When I was a kid, two events were truly special for my sister and me–eating at a steakhouse and staying overnight at a hotel. Often these situations coincided. When our family vacationed, my father might celebrate the occasion with that working-class ’70s emblem of aristocratic indulgence–the steak. And we kids,…
I’ve long ago gotten over people’s surprised (and sometimes disdainful) reaction when I argue at parties and dinner conversations that Dallas maintains a fertile theater scene despite neglect from the city at large. I’ve come to understand that there are two kinds of people who ignore plays in this city–those…
thursday july 3 Sherman: Video Association of Dallas, the acclaimed arts organization dedicated to the notion that TV doesn’t have to destroy your brain cells, kicks off a series called “Frame of Mind” that will take place on the first Thursday of every month. Dallas filmmaker Bob Stevenson’s documentary Sherman…
When I was 12 years old, I went to my first rock concert–at Reunion Arena. My sister and I bought tickets for seats against the back wall of the first balcony–undoubtedly one of the worst deals you can get at Dallas’ almost-dormant downtown arena. Yet the assault of funny-smelling smoke;…
An abbreviated version of a famous joke goes like this: After you die, how do you know whether you’ve gone to heaven or hell? When you go to the great banquet hall of the afterlife, if you’re greeted by the English while the French cook for you, it’s heaven; if…
thursday june 26 Darrell Kreitz: Leave it to Austin, the Texas city that’s in many ways so unTexas-like, to come up with a festival competition that’s different from practically every other festival in the country. The Austin Heart of Film Competition was founded on the notion that the page is…
“I know how the story goes,” says Angus (Michael A. Corolla), a perpetually hopeful if not always realistic Englishman who spent his childhood watching adventures on the movie screen. “They tell each other deep secrets, and the power relationships begin to change.” Angus is talking to three co-workers with whom…
Driving through the constellation of strip malls on North Belt Line in Irving, you’ll find various Japanese restaurants with names like Hanasho–titles that would seem to scream “authentic” to Western eyes. Down the street from these establishments, however, beside a doughnut shop with a drive-through, is a boxy little establishment…
thursday june 19 National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America: Unfortunately, the history of human civilization has been one ethnic/religious/sexual group repressing and exploiting another, weaker one. But can we distinguish between garden-variety atrocities and atrocities with a capital A? Here’s a handy guide: Your group’s suffering is an…
While recently describing past romances with a friend, I chose a food metaphor. These frustrating relationships, I said, were like eating a big plate of barbecue ribs. As an unrepentant carnivore, I should love ribs, but I’m often as not disappointed by the experience. My mouth watering with anticipation as…
My poor planning occasionally triggers a situation that every critic should experience–I sometimes actually pay for admission to the shows I review. When I don’t have time to make the advance call necessary for comps, I just dig into my own pocket. Tragic as this scenario is, do hold your…
Dallas screenwriter Gretchen Dyer fully expected that some heterosexuals would resist the plot of her debut feature, Late Bloomers. The film, which was directed and co-produced by her sister, Julia Dyer, concerns two middle-aged women who unexpectedly fall in love while working at the same suburban high school. But she…
thursday june 12 Taming of the Shrew: Fort Worth beats Dallas to the “Shakespeare in the Park” punch with a production of Willie’s ultimate battle-of-the-sexes comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. The question is, will actress Theda Reale–who has worked extensively in theater and film on both coasts–deliver Katerina’s final…
You say your company is doing a play about the intersection of the sacred and the sexual? Protagonists whose myopic love challenges centuries of religious dogma in a foolhardy but passionate stand for the transcendent power of eros? Well, you’ve got this critic’s undivided attention and best wishes for success…
A certain kind of movie lover adores anything and everything foreign–French romantic comedies, Chinese historical dramas, English studies of class conflict. This is a perfectly defensible bias to hold, since the cinema does nothing better than take the stories of distant neighborhoods and write them so large across the screen…
thursday june 5 1997 Tour of World Figure Skating Champions: Some skating superstars have become famous for things other than working the blades–Dorothy Hamill for drinking iced tea and shampooing her hair, Rudy Galindo for being boy crazy, Oksana Baiul for proving you can laugh at someone’s name and still…
When you consider that Dallas-based playwright Angela Wilson mines very familiar territory in her two one-acts, Black Velvet and George and Scheherazade, sad, sad, sad, the little gems she extracts in her dirt-covered fingers are all the more surprising. Like all playwrights who attempt to cull the dramatic from the…
Artist David Alvey knew when he started work on the piece he calls “CYBER.sex” that it would contain subject matter that might offend people. “The concept consumed me and, literally, my studio,” Alvey says of the almost six-foot-long installation, a solid mahogany tabletop with three computer monitors, two of them…
thursday may 29 Cruces de la Vida: In a culture that has prized the public display of machismo as highly as the Latino culture has, it’s inevitable that Latinas have traditionally been driven to find and exercise strength inside themselves. The Catholic Church has provided much fuel to help stoke…
Having recently seen the same Samuel Beckett one-act performed by two different Dallas theater companies for two different audiences, a comparison is in order–and would be particularly helpful for neophyte theatergoers. Three weeks back, a large group of people, mostly heterosexual couples, attended a performance of Bucket Productions’ For Whom…
thursday may 22 Black Velvet and George and Scheherazade, sad, sad, sad: 11th Street Theatre Project brings these two short plays written by a playwright who graduated from Southern Methodist University to the Dallas area for the first time. Angela Wilson, who currently teaches on the faculty of Mountainview College,…
It says a lot about New Theatre Company’s collective skills that a play about boredom should come across so forcefully. Yet Keith Reddin’s Dallas premiere of Nebraska twiddles its thumbs with such homicidal intensity, the thwarted lives of the various couples it portrays are rendered from the inside out, all…
