THEATER & DANCE
of both genders — behind Silver State suffrage is the subject of 45 Years in the Desert: Nevada Women’s Long Journey to the Ballot Box, by scholar Dana R. Bennett. (SD) 7:30p, free, UNLV’s Barrick Museum, liberalarts.unlv. edu/forum
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Welcome to Funtown David Sedaris (4), that exemplar of NPR-friendly satire, comes to town on the heels of his latest best-seller, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. Smiles, everyone, smiles! (SD) 7:30p, $46 and up, The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
moving
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social
Picnic and ‘A rsenic’
brainy
The same self-affirming impulse that makes reality TV a guilty pleasure (“Hey, at least we’re not that crazy!”) draws us to dysfunctional-family comedies. And Joseph Kesselring’s 1939 play, Arsenic and Old Lace, is the original Kardashian-style train wreck you just can’t stop watching — complete with two elderly homicidal aunts, one brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt and another brother who’s had plastic surgery that makes him resemble Boris Karloff. The play’s main character, Mortimer Brewster, unearths one disturbing truth after another as he defends his family from the authorities and decides whether to marry his fiancée, drawing an innocent victim into the madness. Kim and Kanye? Yawn. (HK) 7:05p, $12.95, Super Summer Theater at Spring Mountain Ranch, supersummertheatre.org
funny racy
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For compete’s sake! Excess testosterone: not just a concern for male athletes. Rules often prevent women from competing if they have naturally high levels of the hormone. Many compensate with potentially risky medical procedures. In Just Games: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Testosterone in Women Athletes, Rebecca M. Jordan-Young of Barnard College, Columbia University, challenges the scientific and ethical bases for these athletic policies. (SD) 7:30p, free, UNLV’s Barrick Museum, liberalarts.unlv.edu/ forum
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When it’s okay to talk in a theater
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As Asylum Theatre sees it, there can be more to being in a theater audience than passively receiving staged entertainment. Following this staged reading of a submission selected from Asylum’s annual call for plays — one of some 350 entries — audience members will discuss their responses to the work,
It’s raining the truth up in here! Gird yourself for Christmas dinner with Uncle Jasper, the family climate-change denier, with this talk by UNLV physics professor Michael G. Pravica. When Uncle J. quacks, How can we have global warming with all these doggone snowstorms?, you can bust out the facts you’ll pick up from Global Climate Change: What’s Going On? Pravica will examine the relationships between climate change and such phenomena as the polar vortex and drought. So clam up and open your present, Uncle Jasper; it’s a wallet. (SD) 7:30p, free, UNLV’s Barrick Museum, liberalarts.unlv. edu/forum
their feedback helping the author fine-tune it. Hooray, empowered viewing! (The same dynamic will repeat in February with a staged reading of Reckoning, “an intense family drama about modern-day Irish travelers,” by Chicago’s Jenny Seidelman.) (SD) $10, Onyx Theater, asylumtheatre.org
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A dream for all seasons Nevada Ballet Theater opens its season with the birds and the bees — and the Vivaldi and the Shakespeare. The two-act show begins with Paul Vasterling’s Seasons set to Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” and ends with George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 1 (1), the sensual interpretation of William Shakespeare’s beloved comedy set to Felix Mendelssohn’s score. Emil de Cou will direct the live orchestra that includes members of the Las Vegas Philharmonic, and more than 20 young dancers from the Academy of Nevada Ballet Theater will participate in the performance. (HK) 2p and 7:30p, $29-$129, Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center, nevadaballet.com
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Go ask Gaddis The Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater could only get more popular if its founding artistic director, Bernard H. Gaddis, made his first full-length ballet the modern interpretation of a
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