Stephen Tobolowsky’s strength as an actor is that he finds complexity in all of his characters; he doesn’t believe stories can always be reduced to a struggle between good and evil. Take, for instance, the Dallas native’s role as “Action” Jack Barker in the current, third season of Silicon Valley, the…
“It’s just messy right now,” a character in playwright Steve Yockey’s The Thrush and the Woodpecker states defensively early in the play. If only it were just messy right now. Steve Yockey is a Los Angeles-based writer whose play Blackberry Winter is currently receiving a National New Play Network (NNPN)…
If you’re planning to attend a production of Steve Yockey’s Blackberry Winter or The Thrush & the Woodpecker from Kitchen Dog Theater, plug in directions to Undermain Theatre. For more than a decade, Kitchen Dog Theater was housed in the bright blue building on McKinney Avenue known as The McKinney Avenue…
Comics are a cynical breed. Their goal is to make an audience laugh and one common way to do that is by pointing out holes in our beliefs and behavior. Ryan Singer uses a different technique to get guffaws from the crowd. He thinks a sense of humor is necessary to…
Eight figures wearing hooded terra cotta-colored robes could be made out through a thick fog on the stage as patrons trickled into a nearly sold-out Winspear Opera House Tuesday night for the kick-off event to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s second Soluna Festival. They were clearly the dancers who would be…
You don’t need to possess any knowledge of theater at all to know the character of Ophelia, Hamlet’s doomed lover; her tragic descent into madness, like some of Hamlet’s more dramatic speeches, has taken on a life of its own. But young Dallas playwright/actress Janielle Kastner would like you to…
There’s no doubt you’re watching a live radio drama when you watch The Intergalactic Nemesis. The actors bring their characters to life behind an old-timey microphone and a sound effects operator uses the whirl of a Little Tykes cement mixer to mimic the sound of a robot scuttling across a…
Trailer Park Boys, Canada’s classic television comedy series, has been running for 10 seasons and counting. Actor John Dunsworth brilliantly plays the Boys’ drunken nemesis, Jim Lahey. Along with his shirtless sidekick and on-and-off lover, Randy, Lahey has sent the Boys to jail several times. A former police officer and…
Back in 2009, just as the Dallas Theater Center was moving into its brand new home in the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Wyly Theatre, DTC artistic director Kevin Moriarty sat in the audience for a performance of Cara Mia Theatre Co.’s original production of Crystal City 1969. Although it was his…
Anyone alive in November 23, 1963, remembers the nightmarish quality of that day—and the international stigma it attached to Dallas and to the whole state of Texas. Saturday night at Bass Performance Hall, with the premiere of David T. Little’s opera JFK, Fort Worth came face to face with its…
On Wednesday, LeeAnne Locken, star of The Real Housewives of Dallas, visited with the Plano mayor, Harry LaRosiliere, for a great PR move to clear up that whole “It’s a little Plano in here” line she mumbled while fellow housewives Brandi Redmond and Stephanie Hollman were joking about poop during…
Last night, the worlds of the Omegans and the Koridians collided explosively in Denton and only one man could keep these furious foes from a battle that would destroy all of mankind. That man, of course, was performance artist and Adult Swim celebrity David Liebe Hart. Hart, who is best…
Episode 2: “Mad As a Hatter” Like every great reality television program, the episode begins with a review of what happened last episode. (Our take on Episode 1 and the cast viewing party is here for those who missed it.) Housewife LeeAnne Locken is angry at other Housewife Brandi Redmond for mocking her…
It’s 10 a.m. on a weekday and Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are cuddling kittens on the stage of a fancy strip club off Northwest Highway. The small felines have been brought to The Lodge by no-kill shelter Operation Kindness as a surprise for the comedians, who are in Dallas…
Friday, for the first time ever, Dallas Opera produced a Broadway musical. Kern and Hammerstein’s Show Boat made Broadway history with its innovations and the quality of its score, setting the standard for the American musical for decades after its run of 527 performances in New York in 1927-’29. Ninety…
The well-heeled crowd at Winspear Opera House this Friday is going to get the chance to be offended by Dallas Opera’s production of Show Boat. The first-ever opening night audience on Broadway 90 years ago may have had a little jolt at seeing an all-black chorus, including women, onstage as…
Fighter and the Kid is a popular podcast with a rabid fan base. The fighter is Brendan Schaub, a mixed martial artist who fought several times as a heavyweight in the UFC. The kid is longtime comedian and actor Bryan Callen. Unedited and uncensored, the two friends riff on fighting…
When a Comedy Central rep reached out to comedian Josh Johnson last October about appearing on the new season of “Adam Devine’s House Party” on Twitter, he treated it the way most people might expect a comedian would. “I thought it was a joke,” Johnson says. “I thought it was…
Improvised comedy is experiencing another renaissance of sorts thanks to television and for once, I’m not talking about another reincarnation of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” The TV Land sitcom “Teachers” about a group of barely functional educators who let their personal lives bleed into their work came from the…
When comedian Ithamar Enriquez walks on to a stage, his presence commands an audience’s attention. He doesn’t capture it by yelling obscenities into a microphone to punctuate his jokes or screaming like a banshee to exorcise some deep seeded emotional pain that brings some comics to a stage. Enriquez never…
Texas Ballet Theater has nailed the perfect fairy tale in its production of Cinderella, a dreamy and funny ballet that appeals to aspiring princesses and cynical mamas alike. The Ben Stevenson version, using Sergei Prokofiev’s wide-ranging score, is a beautifully danced and vivid rendition of the classic tale. For parents…
Will Eno has much to say about life in the 21st century and a deft way of saying it in The Realistic Joneses, a play which premiered on Broadway in 2014 (in a production directed by Sam Gold) to rave reviews. The same could be said of director David Denson’s…
