Events for the week

thursday
october 3
Camping With Henry and Tom: In the spirit of Nicolas Roeg's priceless script of Insignificance, which detailed a fictional conversation of the real-life hotel meeting between Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe, playwright Mark St. Germain wrote his comic exploration, Camping With Henry and Tom, in 1993, then moved it off-Broadway two years later. The WaterTower Theatre in Addison brings this tale of what might have happened during a real-life camping trip taken by Henry Ford, President Warren G. Harding, and Thomas Edison. Performances happen Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. through October 26 at the WaterTower Theatre at the Addison Conference and Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road in Addison. Tickets are $18. Call (972) 450-6220.

Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky: Martha Argerich is the kind of pianist who drives classical music aficionados to say things like "She's one of nature's happenings." Thus spake a jury member in Warsaw's 1965 Chopin Competition who was bowled over by a 24-year-old Argerich. Granted, these same aficionados tend to wet themselves over new talents with the same shameless glee of a 16-year-old at her first Beatles concert, but that particular jury put its award where its mouth was; she went on to be the first Westerner to win first prize in Warsaw. The Cliburn Concert series invites her and cellist Mischa Maisky, with whom Argerich recently recorded Three Cello Sonatas. The concert begins at 8 p.m. in the Ed Landreth Auditorium of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Tickets are $10 to $35. Call (817) 335-9000.

friday
october 4
Hair: The Deep Ellum Opera Theatre couldn't have picked a more opportune time to revive Broadway's classic "American tribal love-rock musical"; 1996 has found anyone who watches TV or reads magazines drowning in ad nauseam references to Broadway's Pulitzer Prize-winning megahit Rent. Some of us who have never seen either Hair or Rent performed live, but have listened to the original cast recordings of both, feel that the former's ode to free love in the face of the Vietnam War mops up the floor with the latter's toast to Bohemia in the '90s. Hair has the more wickedly clever, anarchic, and hummable tunes between the two. Come decide for yourself. Performances happen Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. through October 27 at Deep Ellum Opera Theatre, 3202 Elm Street. Call 871-ARTS.

saturday
october 5
Fort Worth Museum Powwow: The dances performed at Native American powwows are so very different in form and philosophy than anything in the canon of contemporary U.S. rituals, they sometimes elicit giggles from those Americans whose sense of history is fragile (and that's most of us). And yet, it's their very foreignness to most 1996 Americans that makes them fascinating--and essential for anyone who wishes to fully understand the natural elements of the continent on which we live. The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History hosts its fourth annual Native American Powwow, which features dancing, of course, as well as storytelling, crafts, foods, and more. The event happens from 2 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on the North Lawn of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, 1501 Montgomery St. in Fort Worth. Call (817) 732-1631.

Old Fort Dallas Auction: Just 15 minutes from downtown Dallas in tiny Ferris, Texas, sits a magnet for local TV and film companies--a detailed replica of a 19th-century Old West town known as Old Fort Dallas that has heard the crack of countless pistol-fired blanks. Old Fort Dallas itself and all the accouterments of its 28-structure sprawl will be sold to the highest bidder at a public auction, which means if your couch change beats your neighbor's couch change, you get an Old West town. A last-minute celebration under the current ownership happens October 4 at 6:30 p.m. with gunfighters, buggy rides, a barbecue, and more; the auction happens October 5 at 11 a.m. at Old Fort Dallas. For info call 1-800-250-8967.

The Mystery of Things...A Woman's Explanation of Lear: She has been Frank Sinatra's mother, a San Francisco transsexual landlady, an aging Southern belle with a tongue like a switchblade--but before and above her many incarnations on TV and movie screens, Olympia Dukakis has been an actress, teacher, and director of the stage. Dukakis premieres her new one-woman show, The Mystery of Things...A Woman's Explanation of Lear, at the invitation of the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas. She channels the tragic King Lear through the perspective of three fictional women who knew him best--Goneril, Cordelia, and Regan. The event happens at 8 p.m. at The Majestic Theatre on Elm Street downtown. For ticket info call 871-ARTS.

Keeper of Genesis--The Message of the Sphinx: Pity the Sphinx, that millenniums-old man-faced, lion-butted artifact that has served as a lightning rod for competing, often political interpretations of history. The latest amusing bon mot springs from the head of party guy Louis Farrakhan, who insists the Jews shot the nose off the Sphinx because the offending protuberance too much resembled a black African's. Egyptologist Michael Bauval has a view of Middle Eastern history that's more learned but almost as controversial in his field--that both the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx are mathematical and engineering marvels that prove the astrological knowledge of ancient ancestors was far greater than anyone thought. Bauval lectures "The Eclectic Viewpoint" at 7:30 p.m. at the Unity Church of Dallas, 6525 Forest Lane. Admission is $15. Call (972) 601-7687.