After reading Born Standing Up, Steve Martin’s memoir about the beginning of his career, it’s clear that many of the entertainers (including Martin) we consider to be legendary comics started out doing magic tricks. So what are the new comagicians up to these days? The floating ball? The dove? Card…
I stood next to Bob Wills’ daughter at a SXSW day party once. Of course, I didn’t really know that until they brought her up onstage and said, “Hey everybody, this is Bob Wills’ daughter,” but I still felt a little more Texan after the experience. After all, her dad…
To say that digital art is a trend would be an oversimplification. With Kristin Lucas’ work on display at the And/Or, and artists such as Miranda July and Sandro Bocola gaining more and more attention for their digital pieces, it’s tempting to think that art is going through a phase…
Other than my three-year stint as an ensemble actor, probably one of the best things to happen to Dallas theater would be the International Theater Festival. Now in its 13th year, the festival brings companies from around the world to expand our idea of what the stage can convey. Teatro…
Artist Nancy Brown shares her name with a blond woman with a serious sunglass tan, who unfortunately beat her to the nancybrownart.com domain. Luckily for us, instead of the watercolor beach scenes favored by the other Nancy, our Nancy favors mixed-media collages that would look out of place in the…
The Magnolia at the Modern film series continues to offer a vital palette of moving pictures to broaden its contemporary art exposition. The series’ works of solemnity or quirkiness, of historical note or modern interpretation, are always thought-provoking and tasty. This weekend’s selection, Andrew Wagner’s Starting Out in the Evening,…
If your Super Bowl party snack spread is anything like ours it most likely resembles a dietary timeline associated with massive coronary arrest: fried mozzarella sticks, hot wings, jalapeño poppers and fried jalapeños stuffed with hot wings wrapped in bacon and mozzarella. That’s all well and good for undignified slobs…
Art has embraced digital technology more and more in the past 20 years in many new and inventive ways. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t still something to be said for handcrafted art done the old-fashioned way: I have an friend that creates the most complex and interesting pieces via…
Like a dumb grown-up, I had the Doodlebops mixed up with another live-action preschool band, The Wiggles. The Doodlebops feature blue, yellow-on-orange and pink-on-purple musicians, while The Wiggles feature blue, red, purple and yellow players. Totally different. To avoid further confusion, I asked my 5-year-old son, Lyle—a budding Uncle Barky…
It is a magic formula that could only have happened in the early ’80s. The future Governator, a coked-up, pre-Scarface Oliver Stone and John Milius (Apocalypse Now) got together to create the most ridiculously magical, oiled-up sword-and-sandal epic that ever graced the silver screen. Conan the Barbarian made 1982 “The…
I’ve been waiting for an Alamo Drafthouse to open in North Texas for years now–there’s really nothing as satisfying as watching a bad movie with a bucket of Lone Star in hand, after all. Until that glorious day, however, we Dallasites will have to make do with the Studio Movie…
“‘S Wonderful,” the George Gershwin tune often sung by Ella Fitzgerald, could be sung in tribute to her fans. “‘S wonderful, ‘s marvelous, that you should care for me.” Fans did care and do care. And now there’s an entire musical devoted to the life and times of the sultry…
What do you do when you’re a reputable university with a permanent art collection that’s been unstudied for years? If you’re UNT, you get a bunch of art history grad students at the College of Visual Arts and Design to spend a semester to research and write scholarly texts about…
Monterey has long been associated with music. To many it is because of a pop festival, but perhaps to more it is associated with jazz. Celebrating half a century of jazz affiliation, the Monterey Jazz Festival’s 50th Anniversary Band will perform two Texas dates, including one at McFarlin Auditorium. The…
The neat freak versus the messy one. OCD versus pack rat mound-making. Unger versus Madison. It’s a pairing pop culture fans know better as The Odd Couple. The Richardson Theatre Centre, however, is shaking things up a bit. They’re throwing out the classic tale of singles co-habitating…only this time, instead…
I lived in Chicago for a summer once, so naturally I was expecting an exhibit called New Art From Chicago to feature all the staples: hot dogs, pizza, Old Style, Wilco, George Wendt, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Tortoise, the Blue Line, Jon Langford, etc., etc. Unfortunately, “the show is based on…
It’s another few months before Scarborough Faire gets started out in Waxahachie, and you can’t keep watching Stardust every night or that poor DVD’s going to be as worn out as your copy of Busty Wenches XVII: Codpiece Cove. Where to go for your Middle Ages romance fix? Why, Addison,…
You know Bruce Bruce. The doubly monikered comic has hosted BET’s Coming to the Stage, has been in Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits commercials and that Ying Yang Twins video “Salt Shaker.” I’ll take the Popeye’s and the Ying Yang, but I cannot tolerate Bruce Bruce’s participation in box office splat…
I’m stressed, you’re stressed, we’re all stressed. I miss the kindergarten days, when the only stress we had came from deciding which crayon to use or whether to play on the swings or do the monkey bars at recess. And one’s love life was so simple too: The threat of…
Like Ella, this one-woman biographical musical, directed by Phyllis Cicero, allows for lots of songs, interspersed with personal monologues about the men that got away. Dallas actress and cabaret diva M. Denise Lee may not look a lot like Billie Holiday, but she gets to the essence of the legendary…
The First Lady of Song? How about Empress of All That Swings? Ella Fitzgerald comes to life again in the voice and “scat-itude” of Chicago actress E. Faye Butler. The glitzy production of the bio-musical, which arrives here from a sold-out run at Chi-town’s Northlight Theatre, is stacked with jazzy…
There’s a point at which every fad overstays its welcome. Could it be that Guitar Hero is already just a sour note from being booed out of America’s living room? For evidence, look no further than the plethora of GH cash-in products hawked at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in…
