What good reason might explain actor Leah Spillman being clad only in skimpy pink panties and a sheer white tank top in her first scene in Kitchen Dog Theater’s The Totalitarians? In the sexist and unsexy four-character 2014 play by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, Spillman’s character, Francine Jefferson, is an ambitious…
Composer Mark Adamo knows what you are thinking when you hear the words “Christmas opera” (he can see the sugar plum fairies dancing across your mind). “It’s an opera about Santa Claus as a young boy,” he says with a laugh. “People hear that and they start looking for their…
Now that Thanksgiving is over, we’re now officially on the countdown to the end of the year. The cultural calendar starts to look a little bit bland throughout the holiday season, what with all the symphony Christmas carol performances and theatre performances of, well, A Christmas Carol. This week, though,…
William Baker has us all beat. He’s filled with knowledge, humility and seriously some of the best taste in Dallas. (That sounds weird, but we mean he has great taste. Not like he has the best, Taste in Dallas!) Anyway, bullet points!!! Childhood: Baker saved his money and shopped for collectibles…
There’s so much to be grateful for in Dallas culture, it’s difficult to limit the counting to two hands. But here’s my best attempt. The Dallas OperaBy the end of this year, the Dallas Opera will have produced three opera world premieres in under 12 months. They gave us the…
In a 2001 interview, producer Lee Mendelson recalled the reaction of a CBS executive who attended a screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” shortly before it was scheduled to premiere, on December 9, 1965: “Well, it’s in the TV Guide logs — we gotta put it on the air. Nice…
Who knows what started the trend, but adult coloring books are a thing. And we don’t necessarily mean adult like raunchy, of course, we’re not opposed to that either. Two of our favorite places, the library and the sculpture center, organized groups of local artists to create outlines of various…
Before America succumbed to the insane ravings of right-wing media nut-jobbery, the only “war on Christmas” was one based in the notion that the birth of Jesus was exploited for profit by retail businesses. There was too much Christmas in the public square, said solemn theologians and some politicians in…
An important part of running a gallery is observing people at your shows, reading the room, noticing who is engaged with the work, and talking to people. You notice body language: the way perspective buyers keep circling back to a certain piece while others are there to appreciate the work…
Friday, Nov. 27 Cinewilde’s La Cage Aux Folles If you’re in the mood for a madcap comedy that was originally an award-winning music, head to Texas Theater for the one-night-only showing of La Cage aux Folles. It’s the story of two gay men, Georges and Albin, who run into a bit…
Imperfect people struggling to free themselves from messy circumstances can make for good drama. But actors fumbling with accents and mumbling lines as they play those imperfect people — as they do in Undermain Theatre’s The Night Alive by Conor McPherson — just make a mess of a pretty good…
The big breakthrough in Legend, the latest well-crafted studio throwback from writer-director Brian Helgeland (Payback, A Knight’s Tale, 42)? At long last, here’s one movie with two often incomprehensible Tom Hardy characters, sometimes muttering their Cockney swears at each other inside the same scene. Hardy plays twins, real-life gangsters who…
The heads of the City Dionysia, the Grecian playwriting competition that pitted Aeschylus against Sophocles and can be considered the original Oscars, had a rule: no original characters. Instead, the best creative minds of a generation — or really, a millennium — exhausted themselves finding new spins on, say, Medea…
Bob Birdnow’s Remarkable Tale of Human Survival and the Transcendence of Self is a work of fiction that puts TED Talks to shame. Local filmmaker and playwright Eric Steele has completed The Midwestern Trilogy he started back in 2008 with an absolute gem by adapting this one-man show into a…
The first sound you hear in Stage West’s production of The Heir Apparent is a tremendous fart. That could serve as commentary on the rest of the play. Playwright David Ives’ flatulent adaptation of a fluffy 18th century French comedy is written in rhyming couplets. All of it. Hours of…
If you’re looking for a specific breed, there are quite a few organizations dedicated to matching pets with a forever home. The Golden Retriever Rescue of North Texas, for example. But sometimes it’s more specific to a connection with an animal. Sometimes you’ll meet an animal and know. And if that’s how…
Thanksgiving week isn’t generally a time when most of us are able to get out and about. After pretending to work Monday through Wednesday, the luckiest (or unluckiest, depending on your own situation) among us will head home for a Thanksgiving feast with the family. Once that’s all over, though,…
Today is the last day to nominate your favorite artist, performer, writer, curator, choreographer, songwriter, community activist, etc. for the annual Mastermind award. See original post below and get those nominations in today by midnight. Artists in Dallas are always complaining about the limited spread of funds. This is why…
Friday, Nov. 20Art Film at the Dallas Contemporary Dallas-based fashion designer Charles Smith never seems to be without a new vessel to pour his creative talent into. In the last couple of years, he has put out his first line of couture as well as a ready to wear line,…
Marvel’s Jessica Jones is smart, surprising and occasionally terrifying, a human tale of trauma and healing in a superhero vein. Its first episodes have more (unexploitative) sex scenes than battles, more shrugs and eye rolls than mighty kapows. But it’s not the shock or novelty that gives it resonance. Jessica…
The Nazis lost World War II, but they’ve conquered the American imagination. Seventy years after his suicide, Hitler is still everywhere: in the movies, on YouTube, in political headlines and on the History Channel. The latest manifestation of our Third Reich fixation is The Man in the High Castle, Amazon’s…
Find your inner holiday cheer because tree lightings are happening all around you. Yes, it’s officially Christmas time and we know that because shopping anxiety has set in and your mother has already started bugging you about doing “more family things” because “it’s the season of giving and family time.”…
