It’s almost that time of year when the NYC Fringe Festival dominates the theater scene with hundreds of new shows of wildly varying quality. But before the Fringe sucks the air out of the room in August, it’s worth noting that July is packed with a number of smaller, more manageable and generally more-reliable theater festivals. For starters: more ›

MOVIE: Tonight the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series delivers two very different films. First up is The French Riviera, described as "a road documentary that follows a truck driver on a mission to earn enough money selling ice cream in the Icelandic countryside to go on a vacation on a French beach." more ›

COMEDY: In November, shortly after the WGA strike sent SNL to reruns, the cast took the UCB Theater stage for an off-air show. If you missed that one, there's a chance to catch some of the cast doing stand-up at Comix tonight. The site says "sold out" but the people at the venue say they just added more tickets! So give a call and enjoy "An Evening with the Writers and Performers from Saturday Night Live." The money raised will go toward the Writers Guild of America. And yes, Andy Samberg (pictured with cat) will be there. Andy Samberg, originally scheduled to be there, has dropped out of the show. more ›

SHOP: Want to pick up some cheap(er) fashions by John Varvatos -- the rock n' roll designer taking over the CBGB space next year? Head to a sample sale today to get in on some 80% off clothing, footwear and accessories. more ›

TIP: According to Paper's Mr. Mickey, Chloë Sevigny is having a tag sale on her block this Saturday. We're guessing there will be lots of vintage Balenciaga. Check out her apartment in House & Garden...pretty nice! more ›

THEATER: With his zany imagination and distinctive bass-baritone voice, Joseph Keckler (myspace) has been generating buzz throughout the gooey honeycomb of the downtown performance art cabaret scene. Tonight he sprinkles his particular blend of whimsical catnip at Dixon Place with Cat Lady, in which a man re-enacts an ordinary day with his mother, who runs a community theater with cat actors out of her home. “Past lives are recalled, songs are sung, and finally a trip to the vet's is made in this comedic and dark exploration of the relationship between art and trauma.” Part of the HOT! Festival. – John Del Signore more ›

MOVIE: It's certainly not the kind of night for an outdoor movie, so we suggest sitting in the cool a/c and watching the 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead. "Gone is the possibility of mankind’s dominance in this sequel to Night of the Living Dead; the zombies are in control now, with a group of AWOL soldiers and TV producers on the run from the staggering hordes. A deserted shopping mall offers a safe hideout, as well as the setup for Romero’s savage satire on consumer culture." The early screening will be introduced by producer Richard Rubenstein, more info here. more ›

MOVIES: It's a perfect night to head to the movies. Get a double-feature in at the MoMA with Fabricating Tom Zé followed by David Cronenberg's Crash. Let's focus on the former film. Tom Zé (pictured) is a Brazilian songwriter and composer and this documentary (filmed during a 2005 European tour) charts his "personal universe". Zé is an "uncompromising and inspired artist...seen by many (including David Byrne and Arto Lindsay) as revitalizing the ever-evolving Tropicalia movement. Zé, who narrates his own story, is a very special musical phenomenon in a genre mostly associated with Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil—both of whom warmly assess the musical genius of their friend." more ›

ART: A Cloudy Day's Epiphany is an exhibit including artists Devendra Banhart, Andrew Guenther, Brent Ridge, Dash Snow and Valaire van Slyck. You love Dash Snow, right? The idea is to explore the ephiphany as artistic inspiration. More on the show here. more ›

THEATER: The Ledge is a multi-media solo show based on a 1959 short story by Lawrence Sargent Hall. The production uses video projection as the only source of stage lighting to tell the haunting tale of a fisherman who becomes stranded with his son and nephew on a small reef off the New England coast in winter. When his wife ultimately finds his frozen body, he is compelled by her eyes to relive his last hours holding the boys above the icy waters. Martin Denton praised the Dixon Place workshop production of The Ledge as “a theatrical experience of rare power and beauty: an exploration of our humanity that has the profound capacity to move and uplift its audience.” - John Del Signore more ›

THEATER: Jude Narita's one-woman show, Walk the Mountain, is about the hellish effects of the Vietnam War. In the wrong hands, this might make for an unbearably ponderous evening, but the Times review puts us at ease: “In dramatizing unspeakably horrific events, must an artist end up brutalizing her audience as well? [Jude Narita] reminds us that it's possible for a performer to treat both her material and her audience with respect.” For Walk the Mountain, Ms. Narita interviewed Vietnamese and Cambodian women who survived the horror and traces the country’s history of resistance back to 39 A.D., when a Chinese invasion was thwarted. L.A. Weekly called it “haunting and heroic.” - John Del Signore more ›

In theater, as in television, summer is an opportunity for producers and creative teams to try ideas that may be a little wackier than main-season fare – off- and off-off Broadway, that’s what all the play festivals that are currently on and coming up are about. But the theater world also has its version of summer TV’s ubiquitous reruns, only there we like to think the phenomenon of show extensions and brief revivals is weighted more toward being a chance to see things you didn’t see previously, rather than being an expression of laziness or lack of better things to show. more ›

ART: The 10th annual Tribeca art walk is this weekend. Toast, the Tribeca Open Artist Studio Tour, is a free, self-guided tour of approximately 100 artists' studios throughout Tribeca. Talk to the artists in their own spaces, and of course - check out their art while you're at it. more ›

While we wait impatiently for some real improvement in the temperature, theater companies are heating up the late winter with scores of new productions. A warning, though: maybe it’s just the mood we’ve been in, but everything that most appealed to us this week is pretty dark/serious. For that reason, we’ll start off with Ensemble Studio Theatre’s company of emerging playwrights, youngblood, which is having its annual “Asking For Trouble” series this week. Each playwright (10 of them) drew a cast and director randomly and had a short time to create a nine-minute play with them; the results are at the Kraine this week, and even if some of the plays are dark, as some undoubtedly will be, it will at least be uplifting to see new playwrights having their work produced. more ›

The Phantom of the Opera may be nearing the ripe old age of 18, but most shows in this city don’t even play 18 shows. That doesn’t mean that they’re unworthy, of course – far from it, at least in our book. For instance, there’s Clubbed Thumb’s new production What Then, which (including previews last weekend) has 16 showings at the Ohio Theatre. Written by Rinne Groff and directed by Hal Brooks, who recently got accolades for his work on Thom Paine, this is the story of a dysfunctional family and their attempts to stitch their relationships and psyches back not through therapy but rather through creating and exploring new realities through dreams and drugs. It’s a powerful vision that will leave you questioning your own perception of existence. more ›

The New York Musical Theatre Festival is waltzing into its second week without flagging – there are at least as many intriguing offerings now as when we wrote last week. But first, take note that the festival has clearly learned from the Fringe’s example, at least in some ways, including the idea of scheduling events that aren’t simply staged musicals. For the last week, for example, there were screenings of movie musicals; starting Thursday you can see compilations of classic TV musicals. There are also reading-only events, singing-only events, and various panels and seminars – the full listing is in the program PDF. Or perhaps you do want to see a real show, but not one that’s pulling out all the stops in an effort to land financing for a more permanent run. The NYMF folks don’t seem to be the kind to view that as heresy, nor to take umbrage at having fun poked at them – at least, if they were, they probably wouldn’t have partnered with Dixon Place for the Warning: Not For Broadway series, or taken the improv group The Pearl Brunswick into their fold of performances. The Not for Broadway shows start Thursday at the Marquee; some cleave faithfully to the idea in the series’ title (can you imagine Olsen Terror, which is about an insomniac who realizes he’s turning into…um…the Olsen Twins…on Broadway? Not that it wouldn’t be sweet to see) while at least a couple others really could go big-time (we can’t wait to see how Gary Plotkin has adapted Roald Dahl’s wonderful children’s novel The BFG). Other shows fall in between, such as Tuesday, Brett Macias and Caroline Murphy’s musical about a day in the lives of 7 high school sophomores, and Janine McGuire and Emily Paul’s Wake Her Up, which brings some of the Greek gods into the 21st century club scene (hardly a stretch of the imagination, really). more ›