If you are not already familiar with the name Tarell Alvin McCraney, you will be soon enough, and most certainly, you should be. The Brother/Sister Plays, a trilogy of plays currently being performed at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, is an extraordinary theater-going experience. Really. I’m talking in superlatives again, and, seriously, for good reason.

August: Osage County is a great theater-going experience, there’s just no other way to say it. It’s brutal, hilarious, deeply sad, smart, brash, nasty, and bold. Enough adjectives for you? I can come up with a million more and still not cover it. With three acts, two intermissions, and clocking in at three-and-a-half hours this is a tour-de-force of the stage, without a boring moment in it.

Two days before Valentine’s Day, a ballet all about love was an interesting choice for a chronically-single gay man such as myself to attend.

Last night, I went to Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s original production, Love. an internal affair., without considering that the audience would be a venerable parade of heterosexual couples. Normally one wouldn’t see a huge quantity of straight men at the ballet (at least not outside of Manhattan), but two days before Cupid’s arrows were to be shot, there were plenty men willing to bite the bullet in an attempt to please their girlfriends or wives.

Nevertheless, there was plenty for this young homo to enjoy. After all, the two reasons I love contemporary ballet are that, firstly, and like all contemporary art forms, it isn’t as locked to heteronormativity as are more traditional styles of art; and secondly, there are lots of beautiful men (and women) upon which to marvel.

When I first arrived in Denver, I was surprised to find that the so-called “theatre district” was not a cluster of aging performance halls that had spread like a cancer over the decades, but rather a series of venues all arranged in the same building. The term seems to be referring, most or less, to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, an enormous complex with a distinctly Coloradan open-air quality.

Set in my East Coast ways, I had initially laughed at the term “theatre district” having been invoked. But it turns out that a performing arts hub that isn’t ancient has its benefits.

Who knew that a foot could be so expressive, drawing you in with its vulnerability? That a fluttering hand that is never seen again, could leave such an indelible impression on you? That a duet could be so charged and poignant even though the dancers never once see or touch each other? Or, that the softest breath impulse could make you hold your own in anticipation? Apparently, the master Taiwanese choreographer LIN Hwai-min did.

LIN Hwai-min presented his group, the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre Company in a performance of Luminous Moon Water at the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center this past weekend. The incredibly talented dancers in his company train in Tai Chi Tao Yin (an ancient form of Chi Kung), meditation, martial arts, Chinese Opera movement, modern dance, ballet, and calligraphy. Moon Water draws on these collective forms and unfolds like the illusion of a luminous jewel and like a magician closing his dark velvet glove over the jewel, just as quietly slips away.

However, I also like to see things for myself. I should’ve been a Missouri resident for the how often I say “show me” (and I’m not just referring to Saturday night at Cobalt.) So when I got the opportunity to see Kathy Griffin live at DC’s DAR Constitution Hall I took it. At best, I would be pleasantly surprised and at worst I could validate my severe distrust of all things gay-approved.

This Friday and Saturday, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company presents the 6th Annual Fall Festival of Indian Arts. Dakshina Dance Company will open each performance followed by a featured artist from India.

Brightest Young Things and Tig Notaro are teaming up to bring DC the Bentzen Ball comedy festival this weekend.

Mortified is visiting DC this Wednesday night at Town. Mortified is true tales ripped from the pages of real life. It stars everyday adults sharing their most embarrassingly real teenage diary entries, poems, love letters, lyrics and locker notes…in front of total strangers.

The creative output of a tormented mind can teeter on the line between real experience and art in a number of dangerous ways. The cliché of a “tortured artist” is far too trite to describe the great talents of folks like Kurt Cobain or Tchaikovsky, however it is true that their inner demons inspired much of their art. While it’s far too early to tell what sort of lasting place British playwright Sarah Kane will take among great writers, it is clear that her output is intensely personal and brutally real.