Best Bets: Madame Butterfly, Plantasia and Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Do you want to do something good for your neighbor? Of course, you do – it’s National Do Something Good for Your Neighbor Day. Our suggestion is to kindly invite your neighbor to one of this week’s best bets. Below, you can find our picks, which include film festivals, an opera outdoors, a botanical art show and more.

The 17th Annual Palestine Film Festival will open on Friday, May 17, at 7 p.m. with a screening of Lina Soualem’s “festival favorite,” Bye Bye Tiberias, at Rice Cinema. In the film, the filmmaker tells the story of “her maternal relatives,” including her mother, the Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, in hope of answering “the question ‘How does a woman find her place when caught between worlds?’” Each of the six features spotlighted throughout the three-day festival, which runs through May 19, will be preceded by a short film, and Bye Bye Tiberias will follow a reception beginning at 6:30 p.m. You may view the full lineup here and tickets to any of the screenings can also be purchased here for $10.

A couple unable to conceive is diagnosed with a rather unique, newly identified syndrome, one which can only be cured by locating everyone the two have ever had sex with and having sex with them again. This is “the quirky premise” of The (Ex)perience of Love (Le syndrome des amours passées), which will open Five Funny French Films at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Friday, May 17, at 7 p.m. The film, directed by Raphaël Balboni and Ann Sirot, is the first of five curated comedies from France that make up the twelfth annual edition of the festival, which runs all weekend through Sunday, May 19. Tickets to any of the screenings can be found here for $8 to $10, as can the full lineup.

Kinetic Ensemble will close out their season on Friday, May 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the MATCH with a program titled At Play. The program not only features special guest Frame Dance Productions, but all the composers selected for the evening are living, American composers of marginalized identities. Cellist Patricia Ryan recently told the Houston Press as much as the ensemble loves “playing the old canon of Beethoven and Mozart, who still have relevance today, there’s something that’s really more tangible for us to play pieces by current, living composers, especially now that there’s an opportunity for previously marginalized groups who are able to now get the support and exposure that they deserve.” Tickets to the program can be purchased here for $15 to $30.

In 1995, Ilene Beckerman published a “captivating little pictorial autobiography for adults, a life told through clothes,” that was also “a wry commentary on the pressures women constantly face to look good.” Nora Ephron and sister Delia Ephron turned the book into a 2008 play – featuring a series of monologues and ensemble scenes that reference those sartorial touchstones (from bras to prom dresses) – of the same name, Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which On The Verge Theatre will open at The Alta Arts on Friday, May 17, at 7:30 p.m. Performances are scheduled to run through June 9 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Monday, June 3, and at 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets to the play can be purchased here for $30 to $40.

This weekend it’s the Houston Grand Opera’s turn to take the stage at Miller Outdoor Theatre when HGO brings their production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly to Miller on Friday, May 17, at 8 p.m. The production of the classic opera, which was previously performed at the Wortham Theater Center earlier this year, became one of the company’s top-selling shows of that last ten years. As always, shows at Miller are free, and you can get reserve a ticket here starting at 10 a.m. today, Thursday, May 16, or you can head for the seating on the no-ticket-required Hill. Madame Butterfly will be performed a second time on Saturday, May 18, at 8 p.m. You can reserve a seat for Saturday beginning on Friday, May 17, at 10 a.m. here.

A galaxy far, far away comes to Jones Hall on Friday, May 17, at 8 p.m. when the Houston Symphony presents The Music of Star Wars. Conductor Steven Reineke will lead the Symphony through music from all nine films (the trilogy of trilogies which all feature works from noted composer John Williams) – in chronological order – along with selections from the standalone “Star Wars Story” films, Rogue One and Solo. The concert will also be performed in-hall at 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, May 18, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 19. In-hall tickets are available here for $48.88 to $170. The Saturday evening performance will also be livestreamed, and access to the livestream can be purchased here for $20.

Did you know that we get 60 percent of “our energy intake from just three plant species”? Those would be rice, wheat and maize, if you’re wondering. The point is, there’s a lot to appreciate about not only plants, but flowers, fungi and more, and you can celebrate these and the beauty of the botanical world on Saturday, May 18, from 5 to 9 p.m. when Hardy & Nance Studios presents Plantasia: A Botanical Art Show. The curated show will feature work in various mediums in 2D and 3D formats from artists all around Houston (and the surrounding area). Also, on hand for the third annual botany-appreciating art show will be Eden Plant Co. as well as food from Chicano BBQ. You can attend the art show for free.

Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s Taking Steps, a two-act play set more than 50 years ago in a former-brothel-turned-possibly-haunted-house, will officially open at Main Street Theater on Saturday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m. Callina Anderson, whose character Elizabeth is the wife of a man thinking of buying the house, recently told the Houston Press that the play “is about what people are trying to get toward, to work toward, like a relationship or career,” adding that “the script is really funny” and that anyone who “wants a laugh” should see the show. Performances are scheduled 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. through June 15. Tickets can be purchased here for $35 to $59.