Vero Beach’s First Friday gallery stroll includes a talented new artist showing at Raw Space at Edgewood. Lisa Steffens, who was raised in New York’s Hudson Valley and lived 20 years in the U.K., has integrated herself into the art scene locally since moving here a few years ago and her oil paintings and monotypes have taken a decidedly Floridian slant. Along with Friday’s reception at the gallery stroll, Steffens is leading a workshop in drawing from a costumed model next Saturday, Oct. 15. Steffens will offer guidance from 10 a.m. to noon, with an open session with long poses from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. A $20 donation is suggested for the day.
Oct. 14, Palm Beach Dramaworks opens the season with “The Night of the Iguana,” Tennessee Williams’ last play. Based on a short story he wrote in 1948, the stage play debuted in 1961, about a minister, banished by his congregation after referring to God in a sermon as a “senile delinquent,” who has a nervous breakdown, finds a job as a travel host, and is accused of sleeping with a 16-year-old girl on his tour. Through a tangle of personalities the minister meets, the plot twists come back to his one deep friendship with a kind, single woman working as a traveling artist.
At Vero’s Majestic Theatre, Met Live in HD begins its season Saturday with Wagner’s iconic “Tristan und Isold.” The new production by Mariusz Trelinski features top Wagnerians Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton as the lovers during a medieval war between Cornwall and Ireland. Sir Simon Rattle conducts the legendary four-hour score in a rare Met appearance. You will certainly get your money’s worth: $26.75. The opera starts at noon Saturday and is repeated Tuesday at 7 p.m. for $21.40.
If you’re reading this on Thursday you may have a shot at seeing another great love story simulcast at the Majestic, this time set in mid-century West London: Terrence Rattigan’s “The Deep Blue Sea.” Helen McCrory stars in what many consider the greatest female role in contemporary drama. The play begins as she is rescued from a suicide attempt, and tells the story of her passionate affair with a former Royal Air Force pilot and the breakup of her marriage to a High Court judge. The simulcast is at 2 p.m. Thursday with a repeat at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20.
Vero’s Riverside Theatre is throwing open the stage door Oct. 11 and Oct. 27 to audition both Equity and non-Equity actors for the upcoming season.
They’ll be casting for January’s “Chicago” and April’s “Saturday Night Fever,” both directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford; “Mame” and Noel Coward’s “Private Lives,” both directed by Jimmy Brennan; and “An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf” and “The Christians,” both directed by Riverside’s Allen Cornell for the Second Stage series.
