Top Five Things to Do This Weekend

Photo by George Hixson

The cast of Fleaven

Still haven't planned out your weekend? We've got a few suggestions for you, starting with Catastrophic Theatre's Fleaven. It was American Falls that snagged actor/playwright Miki Johnson the Best Playwright nod at the Houston Press's Houston Theater Awards last August. Falls is Johnson's first-ever produced work, but Fleaven, produced here by Catastrophic Theatre, is actually her first playwriting effort. The show's title is a mash-up of two characters' names: Flame, a disco star wannabe, and Heaven, an international disco star who left Flame behind on the road to fame. The setting is a mall — a disco mall. The dialogue is in rap-influenced rhyme…spoken by people on roller skates…who also sing sometimes. "You definitely can't talk about it seriously for long, because it gets ridiculous," Johnson tells us, laughing. "But really, it's about a friendship that's very broken."

Johnson says writing is a bit of a change from acting for her. "When I'm acting, I'm that one character. When I'm writing, I'm all of them. In Fleaven, I'm the villain more than anything, but I'm also the good guy. All of the characters are based on my point of view," she says before quickly adding, "but they aren't based on me." (Just in case we had any doubts about her secret life as a roller-skating, rap-rhyming disco queen.)

8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Through November 17. Frenetic Theatre, 5102 Navigation. For information, visit the company's website or call 713‑522‑2723. All performances are pay-what-you-can.