Theater: This is the final weekend for the 19th annual Summer Shorts Festival by City Theatre, at the company’s home in the Carnival Studio Theater of Miami’s Arsht Center. Whittled down to a more manageable 10 plays of 10-15 minutes duration each, that does not leave much room for error. Still, it wouldn’t be Summer Shorts if the production did not include a few what-were-they-thinking clunkers. But scenes by Richard Dresser, Paul Rudnick and John Minigan make the trek worthwhile, as do the performances of Beth Dimon, Tom Wahl, Irene Adjan and newcomer Mcley Lafrance, and the direction by Margaret Ledford and others. Tickets: $40-45. Call: (305) 949-6722.
Film: Paul Haggis, Oscar winner for Crash nine years ago, is up to his usual tricks of large-cast, parallel storylines with logic-defying intersections in Third Person. Liam Neeson plays a once-successful novelist who has started to repeat himself creatively — Hmm, kind of like Haggis — and having an affair with Olivia Wilde. Adrien Brody is a shady businessman who meets and falls for a Romanian woman in an Italian bar and gets ensnared in a blackmail plot. And Mila Kunis is caught in a custody battle over her son with her ex-husband, James Franco, a trendy artist. All of this takes place in Paris, Rome and New York, except the locales keep merging. Although the action is often overwrought and frequently implausible, just go with it. The payoff sorts matters out in a satisfying way. At area theaters now.
Music: Can it really be the 23rd season of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival? When it began at the Duncan Theater in the summer of 1992, it was a way for some good friends to get together in the slow, hot months and play the music they loved. Six recordings and the addition of a new fall series later, the festival is up to its usual quirky tricks with the first concert in the series Saturday and Sunday (it opened Thursday, for Fourthfully obvious reasons). But don’t expect Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: the first program contains 20th-century music by Malcolm Arnold and Herbert Howells, and closes with a big septet by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. You won’t find that in many chamber music programs, and that’s part of what makes this festival so valuable. Concerts are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Palm Beach Gardens (Eissey Campus Theatre) and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach. Call 800-330-6874 or visit www.pbcmf.org, or buy $25 tickets at the door.
Dance: This coming week, Ballet Palm Beach leaves for a one-week trip to Cuba to perform across the island nation in the Ballet Ambassadors program, which stages dance concerts in theaters, churches and orphanages. Principal dancer Rogelio Corrales knows the terrain well: He’s a native of Pinar del Rio, the small farming town where the Ballet Palm Beach troupe will perform its first concert on its July 10-17 itinerary. The schedule is as much arts good works as it is dance, because the dancers will be donating some of their ballet shoes and other equipment to Cuban dance companies that could use some help. You can see the work they’ll be bringing to Cuba in a free open rehearsal at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Esther Center in Palm Beach Gardens. If you really believe in the power of the arts to do good, here’s your chance to show you mean it by stopping by and cheering them on. Call 561-630-8235 for more information.