Best Things To Do In New York City This Weekend
March begins on Sunday! At last! It's March at last! OK, so while spring has yet to, well, spring, it's getting closer by the second. Celebrate the (almost) end of winter by seeing a play, heading to a film, tasting a cassoulet, or doing one of our other picks for the best eating, drinking, and merrymaking events this weekend. By Jessica Allen.
Cold schmold. Frigid New York will warm you up on the coldest of cold days, by offering more than 150 performances by 30 independent theater companies over the course of three weeks. Now's your chance to see plays about being "bi, hung, fit . . . and married," hanging out with Satan, and imaging our favorite characters from the 1990s all grown up. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll think, you'll applaud hard enough to generate much-need body heat. Wednesday, February 18, through Sunday, March 8, see schedule for details, tickets required.
For the 15th year, Film Comment Selects welcomes a variety of movies, including "the coming soon and the never-coming-back, the rare and the rediscovered, the unclassifiable and the underrated." The slate is curated by the magazine's editors, based on what they saw (and heard about) during various other festivals over the past year. Among the movies scheduled to be screened are Voice Over, a movie from Chile about the dissolution of a decades-long marriage, and The Golden Era, "a fractured, modernist epic on the life of Manchurian essayist and novelist Xiao Hong" from China. Friday, February 20, through Thursday, March 5, see schedule for details, tickets required.
Since its founding in 2010, the Avant Music Festival has offered contemporary American composers the opportunity to "experiment with long-form concerts and the full programmatic experience of their work." This year, that'd be the work of Paula Matthusen and Imani Uzuri, each of whom gets to "program a full night of their own music unfettered by concerns of duration, scope, or aesthetics." In addition, the festival features a day-long celebration of John Cage, discussions, and other concerts. Friday, February 27, through Saturday, March 7, most shows start at 8 pm, tickets required.
If you close your eyes, you might be able to pretend that those snow plows are really waves crashing, that your space heater is actually the sun's rays, and that your neighbor's tv is a seagull cawing. Or you could head to the Bell House for Point Break Live, the longest running stage show in Los Angeles. The parody is full of "100% PURE ADRENALINE! EXTREME 90s ACTION! GRIT! GORE! and the unintentionally hilarious dialogue of the original film!" Emphasis theirs. Friday, February 27, 8 pm, $30 at the door, tickets required.
Is there a more perfect winter food than cassoulet? It's warming, it's hearty, it's full of meat and vegetables. See for yourself at the annual Cassoulet Festival at Back Forty West. For one night only, this Soho restaurant invites several big name chefs, including Jon Check and Sara Jenkins, to serve up their version of the classic French fare. New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik will be on hand to talk about what makes cassoulet so delicious. Best of all? Each dish will be paired with a French wine. Ooh la la. Sunday, March 1, 6:30 to 9 pm, $87, tickets required.