The Charles W. Eisemann Center for Performing Arts is presenting two one-act plays with social commentary on the very timely topic of race relations. Director Rockne Ragsdale wrote the first play, Guilty or Not Here I Come, in 1979 when he was just 22-years-old. This is the first time it…
Without actor B.J. Cleveland at the ready, Uptown Players could not have produced Douglas Carter Beane’s marvelous dark comedy The Nan ce. Cleveland is one of Dallas theater’s most versatile veterans, the sort of all-around, locally revered professional who bounces into leading roles in comedies, musicals, children’s shows and, too…
The theater can be a stuffy place. For that matter, a museum can be too. But across art forms, there is a movement toward something more authentic –something more raw. Certainly this DIY aesthetic isn’t new, but it’s gripping the young artists in Dallas in an unrelenting chokehold. And we’re…
Behind the Screen at Texas Theatre returns this weekend, bundling cinema, music, and comedy. It all starts with a screening of a documentary about Saturday Night Live, Live From New York! The film is based on a book of the same name, an oral history of the series that makes…
We know, we know. We weren’t ready to trade in sunshine for rain either. But it happens, and when it does, we call on our cock-eyed optimism to rearrange our plans. There aren’t sunny happy hours in our future, blame it on tropical but there are these wonderful events, plays,…
Nobody gets their fingernails done in Manicures & Monuments, a 30-year-old play by Dallas playwright Vicki Caroline Cheatwood that’s on in a respectably acted but outsized revival at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. Think of it as Golden Girls meeting Steel Magnolias in a run-down nursing home in rural Oklahoma. Instead of…
Over the weekend, the great progressive suburb of McKinney barrel rolled into the the national conscience. A video showing footage of the McKinney Police Department’s response to a disturbance at a teenage pool party went viral, viewed by millions within a few hours. Emotions ran high on social media. But…
Audacity Productions’ Dallas Solo Fest at the Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park is presenting its second celebration of short shows written and performed by brave souls who aren’t afraid to go it alone. The standouts from the first weekend of the eight-show festival were Jill Vice’s Tipped & Tipsy…
The best play running on any Dallas stage right now is Precious Little, currently on at the Bath House Cultural Center. The best actor on any Dallas stage right now is in it — Sherry Jo Ward. In the production of Madeleine George’s strange, brief, beautiful play, directed with gentle…
Kathy Griffin will be performing in Dallas at The Majestic June 25th, so we caught up with her to ask her a few questions about her new tour, “Like A Boss.” Griffin says her act is ever-changing, “I still make fun of the celebrities that I’m friends with, and I…
William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays without any character ever turning to another to say “Are you OK?” The two main characters in Amy Herzog’s 90-minute, four-person drama Belleville say it a lot. The lazy little linguistic glitch is the mark of a playwright less concerned about the literary merits of…
Even if you’re really, really interested in the theater, purchasing tickets to see a few shows a month can knock a huge hole in your entertainment budget, which should generally otherwise be reserved for purchasing copious amounts of alcohol. Still, you should make it a priority to see at least…
The minutes before a play begins are usually spent flipping through the program, examining coupons for restaurants you’ll never visit and marveling that one of the evening’s performers was on Law and Order: SVU. Not so at the opening performance of Stop Hitting Yourself at the Wyly Theatre. One of…
Kitchen Dog Theater’s final play in its longtime home at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary is The Firestorm. What a title for a damp squib of drama by Meridith Friedman, getting an undeserved “rolling premiere” starting at KDT and moving on to other theaters elsewhere. Directed by Tina Parker, The Firestorm…
The smartest man in Radio Golf isn’t the man with money. That’s just one of the home truths in August Wilson’s final play in his epic 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle. African American Repertory Theatre’s strong production of Radio Golf benefits from sharp, well-directed performances by five hometown actors who click with…
This Is the First Time the Rude Mechs Have Been to Dallas Just a quick hop down 35, the state’s most interesting theater troupe call Austin home. There, for the past two decades, they’ve been devising new work that has earned raves from critics for its inventive staging, satirical wit,…
As soon as word got around over the weekend that Theatre Three founder and producing director Jac Alder had died, local actors and others started swapping stories. Alder, 80, had been hospitalized last month with pneumonia and was in ICU for several weeks, but had rallied and returned home to…
Believe the man in the purple pants when he says he cannot tell the truth. He is the title character in The Liar, a 400-year-old comedy by Pierre Corneille remade in 2012 into a rip-snortin’ rhyming farce by Venus in Fur playwright David Ives, working on a commission from the…
A comedian without a dark side is a rare thing. “There’s not one that comes to mind,” Clint Werth admits. A local standup comic who skipped comedy classes and jumped right into open mics, he pauses and gives the topic further consideration. “Some are not necessarily dark, but still troubled.”…
Do you remember when Michelle Obama cut her bangs? Of course you do. This inane conversation topic was part of our national dialogue for weeks. Did she look better with or without? What did it say about her femininity? And more important, her blackness? Playwright Meridith Friedman finds this microscopic…
The last day at the Dallas Comedy House’s old Commerce Street location in March was also the final day of the 6th Annual Dallas Comedy Festival, a five-day showcase of local and national stand-up, sketch and improvisational talent. The gathering didn’t end when the festival’s headliners TJ & Dave took…
A sweeping novel like Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility isn’t one that travels easily to the stage. Too many picnics, rainstorms, carriage rides and strolls down country lanes in the 19th-century classic. The 1995 film did it right. Director Ang Lee had an all-star British cast led by actress Emma…
