kind of relationship.

Timothy Eric, a veteran Houston actor, stopped by the Houston Press offices to discuss The Sty of the Blind Pig with Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez. To hear a Radio Houstoned podcast with Timothy Eric and Olivia Flores Alvarez, click the button below:

The Sty of the Blind Pig is performed 7:30 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays; and 3 p.m. Sundays. Through April 13. 3535 Main. For tickets and information, call 713-520-0055 or visit www.ensemblehouston.com. $15 to $35.

Click here for a Houston Press review of The Sty of the Blind Pig. -- Olivia Flores Alvarez

Click the button below to listen to Nevada Barr reading from her latest work, followed by an interview with Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez...

Nevada Barr fans have been anxiously awaiting the 14th installment of the Anna Pigeon series of mysteries and Winter Study does not disappoint. Set on Isle Royal in Lake Superior, where temperatures are around zero 24 hours a day, Winter Study follows Pigeon as she joins a wolf study team. As if being stuck in an icy camp out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of brainiac, self-absorbed scientists isn’t bad enough, Pigeon has to contend with a couple of Homeland Security bureaucrats and giant wolf right off Dr. Moreau’s island.

Catch Nevada Barr as she reads from Winter Study at 6:30 p.m. today. Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-524-8597 or visit www.murderbooks.com. Free. – Olivia Flores Alvarez

Houston vocalist Kristine Mills was at a cocktail party when she bumped into artist/curator Wade Wilson. In between chitchat and mixed drinks, the two came up with Wade Wilson Art’s Second Anniversary Party, a combo art exhibit/jazz concert benefiting Texas Children’s Hospital and Houston Center for Photography. Joining Mills will be members of the famed Duke Ellington Orchestra. It’s a little pricey, but hey, cough it up – it’s for a good cause. 7 p.m. Today. 4411 Montrose. For information, call 713-521-2977 or visit www.wadewilsonart.com. $100 to $500. -- Olivia Flores Alvarez

To listen to an interview with Kristine Mills and Houston Press Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez , click the button below.

And here are a few more tunes from Kristine’s newest album.

Click the LISTEN button below for a preview...

Angelina Jolie can’t save all the orphans in Africa, can she? Thankfully, the orphans of the African Children’s Choir are saving themselves. The choir, started 23 years ago, takes orphaned or abandoned African children with amazing musical talent on a worldwide tour to raise awareness of the plight of Africa’s youngest citizens, including children from Darfur, Sudan, Chad and Kenya. You can see them perform today at 8 p.m. Wortham Center, 500 Texas Avenue. For information, call 713-227-2787 or visit www.houstonballet.org. $17 to $47. — Francisca Ortega

It’s your last chance to catch the musical Altar Boyz at Stages Repertory Theatre this weekend. The story of a Christian boy band, Altar Boyz is a bit of fluff, but fun fluff nonetheless.

You can read what our reviewer Lee Williams had to say about the show here, and click the button below to listen to one of the show’s songs.

Altar Boyz runs at 8 p.m. tonight, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. tomorrow and 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway. For tickets and information, call 713-527-0123 or visit www.stagestheatre.com. $26 to $36.— Olivia Flores Alvarez

Click the button below for an interview with El Mero Cocinero and Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez.

Robert Karimi puts together comedy, food, politics and culture to serve up the off-Broadway comedy The Cooking Show. “The show is about a progressive chef that wants to change the world, one recipe at a time,” Karimi says. The chef, a.k.a. Mero Cocinero, “went to the Paolo Freire Culinary Institute; it’s a cooking school that you cannot find because they are clandestine and they believe that cooking is a political act that brings communities together. [He has] a sidekick, Comrade Castro, who is a flunky from the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. Mero Cocinero is Iranian/Guatemalan like me, and Comrade Castro is Filipino, and we do our Iranian-Guatemalan-Filipino fusion, which means we cook whatever the hell we want.”

Click the button below for a Radio Houstoned podcast with Rebekah Dahl and Houston Press Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez.

How do you go from a boyish tomboy to a sexy, sultry burlesque star? Well, it helps if you have a domineering, fame-crazed mother. Gypsy has that. The true (well, kinda) story of Gypsy Rose Lee, Masquerade Theatre’s production stars Rebekah Dahl as Mama Rose and Laura Gray as Gypsy. The musical shows Lee’s beginnings as the child star of her mother’s vaudeville act, Madame Rose's Dancing Daughters, and how she “accidentally” becomes a stripper - hey, it’s possible. (Here’s a little Gypsy trivia for you: Word is Sigourney Weaver is slated to play Gypsy in an upcoming HBO bio-pic based on My G-String Mother, a memoir written by Lee’s son, Erik Lee Preminger.)

Click the button below to listen to Martin Limón reading from The Wandering Ghost.

In Martin Limón’s The Wandering Ghost, it’s the early 1970s and a female MP is AWOL from the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Or is she? Maybe she’s been kidnapped. Maybe she’s been raped and murdered. Nobody knows for sure, but Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom aim to find out. Oh, and while they’re at it, they’re looking into another soldier’s supposed suicide, a stripper on the run, an overactive black market and the wandering ghost of a schoolgirl killed by a speeding army truck.

Click the button below for Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez's interview with author Clive Cussler.

New York Times bestselling author Clive Cussler is a lot like the men he writes about -- he’s tough, weather-worn and always ready for an adventure. For his latest book, The Chase, Cussler has left Dirk Pitt (the lead in 19 Cussler novels) at home and instead taken up the story of detective Isaac Bell.

Click the button below for a Radio Houstoned interview with director Steven Fenley and Houston Press Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez.

You think you know Dracula? Think again. In Texas Repertory Theatre’s new production, the king of vampires is equal parts horror and humor, suspense and seduction. “What [playwright] Stephen Dietz has done is to go back to the way the book was written,” says Steven Fenley, the play’s director. “If you read Bram Stoker’s novel, it’s all told in journal entries and news reports and little pieces, and you’re asked to put the story together in your mind; and Dietz has really captured that. There’s something that’s pure evil about [Dracula], and then there’s something that’s a little sad about him. It’s a monster of a play.”