Tom Stoppard is a tough sell to the typical theatergoer. And by typical I mean a real die-hard fan of live performance who pays to see several plays a year. Most people don’t go to the theater. Ever. Just like most people don’t eat fried calf brains or read Doris…
Blasted Within four years, British playwright Sarah Kane churned out a steady raft of confrontational plays, as if she knew she would die at 28 (at the very end, she did know–she committed suicide). Not everyone agreed she deserved a stage: London’s Daily Mail called Blasted, her violent first salvo,…
Barber/Kincaid/Pomara Scott Barber, Ted Kincaid and John Pomara are three artists who’ve harnessed technology to the betterment of their work. Using the computer to mediate and transform photography, they make colorful flat images that make you rethink painting and its surfaces in the present. Using cancerous cells as subject matter,…
No longer does the comic-book reader have to apologize for his (or her!) fondness for tales starring caped crusaders; no longer must we skulk into comics shops like trench-coat pervs trolling for porn in adult book shops. The medium’s all grown up now and worth a fortune, especially to movie…
Thursday, November 4 When we think “British music,” we generally think of Sex Pistols, the Clash, Joy Division, David Bowie, Radiohead and even Coldplay. It’s never an instantaneous connection to Andrew Lloyd Webber or Gilbert and Sullivan, but that doesn’t negate their influence or importance. The Symphonic Pops Consortium, composed…
He’s a franchise now–writer of two books, star of a series of DVDs, seller of a wireless Texas hold ’em game, even the face (literally) of a set of poker chips offered for a $200 buy-in and now, along with Tobey Maguire, on the board of advisers of EdgeTV, the…
11/4 Within the sphere of lofty cultural movements, there is the smaller, but no less lofty, category of culture that moves. Like mobile lending libraries that visit library-less villages, Artrain USA thrives on the idea of accessibility. It’s already pulled into many places where art usually does not arrive: LeRoy,…
11/6 Saturday’s Ride the Rim, a back roads mountain bike tour, at Glen Rose’s Fossil Rim reminds us of a race we once took part in at Fossil Rim when we were young. It started like any other school field trip as we packed into a yellow school bus, but…
11/5 Pop artist Paul Frank was a lot cooler before he opened a boutique in Dallas. You used to have to go to New York City, Chicago or Tokyo to get one of those trendy T-shirts with the funky monkey emblazoned across the front. Since the store opened in the…
Cirque du Soleil visits Varekai 11/4 Two years ago on Bravo’s reality series The Fire Within, Cirque du Soleil selected and trained 50-plus artists and musicians from 13 countries for the group’s most recent creation. Varekai–“wherever” in gypsy speak–captures the nomadic spirit of kindred tribes with enchanting costumes, elegant staging…
Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It almost serves as an early climax, a bracing thrill served up before a word…
Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks on the soundtrack. He’s talking about reincarnation and about what he would do if his wife, named Anna, were to die and return as a bird insisting it was indeed…
The story goes that when Oscar Wilde traveled to America in 1881, he was asked by a customs agent if he had anything to declare. “Only my genius,” he replied. The Irish-born poet, novelist and playwright was the Victorian era’s most quotable aesthete, famously spouting barbed aphorisms even to his…
New York City is the materialization of order out of chaos. Boisterous crowds of pedestrian and vehicular traffic elegantly course through its veins on a minute-by-minute basis. Its manmade mountains, what Walt Whitman called “solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars,” mark the upward thrust of an endless hustle and…
Grateful: The Songs of John Bucchino In Theatre Three’s new cabaret act, five of the company’s most seasoned actors tromp onstage in a merry file to sing “That Smile,” the first in their hour-long lineup of Bucchino’s tender, wistful songs. Bucchino’s talent is for saying something indelible about life by…
Barber/Kincaid/Pomara Scott Barber, Ted Kincaid and John Pomara are three artists who’ve harnessed technology to the betterment of their work. Using the computer to mediate and transform photography, they make colorful flat images that make you rethink painting and its surfaces in the present. Using cancerous cells as subject matter,…
Bill and Pam Campbell get a little misty when they talk about their upcoming 30th anniversary in business, the artists they’ve loved and lost at William Campbell Contemporary Art and the new talents they’ve nurtured to become nationally recognized art stars. And they’re planning a big party to celebrate. “This…
Ongoing If you want to scare the bejeezus out of most kids, threaten them with a Saturday-afternoon visit to an art museum. (“Culture! Education! N-o-o-o-o!”) If you want to frighten their fathers, an evening at a fund-raiser for an art museum usually works. (“Black tie! Canapés! N-o-o-o-o!) So it makes…
10/30 Last year’s Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships had its moments of high drama, including a rare dead heat, first in the Cup’s history. But I got my money’s worth watching the spectacular hissy fit of Six Perfections, a gorgeous French-bred filly who forced rider Jerry Bailey to bail out…
10/30 Every 300 years or so, a great idea comes along. Martin Luther had his, our nation’s forefathers had theirs and now we have ours thanks to the Deep Ellum nonprofit DEFMAN’s fifth annual Goth Ball, perhaps the largest Halloween party of its kind, which has an ’80s theme asking…
10/30 This summer, the country had hope. Lollapalooza was set to unleash a hearty slab of unknown gold to the Midwest, as the traveling festival would have given MTV-loving kids a sample of non-mainstream live acts such as The Flaming Lips, Broken Social Scene and, possibly, the Bellydance Superstars. We’re…
“Whadyawant, motherfuck?” They’re the first words Charles Bukowski speaks in John Dullaghan’s documentary about the poet and novelist, famous for his writing and infamous for his drinking and brawling and screwing. The audience member, either the acolyte or just the curious stranger, might respond, “To hear your story, Hank, that’s…
