Best Bets the Week of September 25-October 1, 2025

It’s the last Best Bets of September, and the arts are in full swing around Houston. To close out the month, we’ve got an epic of a stage production, a celebration of Latin American and Hispanic composers, and a collection of the best short films you can find. Keep reading for these and everything else that makes our picks for the best of the week.

On Friday, September 26, at 7 p.m. at Stages, you can see The Lehman Trilogy, which, adapted by Ben Power from Stefano Massini’s epic novel and play about the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers, covers 160 years and features over 70 characters. Orlando Arriaga, one of three actors in the production, told BroadwayWorld Houston, “There were a lot of characters to create but for most of them I came to an immediate decision on who they were and how I was going to present them. I didn’t bother with time periods because human beings deal with family, love and money pretty much the same since the beginning of time.” Performances will continue at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 7 p.m. Fridays, 1 and 7 p.m. Saturdays, and 1 p.m. Sundays through October 12. Tickets are available here for $25 to $109.

When Alex Thompson’s short film Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting screened at Sundance, the first frame, with its “so-real-you-can-touch-it CG image” of two griffins, “elicited gasps of amazement.” You can join film lovers from around the world to view and vote on the shorts featured in the 28th Annual Manhattan Short Film Festival – including Thompson’s – at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Thursday, September 25, at 7 p.m. Audience ballots will determine the winners of Best Film and Best Actor from the ten curated films, which come from seven different countries. The films will screen again at 7 p.m. Friday, September 26, and 2 p.m. Saturday, September 27, and Sunday, September 28. Tickets can be purchased here for $8 to $10, and get your tickets in advance; some screenings are likely to sell out.

A string arrangement of Benjamin Britten’s 1932 Double Concerto for Violin and Viola, the sketch of which was only discovered more than 20 years after his death in 1976, will be the centerpiece of Kinetic’s season-opening concert, Notes Unspoken, at the MATCH on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. The conductor-less ensemble will tackle Britten alongside Michael Torke‘s December, Libby Larsen’s String Symphony, and the world premiere of Rice University graduate Alex Berko’s Unstrung for string orchestration. Berko, who originally composed Unstrung for the Louisville Orchestra in 2024, has said the piece, “a deconstructed bluegrass tune,” was his attempt “as a new Kentucky resident and admirer of” the genre “to pay homage to the art form.” Tickets to the performance can be purchased here for $15 to $35.

Four world premieres and a not-oft-heard symphony make up ROCO’s season-opening program, Feels Like Home, which you can hear on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. when the chamber orchestra visits Miller Outdoor Theatre. The premieres, which will be performed alongside Emilie Mayer’s 1847 Symphony No. 4 in B minor, draw from various sources of inspiration, including husky rescues and a ROCO member’s work in hospice care. The performance is free, and you can reserve a ticket here starting at 10 a.m. today, September 25. Or, as always, you can sit on the Hill – no ticket required. The concert will be performed a second time at The Church of St. John the Divine on Saturday, September 27, at 5 p.m. Tickets are pay-what-you-wish here with a suggested price of $35 and a minimum of $0.

“A percussive pulse drives the lover’s declarations in ‘And now you’re mine,’” one of five sonnets written by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and set to music by American composer Peter Lieberson in Neruda Songs, which you can hear at Jones Hall on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. during the Fiesta Sinfónica. Conductor Gonzalo Farias will lead the Houston Symphony and special guest mezzo-soprano Josefina Maldonado in the orchestra’s annual celebration of Latin American and Hispanic composers. This year, audiences can expect musical selections like “I Feel Pretty” and “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, the Habanera from Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Albert Gonzales’s arrangements of Rafael Hernández Marín’s “El Cumbanchero” and Daniel Alomía Robles’s “El cóndor pasa,” and more. This concert is free, but ticket reservations are required here.

Inspired by Shahzia Sikander’s vandalized sculpture “Witness,” choreographer Toni Valle of 6 Degrees Dance, composer George Heathco, and singer-composer Misha Penton created Testimony, an aerial dance and visual art installation that will premiere at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, September 25, at the MATCH. Valle recently told the Houston Press that though “Witness” is their “point of reference, Testimony is also about the much larger picture of how women in general have been silenced,” adding that the beheading of the statue is “such a metaphor for how violence is often used to silence artists, to silence women, to silence people.” Testimony will be performed again at 7:30 p.m. Friday, September 26, and Saturday, September 27, and 5 p.m. Sunday, September 28. Tickets can be purchased here for $20-$35, with a pay-what-you-can option on September 26.

After going from viral on TikTok to selling out comedy clubs around the country, Jiaoying Summers will return to Punchline Houston on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. with her latest hour of comedy, What Specie Are You? Summers recently told the Houston Press the show will be her “origin story,” saying, “We laugh about all the things that have happened and what I’ve been a victim of…I think that is the best place to find good comedy, to say things you are embarrassed of and ashamed of and make it funny. People can connect with me, I think.” Additional shows are set for 9:45 p.m. Friday, September 26, and 7 and 9:15 p.m. Saturday, September 27. Tickets to the show can be purchased here for $32 to $69.

Arthouse Houston’s Mobile Movie Palace is once again setting up shop at the MATCH, this time on Sunday, September 28, at 7 p.m. to screen the Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin-Dolly Parton comedy 9 to 5, “a feminist lark with laughs, crude comedy, wafts of pot smoke and a catchy anthem written by Parton.” Doors open at 7 p.m. for a set from Houston singer-songwriter Allison Holmes, who will perform live country music from artists like Parton and Loretta Lynn prior to the start of the revenge comedy, which “hit No. 2 at the box office in 1980, beaten only by The Empire Strikes Back.” The film, about three office workers who kidnap their horrible boss, will then begin at 7:40 p.m. General admission tickets are pay-what-you-can, with a suggested price of $20, here.