George Schiavone

GableStage's current production, Cock.

Did you miss out on all the free Cock last week? Don't fret -- the South Florida Theater League is doing its best to pack theaters full for all the region's summertime performances. And if that means giving tickets away for free, so be it.

The league's Free Night of Theater promotion gives South Florida audiences the chance to win tickets to shows from GableStage to Actor's Playhouse to Mad Cat Theater Company.

See also:
- Cock: A Sexually Charged Story Without Onstage Sex

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George Schiavone

GableStage's production of Cock contains what might go down (pun intended) as the most arousing sex scene you'll see onstage all year. Except you won't actually see it. Contrary to the expectations of its saucy title, Cock is chaste as can be. Physical contact is limited to the occasional embrace of hands in this rendition, and even those moments seem to defy the strict orders of UK playwright Mike Bartlett.

There are no props, and nobody mimes his actions. There is only one sound effect. Three of the characters don't even have names. The set is a purely abstract space, hardly reflective of the kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, cafés, and subway stations where the action takes place. This is theater of the mind, a play that would sound minimalist even on the radio.

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Alberto Romeu

To revive an axiom that President Obama directed at the ideas of a certain failed vice presidential candidate from Alaska: Actors' Playhouse's production of The Fox on the Fairway is, at best, lipstick on a pig. As pretty as the company presents it, it's still an ugly, desperate, virtually witless thing -- a madcap farce with as about as many laughs as an average PBS NewsHour. It's been a uniformly successful season for Actors' Playhouse, but I suppose even superior car lots have jalopies.

An homage to English farces of the 1930s, The Fox on the Fairway is the latest effort from Ken Ludwig, an American playwright specializing in old-timey audience-pleasers that tend to make Neil Simon look edgy. His most famous work, Lend Me a Tenor, about mistaken identity and other shenanigans at an opera house, can be an awfully funny night at the theater. But The Fox is a hopeless case. Even in a production chockablock with top South Florida talent, the play feels woefully uninspired, a wheezy example of exhausted escapism.

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George Schiavone

Free Cock?! Yeah, it's a cheap ploy to grab your attention. But it's also true: We're giving away free tickets to GableStage's upcoming performance of the show titled -- no, really -- Cock.

Not since The Motherfucker With the Hat has GableStage mounted a play with a title as controversial - it's right up there with previous GableStage provocations as Fat Pig and Smut. And no, Cock has nothing to do with a rooster.

Find out how to win after the jump.

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Rehearsals at Storycrafter Studio.

Mark your calendars: There will be swordfighting on Miami Beach this summer. Well, not on the beach, exactly, but in a small theater steps away from the sand.

Storycrafter Studio, Miami's latest addition to its thriving theater community, will open its first full-length production not with a bang but with the joust of a blade.

The Sword Bride, scheduled to run June 6 to July 7 at Storycrafter's black box theater at 7329 Collins Ave., is an ambitious sword-and-sorcery epic recommended for fans of Game of Thrones, and the company is going all out to provide a visceral, cinematic experience, even hiring a Hollywood stunt coordinator for the stage fighting.

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First produced in 2007, Evan Smith's The Savannah Disputation is a holy war in microcosm - an acerbic verbal brawl on a single suburban property, currently receiving an exceptional production from Zoetic Stage at the Arsht Center.

Barbara Bradshaw and Laura Turnbull play Mary and Margaret, Roman Catholic sisters cohabitating on a leafy street in Savannah, Georgia. It's obvious from the first moment who wears the pants in their arrangement; for the loud, obnoxious Mary, gossip is a second language, and she spares no insults for the filthy, rude, phony Catholics with whom she shares her pews. She bullies Margaret, whose docile demeanor and lack of religious rectitude makes her an ideal target for new neighbor Melissa (Lindsey Forgey), a peroxide blonde with a beaming smile, a peachy southern drawl, and a box of literature emblazoned with a "Jesus: Change We Can Believe In" sticker. Melissa worships at a small but extreme fundamentalist church that believes Catholics, with their worship of statues and popes (aka false idols) and misguided dogmas, are headed straight for eternal damnation - for only her sect is the one true faith.

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via londonist.com

Lewis Carroll + street art = Alice in Wynwoodland.

Miami is nothing if not a rabbit hole, a place where doe-eyed innocents, much like Alice, gather en masse and then disappear into a surreal void where they meet tweaked-out freaks and crazy characters. So an Alice in Wonderland-themed event seems incredibly appropriate for our far-out fantasyland.

Enter Alice in Wynwoodland. The intriguing concept, a costumed bike ride/theater performance, is the collaborative brainchild of the Front Yard Theater Collective (FYTC) and local bike champion Emerge Miami. So on April 27, bike riders across Miami can don their best Cheshire Cat getups and take to the streets to follow Alice on her trippy trip through the ether.

The premise: What would happen if Alice's final destination were Wynwood instead of Wonderland?

See also:
- Miami-Dade's BIKE305 Initiative Aims to Add Hundreds of Miles of New Bike Paths
- DecoBike is Coming to Miami (Pending Commission Approval)

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Charming Acts of Misery's Jessica Farr.

On the surface, British fashion muse Isabella Blow did not lead a very comical life. A fashion editor of the glossy magazine Tatler and the discoverer of acclaimed designer Alexander McQueen and milliner Philip Treacy, Blow -- AKA "Issi" -- was disowned by her parents and suffered from nearly lifelong clinical depression worsened by infertility, electroshock therapy, and an ovarian cancer diagnosis. She attempted suicide six times -- not limited to sleeping pills, horse tranquilizers, car crashes, and drowning -- before succeeding the seventh time by ingesting weed killer.

So a script about Blow's life, which reached its painful end in 2007, doesn't seem appropriate for a laugh riot such as the South Beach Comedy Festival. But Jessica Farr's play Charming Acts of Misery will kick off the festival Wednesday, April 17, as the Mad Cat Theatre Company's annual SoBe Comedy Fest production. According to director Paul Tei, the humor will transcend the pain.

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Merrell Virgin/VSPOT Photography

He'd entered the ring with a respectable 16-1 record, seven of which were by knockout. But despite a six-inch reach advantage against his opponent and the genetic predisposition of a former heavyweight champion, Marvis Frazier was likely the only person inside Glens Falls Civic Center on July 26, 1988, who actually thought he stood a chance against a 24-0 "Iron" Mike Tyson.

"It is not a matter of if Mike Tyson knocks out Marvis Frazier," opined boxing commentator Alex Wallau before the fight. "It's just a matter of when."

Tyson went on to earn his 25th victory that night, landing a ferocious uppercut some 20-odd seconds into the bout.

"I knew deep down in my blood that I was going to stop him in the first round," he said with a menacing straight face after the fight. "I'm confident I can beat any fighter in the world."

He almost did.

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"I've wanted another one of these for so long," a gracious Lela Elam said last night as she accepted the Carbonell Award for Best Actress in a Play for her work in GableStage's Ruined. "I think they just look better as a set."

For Elam, who won a Carbonell in 2008 for GableStage's In the Continuum, it was a brief moment of levity in an otherwise tearful and moving acceptance speech -- and she wasn't the only actor to struggle to keep her composure.

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