Theater: This weekend, Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre offers the area premiere of Nikolai Gogol’s The Diary of a Madman, in the new adaptation by, among others, Oscar and Tony Award winner Geoffrey Rush, who scored a personal performance triumph with the play in New York last season. Here, Ken Clement plays the lowly civil servant in tsarist St. Petersburg, teetering on the brink of lunacy. As he falls into the abyss of madness, the play asks questions about the limits of reality and sanity in a highly theatrical way. Continuing through Oct. 14. Tickets available by calling (954) 577-8243.
Film: We tend to use the words “movie” and “film” interchangeably, but the latter technically only applies to motion pictures recorded on physical celluloid, whereas more and more featured released and projected in theaters these days are made with a filmless digital process. Opening this weekend at Lake Park’s Mos’Art Theatre is Side By Side, a fascinating documentary that looks at this digital revolution and asks what we have gained and what we have lost because of it. The movie gathers interviews with some of the top names in directing, from Martin Scorsese to David Fincher to Steven Soderbergh. Most of them acknowledge the advances made possible by digital means, including James Cameron (Avatar) and George Lucas (Star Wars), whose work would not be possible without the computer manipulation that digital allows. Interestingly, however, a major director like Christopher Nolan staunchly defends the use of film, which he used throughout his Batman trilogy. The interviews are conducted by — of all people — Keanu Reeves, who manages to sound quite intelligent, but perhaps that is just a digital special effect.
Art: Ready for something new? “New Art,” an exhibition of South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Artists Fellowship award winners opens today at Florida Atlantic University’s University Galleries. Art from 11 South Florida artists who won grants from the South Florida Cultural Consortium will be on display in the Schmidt Center Gallery and Ritter Art Gallery on FAU’s Boca Raton campus, located at 777 Glades Road. The exhibition, which runs through Dec. 15, includes art from South Florida sculptors, multimedia artists, painters, photographers and filmmakers. “The artists that typically get these grants are cutting edge, advanced,” says W. Rod Faulds, director of University Galleries at FAU. “Most of them are interested in exploring what art can be.” A free, opening reception tonight from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. includes music and a cash bar. Miami-based band Gold Dust Lounge will be performing at the reception. The exhibition is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.fau.edu/galleries.
Music: Each year, the concert series at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach opens in late September with the Trillium Piano Trio of Jupiter, and this year the threesome gets the season under way with an intriguing program. Pianist Yoko Sata Kothari, violinist Ruby Berland and cellist Benjamin Salsbury will perform three powerful works, including the second Piano Trio of Mendelssohn (in C minor, Op. 66) and the lone Piano Trio (in D minor, Op. 120) of Gabriel Fauré. The third work is a relative rarity on chamber programs: The Piano Trio by the Swiss composer Frank Martin, subtitled On Popular Irish Folksongs, written in 1925. Martin is one of those composers much-admired by scholars and professionals, but not well-known by the general public. Perhaps the Trillium’s performance Sunday afternoon will spark some interest in this fine composer. The concert starts at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s. Tickets are $15-$20; call 278-6003 for more information.