From her work at the Third Horizon Film Festival and producing the award-winning short film T, Monica Sorelle has been a filmmaker on the rise. The Miami-born Haitian-American hit a new peak in her career with the release of her first feature, Mountains. Sorelle is again securing much-deserved awards and acclaim, including a Someone to Watch Award from the Independent Spirit Awards. Tapped-in Miamians already had an eye on Sorelle and her work, but now a wider audience can discover her immense talents. After an impressive festival tour, Mountains finally made its Miami debut at the Miami Film Festival, where it earned the Made in MIA Feature Film Award. The specificity of Sorelle's exploration of displacement and alienation as it relates to the diasporic experience in Miami is a marvel. Fortunately, this gifted artist is sharing that story with the rest of the world through film.

Though you might think a day job narrating true crime podcasts like Sacred Scandal or Cold Case Files, highlighting the worst of humanity, might shake the sense of humor right out of you, it's only fueled comedian Paula Barros' hilarity. Also known as Pauley McPaulerson, Barros doubles audiences over at events all around town, whether it's when she's hosting at Hotel Greystone on South Beach and Arlo Wynwood, or gracing the stage at the Villain Theater. While most crowd-working comedians in Miami have made insult comedy a bit of a blood sport, Barros takes a more empathetic approach to confronting her audience. With style and class, she splits sides without the need for the sharp weapons of her podcast subjects. Instead, she comes armed with well-timed punchlines.

Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami founder Pedro Pablo Peña has offered safe haven more than once to dancers fleeing Cuba. He himself arrived in Miami on the 1980 Mariel boatlift. In fact, his company's season finale at the Fillmore Miami Beach this year featured four Cuban dancers who left the National Ballet of Cuba while visiting Puerto Rico. When Peña formed his company in 2006, it was to preserve the style of Cuban ballet outside the island. His openness to deserters seeking a better life in the U.S. has been a great gain for Miami audiences. And many go on to work with the country's top ballet companies. Peña's company also draws in dancers from other countries around the world for the celebrated International Ballet Festival of Miami.

Sisters Tanya and Natasha Bravo are the founding forces behind the magical Juggerknot Theatre Company. Year after year, production after production, the team delivers one helluva unique theater experience. Known for their immersive shows, Juggerknot knows how to engage and entertain an audience. Their latest production, Conjuring the King, is a raw, communal journey and one-woman show that follows the story of an Elvis Presley fan-club president. Taking care of business and takeovers are kind of their thing. The company put on exciting productions that took over motels (Miami Motel Stories) and even a house in Little Havana (The Blues Opera). We're sure the Bravo sisters will continue to find creative ways to stay fresh and engaging.

This absurdist, experimental troupe's odd name was inspired by the title of a Google image of southwest Florida's Lakewood Ranch. Founded by three FIU theater grads during the height of the pandemic, LakehouseranchDotPNG found a surprisingly eager audience while working out of a second-floor rented space in Kendall. The group is committed to showcasing new work, much of which is written by the company's local resident playwrights. This season, they're abandoning Kendall for Miami Lakes, but they aren't straying from their commitment to innovative big-thinking: season three includes a horror play about creeper vines in West Virginia and a couple on the hunt for a cryptid known as Mothman.

Larger-than-life acting coach Violet Tcherkin is Miami's only accredited instructor of the Chubbuck technique. It's a 21st-century evolution of the widely studied Stanislavski method, which countless Hollywood A-listers have used to hone their craft. Tcherkin's students swear not only by her prowess as a world-class instructor of thespians but also by her empathy and insights into the human condition. While she helps her students prepare for the rigorous and highly competitive acting industry, she also offers them what some call a life-changing journey of self-discovery and personal growth.

Easily going from glam to gritty, Miami actress Lela Elam is nothing if not convincing. As Morgan Wright in Zoetic Stage's Clark Gable Slept Here, she originated the role of the Hollywood diva pissed to be called away from the Golden Globes to help clean up a murder mess. Elam seamlessly juggled multiple roles in the Actors' Playhouse production of A Rock Sails By. And she killed it as no-nonsense Coach Odessa Hicks in this season's The Girls of Summer with M Ensemble Company. The role, which hearkened the 1992 classic film A League of Their Own, had the actress leading a team of Black female baseball players in the '40s. Her range and convincing portrayals make it pretty clear that as an actress, Elam is herself in a league of her own.

Elijah Word has finesse. He can transform an iconic role that audiences have seen over and over again. Characters ingrained in our psyche are re-created entirely when he plays them on stage. Superstar Eddie Murphy defined James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls, but when Word played the role in Broward Stage Door's Carbonell-winning production, there wasn't an ounce of Murphy in the character. Likewise, there was not even a nod to Broadway's legendary Billy Porter when Word played the drag artiste Lola in Slow Burn's Kinky Boots. But where he truly proved his knack for originality was in Zoetic Stage's Cabaret. His master of ceremonies was born anew — a love child of a contestant in RuPaul's Drag Race and torch singer Billie Holiday.

Nilo Cruz left behind his homeland at nine years old when he boarded a Freedom Flight from Cuba to Miami in 1970. But the island would stay with him as he developed into a playwright. His play Anna in the Tropics was commissioned by the now-defunct New Theatre in Coral Gables. He was the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2003 for the play, but Cruz never forgot where he got his start. For the 20th anniversary of the play last year, Cruz chose to direct the show for the first time himself at Miami New Drama. In March 2024, only a month after he wrote Sed en la Calle del Agua, he and Arca Images staged its premiere at Miami Dade County Auditorium. Talk about commitment! He was also just named by the president of the Carbonell Awards as the 2024 recipient of the prestigious George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts. Cruz is a national treasure, but lucky for local theater lovers, his roots remain in Miami.

Audiences got up close and personal with famed collectors Don and Mera Rubell's art when Miami New Drama artistic director Michel Hausmann launched his take of a night at the museum with The Museum Plays. He orchestrated six original ten-minute plays by six different playwrights. Each was tied to art in different rooms at the Rubell Museum in Allapattah. Ingenious and inventive, Hausmann had success with an unconventional venue in the past, albeit born out of necessity during the pandemic. He delivered Seven Deadly Sins, short plays by seven writers, in storefronts on Lincoln Road to keep audiences socially distanced. That endeavor made national news. The Museum Plays followed the same format, shuffling five different groups of 30 people throughout the museum at the same time. It was theater worthy of a museum.