Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a fascinating person. That’s a statement that can be fairly made without any political underpinning, and it should be thought-provoking to hear what this woman has to say when she speaks at the University of North Texas Distinguished Lecture Series at 8 p.m…
John Steinbeck once said that he was doing his “damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags” while writing his classic The Grapes of Wrath. If you’ve spent any time with that tome at all, you know the son of a gun succeeded: He eased you in with droughts and…
If you like your stage experience outside of the norm, you probably love the Undermain Theatre, whose latest offering is exceptionally wackadoodle. Written more than a hundred years ago, August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata is the model of modernist chamber plays and experimental theater, so it’s a given that it…
I remember a few years ago my car ran out of gas on I-35. I hopped down the bridge and started walking, in the dead of night, on Colorado toward Beckley. I’d left Oak Cliff a few years before, but the corner boys and gang bangers were right where I…
On stage at SMU’s Bob Hope Theater, a young woman is isolated in a tiny, rolling greenhouse. The smallest of its stagemates, this transparent prop is only a few feet tall — too short to allow her any comfort. So she writhes, pressing her arms, chest and neck into the…
Every week we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Maz Jobrani at the Addison Improv A founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, Jobrani likes to explore such safe topics as Iran’s wishy-washy nuclear program and Asians’ inability to drive…
At the end of a 2012 interview with Maxwell Anderson, the Dallas Museum of Art’s Eugene McDermott Director, I asked him what he’d do for employment if he weren’t shaking up the museum world. He took a very short pause. Then, in an affectionate tone, he said he’d apply for,…
Sorry Schutze, and happy Tuesday to Alice and everyone else. Our favorite freaky-faced guardian of on-tap root beer, Big Tex, is under the knife. And according to this just released video from the State Fair, his face will stay creepy and long-nosed. Sigh, that’s the Tex we know and love…
When I was young, my father took a bite of every great meal I received. He called it “taking tax,” and declared it payback for keeping us alive. Pappa Bear Rawlings agrees, and has branded April 7 to 14 as Dallas Arts Week, or as press materials stress, #DallasArtsWeek. The…
There are always elements of Turandot, the famous Puccini opera, that are hard to swallow: overt sexism, implied rape, uncomfortable racist elements and a disturbing, implausible conclusion. Ideally, the strange beauty of Puccini’s music and the extravagance of the spectacle are redeeming. But in the Dallas Opera’s opening performance Friday…
In “The Love of My Life,” her 2002 essay for literary journal The Sun, Cheryl Strayed is the 22-year-old woman who fell to her knees after seeing her mother dead in a hospital bed, then pressed those same bruised knees into a strange man a week later, unbeknownst to her…
At Denton Square Donuts, on an unseasonable cool April night, four members of Denton Comedy Collective sit at a table shellacked with Bible verses. Matthew Solomon, Robert Joseph, Alex Smelser and Ron Lechler are all 20-somethings trying to make it in the big, bad world of stand-up comedy. For them,…
One afternoon a year, Dallas hands over the keys to the Cotton Bowl, permitting the space to transform into a massive dog park. At Dog Bowl, every canine want is met: there are kiddie pools for soaking, vendors handing out healthy treats, and hundreds of wagging tails, all waiting to…
Of all of Allison Wilt’s tattoos, only a few have personal meaning. There’s a portrait on her left forearm of a young boy in a far away land that’s dedicated to her grandfather’s adventurous spirit. A sugary sweet cupcake sits just above, scribed with the name of Wilt’s sister, “Molly…
“Leaving the safety of Dallas allowed us both to really go for it,” says artist and dancer Danielle Georgiou. She’s referring to Pizzicato Porno, a mutlitsensory piece that she and her boyfriend, Ochre House’s Justin Locklear, recently assembled and presented at the Rogue Performance Festival in Fresno. Dallas gets one…
When we enter a small-town gas station, many of us are quick to get in, out and on our way. Others are content to linger, to observe the fleeting interactions and become small-time voyeurs. That location serves as the nucleus of director Yen Tan’s latest film, Pit Stop, which follows…
In mid-90s America, radio waves were clogged with impassioned blockages — most of which wouldn’t hold with time. Meanwhile, a 2,000 mile fence was being built to further separate America from an increasingly tumultuous Mexico, causing a historically unprecedented number of deaths via border crossing. Somebody, turn up the Gin…
If the Dallas curator scene had a cypher, Kevin Rubén Jacobs would be Riff Raff, refusing to stay on beat, dropping obscure references, making meta-mash potatoes out of the other MCs and showcasing his deep knowledge of the pop culture and art world. His Oliver Francis Gallery has already kicked…
Over the next two months, the Dallas Opera and the Fort Worth Opera will present a combined total of six operas with some 20-plus performances. From classic Italian masterpieces to modern American works sung in English, there’s a lot of variety from north Texas’ opera companies this spring. For the…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Carlos Mencia at Addison Improv This Honduras-born comedian rose to superstardom with his show Mind of Mencia and a ridiculous catch phrase. His Comedy Central stand-up special, No Strings Attached, was a huge…
“Deep Ellum’s back” has been vomited out and up ad nauseum. The truth is it never left. Changed perhaps. Got its face kicked in a few times, then touched up with a lil plastic surgery, and now exists as an amalgamation of its roots and reanimations, with a strong neighborhood…
If you’ve seen the new issue of the Dallas Observer, you already know that we’ve contracted DIFF Fever. Now, we want to help you catch it. We’re giving away two sets of super fancy passes this afternoon and winning them is easy. Just drop a caption for this picture into…
