The Courtyard’s popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [... more]
Flamingo Live’s regular comedy club slot at the Coterie pub in Ibn Battuta Mall. The door price includes two drinks.
Maktaba is 421’s monthly gathering dedicated to collective reading, viewing, and discussion across disciplines. This session discusses theatre-making as a practice of solidarity, exploring how performance builds connections across geographies, identities, and movements. Facilitated by artist and theatre-maker Maitha Ali, [... more]
Founded by Emirati filmmaker and curator Nawaf Al Janahi in 2020, Cineolio‘s mission is focused on promoting short films and expanding their audience reach internationally. Its Cinenights screening series presents a diverse selection of short films on the big screen, [... more]
One of the most consistently funny of the Courtyard’s classic improv gigs: the speakers have to give a presentation on a slide deck they’ve never seen before, with the topic determined at random by the Wheel of Destiny. Each presentation [... more]
“Dubai’s hottest comedy night” (aka the Mad Cat team) come to the moodily-lit speakeasy style bar in DIFC for what looks like a regular every-other-Thursday gig. The door price includes one drink.
A Comedy Kix n evening "packed with stand-up comedy, good vibes, and plenty of laughs". The AED 90 door price includes two drinks.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is preparing the local audience for its 11 December opening with a series of events at Manarat al Saadiyat “for the public to engage with artists, ideas and conversations that are shaping the new museum”. This one [... more]
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is preparing the local audience for its 11 December opening with a series of events “for the public to engage with artists, ideas and conversations that are shaping the new museum”. This one is an interactive artwork [... more]
The name riffs off Vantage Point, Sharjah Art Foundation’s biennial open-call photography exhibition; aiming to support the work of local photographers, Vantage Point Editions offers an opportunity to see and buy work from from 20 UAE-based photographers who exhibit a [... more]
Iris Murdoch's Booker winner The Sea, The Sea (1978) is arguably her best book, a novel of obsession, memory, and self-deception. Another interesting and accessible choice from what is arguably Dubai's most interesting book club ...
How could this stage adaptation of the near legendary Graham Linehan / Arthur Mathews TV series not be seriously funny? Dubai Drama Group says "the show captures everything fans adore about the cult classic: razor-sharp dialogue, joyfully absurd situations, and [... more]
Mad Cat Comedy’s regular standup night at Xandros in Signature 1 Hotel, TECOM. The cover charge of AED 80 includes one drink.
Two further performances for this stage adaptation of the near legendary Graham Linehan / Arthur Mathews TV series. Dubai Drama Group says "the show captures everything fans adore about the cult classic: razor-sharp dialogue, joyfully absurd situations, and characters who [... more]
Al Hashemi’s practice examines what it means to remain human within increasingly automated systems of production and consumption – especiallyy seen through urban life in the Emirates. Al Hashemi works across ceramics, printmaking and painting, “investigating the systems through which [... more]
A survey of works by the French artist, "one of the most restless practitioners of his generation" as the gallery has it. Since the early 1960s Venet unusually broad range of media has included tar poured on to canvas and [... more]
Barcelona Flamenco Ballet does exactly what the name says – applies the style of flamenco in dance and music to create spectacular and passionate performances, typically by reinterpreting iconic works. This one is described as BFB's "most ambitious and revolutionary [... more]
A regular Mad Cat Comedy night – “Dubai’s wildest comedy show on Saturday” at “the first purpose built comedy room in the country”. The cover charge of AED 99 includes two F&B coupons.
An exhibition featuring more than 40 works by 16 photographers (of different nationalities, but all based in the UAE) that seek to find beauty and meaning in the small moments of everyday life, personal rituals, routines, brief encounters, simple gestures [... more]
You can't fault the UAENO's ambition in naming this programme – the title almost precludes discussion. It includes three admittedly classic works, but there must surely have been a strong case for others (we'd have gone for the Symphony No.41 [... more]
Dubomedy’s main man is always good value, though the ticket price here does reflect his growing stature. Expect an evening of probably inappropriate jokes, lots of banter with the audience, and a general feel-good vibe. All seats must be pre-booked [... more]
A Dubai date to follow its Abu Dhabi opener for the exciting Barcelona Flamenco Ballet – the iconic Prokofiev ballet reinterpreted as flamenco. This show is described as BFB’s “most ambitious and revolutionary project” to date, addressing universal themes like [... more]
The AD’Art artist collective with an exhibition celebrating the Sorbonne’s 20th anniversary – new works exploring heritage, knowledge transmission, and cultural dialogue, through "diverse and personal artistic perspectives". The collective : Anne-Caroline Schoeller Anne-Marie Lacroix Raffy Annunziata Tricarico Camille Lamelliere [... more]
In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of British colonisers. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the centre of a power [... more]
A deeply personal portrait of childhood, family fractures, and the fragility of recollection from award-winning filmmaker Sophy Romvari, who drew on her own experiences for her feature debut – a deeply personal portrait of childhood, family fractures, and the fragility [... more]
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is preparing the local audience for its 11 December opening with a series of events “for the public to engage with artists, ideas and conversations that are shaping the new museum”. The mini-package closes with artist Rachid [... more]
A performance workshop with Youness Atbane in advance of the UAE premiere of his work Untitled 14km on 1 and 2 October: "through collective experimentation, participants will explore how everyday objects can be displaced from their usual functions to generate [... more]
Mad Cat’s standup team at their regular stop at the Easy Tiger bar in Abu Dhabi’s Al Ain Palace. The door price of AED 99 includes two drinks …
"An exhibition exploring the perception and relationship between the viewer and the artwork ... an invitation to discover what may appear when we take the time to look beyond the surface." The two French artists offer a dialogue between the [... more]
Funeral Home Comedy, a newish name on the standup circuit, has added to the comedy options in Abu Dhabi – well, on Yas – with a a full night of laughs from top names (Roxy, Obaid, Ash Ahmed and Luca) [... more]
Monaiseer’s solo show examines history through cycles, repetition and flows, while testing the unstable boundary between imagination and reality. The title references the current status of the Doomsday Clock and its measurement of humanity’s proximity to catastrophe; notions of war, [... more]
The UAE premiere of a multidisciplinary work by the Moroccan artist Youness Atbane that combines dance theatre, performance, and installation in a satirical examination of how contemporary art engages with questions of identity – particularly what is framed as “Arab [... more]
Mohamed Abdelwahab was one of the voices who helped shape the musical heritage of the Arab world, a pioneering composer who blended traditional Arabic melodies with Western influences and so helped to redefine the sound of Arabic music today. This [... more]
A standup open mic where fresh and regular comics take the stage; newbies are getting three minutes, the more established comics get six. There's a minimum spend of AED 70.
Two interconnected exhibitions, both curated by Mo Reda and supported by the Department of Painting and Printmaking at VCUarts Qatar. Together, The Ongoing Performance of Melancholia and Songs in Solitude mark the culmination of a two-month residency at Bayt AlMamzar; [... more]
The projects exhibition for seniors of Zayed University's College of Arts and Creative Enterprises – usually among the best student/grad work you see in the UAE. Covers animation, graphic design, interior design and visual arts. To 8 October.
The second evening for this work that combines dance theatre, performance, and installation in a satirical examination of how contemporary art engages with questions of identity – particularly what is framed as “Arab identity”. Atbane constructs an imagined exhibition at [... more]
... not when you have three comedians on the stage, eager and willing to hear your problems and turn them into funny scenes and stories on the fly. Fully improvised, totally interactive. The first runout for this show a couple [... more]
An exhibition born out of the question: how will this time be remembered and who will tell the stories of the people who live here? It's one of the outcomes of Kutubna’s initiative Documenting Culture in the Gulf in a [... more]
A series of brand new and unstaged plays, the public outcome of the first performance residency hosted at Bayt AlMamzar; run by theatre group 63Kolektib, the residency paired six emerging playwrights with six early- to mid-career directors to develop six [... more]
A series of conversations around the Global Positioning System exhibition: artists and researchers will discuss cartography and navigation as instruments of power that enable transport and trade, shape worldviews, annotate belonging and transformation. Speakers include Fatma Al Ali, Vikram Divecha, [... more]
Improv with a twist (probably of the knife in the heart). "Our Sinister plans are coming to fruition. For one night only, we will turn your Smile into consent, as we host an Insidious night of improvisation for the Psycho [... more]
Improv "where anything can happen and the audience becomes part of the show". Which is sort of how improv is defined, though in this case the title suggests there may be an extra element of ray guns and Star Wars [... more]
The Comedy Kix team does The H Dubai ("your Saturday is now sorted"). There's a AED 75 minimum spend.
Classy comedy with Abz Ali, featuring Luca Cupani and Obeid. Hosted by Roxy Yekta.
An ambitious large-scale group exhibition dedicated to mapping and navigation systems, "telling stories of fast cars and donkeys, spinning globes and street barricades, cosmic highways and broken bridges ... delves into topographies, transit lines and simulated landscapes to engage critically [... more]
A group exhibition for six artists – Aya Afaneh, Sarah Afaneh, Sarah Brahim, Amir Hazim, Yoonsik Chico Park, and Andrew Riad – exploring how language is formed through the body, voice, gesture, and mark making practices. Each contributes a distinct [... more]
The first institutional solo exhibition by Emirati artist Juma Alhaj is the culmination of his participation in 421 Arts Campus' Artistic Development Program. Grounded in reading, journaling, and philosophical inquiry, it explores themes of reflection, solitude, and self-discovery; the exhibition [... more]
A group show curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr that brings together works in video, sound installations, and performance that explore “alternative infrastructures for knowledge-making such as whispers, murmurs, hums, gossip, and storytelling”. The artists include Aliaskar Abarkas, [... more]
A beautiful restoration of this family classic for its 55th anniversary, based on the Roald Dahl book and staring Gene Wilder having a lot of fun with his role as the magical maker of scrumptious sweets. Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum), [... more]
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