Wednesday 18 This year’s Thin Line Fest is bigger than ever, beginning tonight with Eric Noren’s concert film Midlake: Live from Denton, TX, with Boxcar Bandits playing at the after-party. Other films include Far From Home, about a man seeking to be Uganda’s first Olympic snowboarder, and Alex & Ali, about a long-term romance between a Peace Corps volunteer and an Iranian man. There will also be live music at Dan’s Silverleaf and Hailey’s Club all weekend. The festival runs today thru Sun at Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton. Tickets are $8-150. Call 888-893-4560.
Thursday 19 Niccolò Paganini commissioned the French composer Hector Berlioz to write a piece for viola and orchestra, but the Italian virtuoso was disappointed with the result, the tone poem Harold in Italy. He went off and composed his own Sonata per la Grand Viola for the same musical forces. You can hear both pieces when Symphony Arlington plays them at 7:30pm at Arlington Music Hall, 224 N Center St, Arlington. Tickets are $16.50-46.50. Call 817-385-4084.
Friday 20 The myth of Helen of Troy and the war fought over her has inspired Western storytellers going all the way back to Homer, but you’ve never seen a story like Eleni of Sparta. That’s because Rajika Puri adapted this Greek story into Indian classical dance. An art form that usually relates the stories of Hinduism’s mythical figures should find this Western story congenial. The performance is at 8pm at UNT Auditorium, 1401 W Hickory St, Denton. Tickets are $5-10. Call 940-565-2428.
Saturday 21 When Madeleine George’s play The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence premiered in 2013, the critics said it was very clever but also somewhat too ambitious for its own good. Stage West holds the regional premiere of this play, which takes place in three different time periods with three actors playing all the parts, with Watson showing up as Dr. Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant, Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick, and the computer that won on Jeopardy! The play runs Thu-Mar 22 at 821 W Vickery Blvd, FW. Tickets are $17-34. Call 817-784-9378.
Sunday 22 The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has a new blockbuster. Framing Desire: Photography and Video contains works by the likes of Larry Clark, Rineke Dijkstra, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, and Laurie Simmons, exploring the themes of age, interiors, and landscapes. The show runs Sat-Aug 23 at 3200 Darnell St, FW. Admission is $4-10. Call 817-738-9215.
Monday 23 Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Eighth String Quartet in a blistering three days in 1960, shortly after being diagnosed with ALS. A ferociously compact work, it contains a quote from his banned 1936 opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, giving rise to dueling interpretations about whether he intended the work to be a coded slap at Soviet repression or an epitaph for himself. Spectrum Chamber Music Series plays this piece and others at 7pm at First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church, 1959 Sandy Ln, FW. Admission is free. Call 817-377-0688.
Tuesday 24 With an Emmy nomination for her unprecedented role on Orange Is the New Black, Laverne Cox now has a decent claim to be the world’s most famous transgender person. In her talk Ain’t I a Woman: My Journey to Womanhood, she will discuss her careers in acting and as an activist for other transgender people at 7pm at UNT Coliseum, 600 Av D, Denton. Tickets are $5-10. Call 940-565-3815.
