Six locally produced short films, all directed by women, will have their Atlanta premiere at The Plaza Theater – 1049 Ponce de Leon Avenue – Friday, March 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 22 at 2 p.m.
For many of the women, this is their first-time directing, although all are experienced film professionals who work as producers, writers, actors, assistant directors, and casting directors. The 2009 Woman’s Angle shorts feature “A Peacock Feathered Blue” by Jenna Milly; “Playgirl” by Melanie Mascioli; “Wheels” by Tracy Martin; “Love Happens” by Dellis Caden Noble; “Flights of Angels” by Kimberly Jurgen and “Happy Hour” by Angela Barnes Gomes.
All films were shot in Atlanta in 2008 and are self-financed. The directors served as volunteer crew members for each other’s films in various roles to learn from each other and strengthen their networks for future projects. The screening promises a mix of comedy, kitsch, drama and experimentation.
The Woman’s Angle educates, mentors and promotes women directors, and relies on the support and guidance of highly respected film industry professionals to lead intensive workshops for men and women filmmakers in Atlanta.
Tickets for the 90-minute screening are $10 and include a party with the directors after the show. Reservations are recommended. To order, visit The Woman’s Angle.

Dancers: Dylan G-Bowley, Ashley Werhun, Annali Rose, Brett Perry Ballet: The Reassuring Effects (of Form and Poetry) Photographer: Rudick
If you missed it tonight at the Rialto Center for the Arts, go see the Trey McIntyre Project somewhere, sometime. In its first year as a full-time dance company, the TMP will perform in 25 cities around the U.S., as well as in a few countries, including Hungary.
Trey McIntyre’s eclectic choreography consists of a mixture of contemporary and ballet styles, which his dancers make their own with style and feeling. At any moment, had you taken a snapshot, the perfect ballet lines of the bodies and the emotion were all there, as the dancers flowed together effortlessly.
The first half of the program featured dances choreographed to children’s folk songs, such as “Puff the Magic Dragon.” It closed with a more serious tune by classical avant-garde composer Henry Cowell.
The second half of the show featured a mixture of songs by The Beatles that the choreography melted into, highlighting a sense of fun, humor and grace.
Two of the dancers, John Michael Schert and Chanel DaSilva, engaged in a talk-back session at the end of the show. Schert originally hails from Valdosta, Ga., where he began his dance education at a local dance studio. He leapt to the North Carolina School of the Arts and later danced with the American Ballet Theatre. DaSilva, from Brooklyn, N.Y., joined the company along with three other of the company’s eight dancers, immediately after graduating from The Julliard School.
Due to its success over the past three years as a summer touring company, TMP’s patrons and sponsors convinced it to become a full-time, year-round company. Before starting TMP, McIntryre had choreographed for numerous dance companies around the country, including American Ballet Theatre, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and New York City Ballet.
Mime, clown, magician, storyteller, acrobat, actor, musician. No one word could quite describe Tomáš Kubínek.
Kubínek, who performed at the Rialto Center for the Arts Saturday in Atlanta, transforms himself from a Vaudevillian performer to a Dickens-like storyteller. He recalls his childhood growing up so poor that all eight children shared one piece of hard candy that his grandmother gave them. The children would line up in a row, and each child would get 10 seconds to suck the piece of candy and pass it down the line until it got to the wee, youngest, Tomáš himself, who would suck it for a full 20 seconds before passing it back up the line to the oldest child and back down again until it had totally been dissolved. Kubínek acts out the telling of it in such detail, milking the moments, miming everything so perfectly, you can almost see all the children lined up waiting for their turn to suck on the candy.
While performing a magic act, Kubínek borrows from The Marx Brothers’ film “Animal Crackers,” in which Harpo, another mime, has stolen a slew of silverware and gets caught when one by one the pieces fall out of his sleeve. Groucho then says, “I can’t imagine what’s holding up that coffee pot.”
Kubínek’s version is a little bit different. He ventures into the audience climbing on the backs of the seats in which patrons sit, and carries a woman’s purse back onto the stage with him. He riffles through it while delivering humorous commentary on its contents. Finally, he dares to look inside her wallet and amazingly finds the red scarf he earlier had made disappear. Just as he is about to return the purse, he spots something, and slowly, one by one he pulls out nearly a dozen pieces of silverware which he repeatedly drops onto the floor, and ends with a remark about a coffee pot being in there somewhere.
Throughout his act, Kubínek engages the audience, and even brings one unsuspecting patron to the stage to perform an acrobatic balancing act. And, like Groucho before him, Kubínek is a master at firing back snappy quips to the audience.
Clearly Kubínek borrows from Vaudevillian masters, but he makes everything he does his own. In one scene he straps on an awkward contraption with four feet that he buckles around his knees, and walks around on six feet. Strange, nutty, and funny! He also performs an amazing acrobatic feat without using his hands. All while balancing a glass of red wine on his forehead, he whistles and plays a tune on the ukulele, balances on one leg, drops down and reclines on his back, uses only his knees to raise the wine glass from his forehead and places it behind his head, does a somersault and picks up the glass with his mouth and drinks it dry. A toast to Tomáš Kubínek.
Betty Hart brings it all, heart, soul and feeling, in Dancing Monkey’s newest cabaret, “The Other Side of Love.” Too bad she only gets two numbers, as they are two of the show’s best: “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” from the musical “Show Boat,” and a parody of a doo-wop tune written by “Weird Al” Yankovic called “One More Minute,” whose lyrics include, “I’d rather dive into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades rather than spend one more minute with you.”
Unfortunately, that’s my sentiments about parts of the show, which is filled with campy acts and performers who don’t quite hit the mark on the musical numbers or in the dancing or acting department. It’s not just the amateur routines that make you want to stick needles in your eyes, it’s the over-the-top acting that lacks any truthfulness.
The shame is so much time is wasted on kitschy skits that it’s not until the very end that we see the true talent of some of the performers. Only then does Aaron Gotlieb get to show his acting chops in a monologue by Topher Payne. And Adam Montague and Casey Holloway, who play a newlywed couple in jejune skits where neither of them shines, should have been singing all along. They close the show with “They Were You” from Tom Jones’ musical “The Fantasticks,” and it is only then that we see they really are fantastic.
The show runs Feb. 27-March 1 at The Academy Theatre in Avondale Estates.
Forget that Cliff never called like he said he would, even after all that online flirting on JDate. This weekend love is promised at Dancing Monkey Cabaret’s show “The Other Side of Love,” featuring actors and singers Betty Hart and Matthew Trautwein.
I haven’t heard either of them sing, but I know Betty from Working Title Playwrights, a group dedicated to writing and performing plays, and based upon her acting, I’m betting she’s a great singer. Trautwein, whose work I don’t know, has been praised in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for his “lovely tenor singing.” I’ll attend a dress rehearsal and report my findings.
The show will be held Feb. 27-March 1 at The Academy Theatre in Avondale Estates.

