Family

Art Car Parade

The highlight of Art Car weekend is the parade, featuring 300 or so cars slowly tooling down Allen Parkway from Waugh Drive to Bagby. Come early to get a prime viewing spot along the parade route, and don’t forget your lawn chairs, sunscreen, and water bottles. 

May 11 from 1–3
Free 
Allen Parkway from Waugh Dr to Bagby St 
thehoustonartcarparade.com 

Film

Dracula with Live Score by the Philip Glass Ensemble 

Glass, who has been called “the most powerful composer of our time” by the Daily Telegraph, returns to Houston to conduct his original score to the granddaddy of all vampire films, Tod Browning’s 1931 classic, starring the inimitable Bela Lugosi as the Transylvanian bloodsucker. Twilight, schmilight.

May 10 at 8
$50–80
Jones Hall
615 Louisiana St
832-487-7050
spahouston.org 

Theater

There is a Happiness That Morning Is 

Two William Blake scholars, inspired by Blake’s poetry, decide to make love in public, an act that occurs before the curtain rises. Mickle Maher’s play consists of two lectures in rhymed verse, one by each of the offending academics, who must decide whether to apologize for their actions or lose tenure. These days, the road of excess leads only to the palace of unemployment. 

May 10–25
$10–50
Catastrophic Theatre
1119 East Frwy
713-522-2723
catastrophictheatre.com 

Dance

Houston Ballet Presents Madame Butterfly 

An Australian Ballet production that debuted in 1995, this beloved interpretation was Stanton Welch’s first full-length ballet. Now the artistic director of the Houston Ballet, Welch is giving this audience favorite an al fresco revival. Set to the music of Puccini’s opera, it tells the story of Cio-Cio-San, a beautiful Japanese geisha who gives up her faith and family to marry Pinkerton, a cynical American naval officer in nineteenth-century Japan. 

May 10–12 at 8
Free
Miller Outdoor Theatre
6000 Hermann Park Dr.
281-373-3386
milleroutdoortheatre.com 

Visual Art

Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust 

The United States likes to boast that it won WWII, but we often forget that eighteen million Soviet citizens gave their lives to defeat Hitler, compared to around 300,000 Americans. This exhibition of photographs from Soviet war journalists, many of them Jewish, shows the “Great Patriotic War” from the Russian perspective, including some of the first photographs of Nazi death camps. Based on an award-winning book by David Schneer, who curates the exhibition.

Thru Oct 25
Holocaust Museum Houston
5401 Caroline St.
713-942-8000
hmh.org