Film: It is a complaint have heard so often I can anticipate it returning every Oscar season: “Where can I go to see the short subjects, both animated and live action, that are nominated for an Academy Award?” The answer used to be a big shrug, but now you can head to Emerging Cinemas. This week, at the funky art cinema called Mos’Art in Lake Park, you can see all five animated shorts in competition, including Day & Night, Pixar’s tasty amuse-bouche that you have probably already seen, since it was attached to the same projection reel as Toy Story 3. Next week comes the live action shorts. – H. Erstein
Theater: This is the final weekend for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ acclaimed production of Mark St. Germain’s cerebral two-character fictional history play, Freud’s Last Session, a meeting of the minds between Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and a staunch atheist and novelist-lecturer C.S. Lewis, a recent fervent convert to Christianity. At St. Germain imagines it, they meet politely and soon lock horns over the existence of God and the meaning of life, as the world teeters on the brink of World War II. Dennis Creaghan as Freud and Christopher Oden as Lewis are very engaging, but don’t take my word for it: Go look up the recent rave review the West Palm Beach company got from The Wall Street Journal. Through Sunday only. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets. – H. Erstein
Music: Paul Bowles is an unusually interesting American writer, an expat who went the distance, and not in Paris or London, but in Tangier, Morocco. But as a young man he was a composer first and foremost, and tonight at the DeSantis Chapel on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University, Bowles’ rarely heard Concerto for Two Pianos gets a hearing at a concert of the student PBA Symphony. Duo Gastesi-Bezerra will do the honors for this 20-minute, four-movement work that conductor Lloyd Mims says reminds him most of Milhaud. The Bowles is joined by a world premiere: Rayos de Esperanza, for two pianos and strings, by PBAU faculty member Marlene Woodward-Cooper, a fine composer. The orchestra shares the stage with the PBAU Symphonic Band under David Jacobs, who will conduct music by Holst (the Suite in E-flat), Grainger (Lincolnshire Posy), Piston (Tunbridge Fair) and Hovhaness (Suite for Band). Tickets are $10; call 803-2970 or visit www.pba.edu/performances.
Also tonight: Violinist Elmar Oliveira hosts a concert of chamber music at Lynn University featuring a number of his colleagues at the Boca Raton school. On the program at the Wold Performing Arts Center are the Sonata No. 3 of Bach (BWV 1005), the Piano Trio No. 4 (in E minor, Op. 90, Dumky) of Dvorak, the too-rarely heard Septet for Trumpet, Piano and Strings of Camille Saint-Saens, and the lovely String Sextet No. 1 (in G, Op. 36) of Brahms. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20-$35. Call 237-7607 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.
And speaking of chamber music: The Delray String Quartet introduces the third concert in its seasonal series starting this Sunday at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach. After the last program’s survey of Russian music (Shostakovich No. 7, Arensky No. 2), the foursome plans music by Mendelssohn (Quartet No. 3 in D, Op. 44, No. 1) and Dvorak (Quartet No. 10 in E-flat, Op. 51), along with an arrangement of Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, in honor of the bicentenary of the composer’s birth. The concert begins at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Colony on East Atlantic Avenue; tickets are $35. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.com.