What is it about Shakespeare’s work that’s so well-suited to summer eves and outdoor performances? Maybe it’s the great Bard’s mellifluous meter or his plays’ timeless knack for capturing the intoxication of young love on blossom-scented nights. Decide for yourself and catch his masterpiece of love and loss performed under the nascent stars. Opening tomorrow at 7:30pm and running Thursday through Sunday for four weeks, the Vortex Theatre presents Romeo and Juliet on the outdoor stage in Albuquerque’s Civic Plaza (400 Marquette NW). It promises good fun for young and old alike as the budding director Billy Trabaudo leads this timeless epic. If you hew more toward the slapstick comedy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that fairy-laden comedy will be running on alternate nights. Tickets are $15 ($10 for students) with Thursday prices rebated to $10 and $5. For more info and scheduling, visit vortexabq.org. Civic Plaza • Fri Jun 20 • 7:30pm • $5-$15 • ALL-AGES! • View on Alibi calendar

Teeming with hardboiled private dicks steeped in alcohol and battered by billy clubs, and with lean fedora-clad gumshoes propped in the penumbras of lonely lampposts, casing leggy dames holding dark secrets, the noir genre has obsessed writers and directors from Raymond Chandler to Stanley Kubrick. Think Bogey and Bacall, Spade and Marlowe.

For three Sunday nights, and three nights only, Dead End Nights celebrates these wizened dramas in all their sordid glory with a series of radio plays, lectures and secret screenings of mystery flicks. The series opens Sunday, June 15, with James Reich’s lecture Real Literature of America. Author of the novels Bombshell and I, Judas, Reich is a specialist in the form who’ll share his insights about noir’s influence on modern literature. Opening night also includes the radio play Lugdunum Falls, written and performed by Brianna Stallings and Marya Errin Jones, as well as a screening of an undisclosed B-movie. Head down to Tannex (1417 Fourth Street SW) on this strip of old Route 66 to catch the gigs: June 15, 22 and 29, 6pm. $5. Visit thetannex.com for more info. Tannex • Sun Jun 15 • 6-9:30pm • $5 • ALL-AGES! • View on Alibi calendar

If home is where the heart is, Cardiac is where the art is. The annual event, now in its third year, was conceived by the Pop-Up Collective. These local artists (Josh Schriber, Jodie Herrera and Angie Poynter) have seized on the concept of collectivism and DIY spaces that's taken root around the world as an alternative venue for undiscovered artists. Tomorrow, seven local visual artists working in a range of media gather for a one-night pop-up gala and fundraiser for the Heart Hospital of New Mexico at the reimagined industrial space West Bund West (217 Kinley NW). Look for Herrera’s stark pop-influenced paintings on wood that capture the female form sans sentimentality, and the eerie, human-animal hybrid wood sculptures of Elana Schwartz. They’re joined by Schriber, a painter in acrylic on steel; Joel Davis, whose tile work creates earthy, figurative mosaics; Kate Burn, a photographer; Poynter, a painter; and Lance Ryan McGoldrick, who builds installations. The evening is sustained with libations and snacks from the New York Pizza Department, and the atmosphere is enhanced by DJ Boojaloo and Haldyon. Welcome home. West Bund West • Sat May 17 • 6-11pm • FREE • ALL-AGES! • View on Alibi calendar