It's Friday ... a good time to explore the alternative arts scene ... here are a couple of openings worth checking out, online or in the real world.

Gallery Gachet is starting to develop quite a cachet in the east end of Vancouver. Tonight is the opening of an Eva Waldauf show. There's a bit of everything in this mix: sculpture, installation, monoprints and drawings/paintings. The show explores the idea of "moving through pain and healing to reach abundance." There's a bit more feminst New Age woo-woo in the catalogue, but Waldouf makes it something worth exploring.

Another cool artist-run gallery on the thriving downtown eastside arts scene is The Dynamo, started a few years ago by a group of Emily Carr grads. I got a mysterious email from president Andrew Armour this week, tipping me off to a new show, also opening on the 10th. See if you can figure this out:

"Frivolous Niece (of the Dowager Aunt Emblem Car) is the subject, or donor car, of this project. It is her body panels which constitute the show. The theme of this specifically created ARTCAR came to me while riding in a 9 hole miniature golf car returning to St. Louis from my first ARTCAR event - the BIG ONE every April in Houston. Babbling to my friend, I said it will have emblems on the sides like the EMBLEM CAR but less linear, license plates on the roof, trophies for a grill, and a diorama of a junkyard on the hood. And so it was to be.

"The winter of 95-96 was harsh; I had an open all-around carport and a deadline to meet. The little hand-me-down '85 Chevette ARTCAR blossomed through numb hands and frozen feet.

"Frivolous Niece took Harv Chometsky and I 5000 miles in less than three weeks to the '96 ART CAR WEEKEND in Houston (She took 3rd place in the small vehicle class) and was my dear friend and daily driver for 4 years. This April, the 200,000+ Km. Motor's main bearings gave up and a free replacement car appeared ( now the DADA Car). And so it was taxi-dermi time ... "

Hmmm... Not sure what that's all about. Some sort of Driving Miss Daisy for artsy types? You'll just have to go check it out yourself. And can you let me know...?

Czech Mate: Lovers of opera will want to grab tickets for Janacek's Katya Kabanova. This is an interesting opera on several historical points. Janacek had a pretty hard time with the operatic genre up until this point. Critics and audiences just didn't understand Jenufa and it wasn't until the opera was finally revived in 1916 to thunderous applause that Janacek returned to the musical form. However it was a personal affair that gave him his creative muse.

Janacek was 63 and unhappily married. He took up with a married woman 38 year his junior. Vivified by the pleasures of the flesh, Janacek took up his pen and completed four masterpieces: Katyá Kabanová, The Makropulos Affair, The Cunning Little Vixen and From the House of the Dead.

Undoubtedly his affair was fodder for musical fiction. Suffocated in an unhappy marriage and kowed by the matriarchy, Katya resigns herself to adultery and ultimately commits suicide. Janacek's understanding of the soaring highs and devastating lows of clandestine romance, is gorgeously displayed in the love duets during the final act. However the drum rolls and dramatic measures reveal that Katya can't live with herself, and conversely society won't allow her to live, this double life.

While things didn't work out too well for Katya, the opera was a huge success for Janacek. The crowd went wild, stamping their feet, calling for the composer as the curtain came down on each act.

Find out what all the excitement is about. Grab your tickets for Katyá Kabanová while you can.

Hey Scout! The Manitoba Theatre Centre is finishing its run of Harper Lee's chilling southern classic To Kill a Mockingbird this Saturday night. Most of us have seen the film, some of us have read of Harper Lee's endurable novel, "a book about racism as seen from a child's vantage point at the precise historical moment when educated liberals were looking for a way to explain all that stuff to their kids." So don't miss the chance to see this marvelously wrought courtroom drama on the stage. Take Atticus Finch's advice: "Climb into the skin of some other people and walk around for awhile ... You never really understand people until you consider things from their point of view."