July 7, 2016, is a day North Texans will always remember. During a peaceful protest against recent police shootings that left black men dead in Louisiana and Minnesota, a heavily armed man opened fired on police officers working the protest in downtown Dallas. Five officers were killed. Nine were injured…
The stage burns up at Drugstore Cowboy in Deep Ellum when a dancing duo who call themselves the Indigos show off their waves, locks and soulful power pops that can move any somber crowd on a typical Friday night. They make a splash when they’re on the floor, whether it’s…
Big changes are in the works for two Dallas-area theater companies. Both Theatre Three and WaterTower Theatre announced new artistic leadership this month. Jeffrey Schmidt will fill the shoes of the late Jac Alder, founder and artistic director for the company. Alder died in 2015. WaterTower has hired Joanie Schultz…
Comedian Dick Gregory has used his comedy, celebrity and humanity to advocate for civil rights and call out ignorance in America and throughout the world, and he’s been doing it since long before he stepped in front of a microphone. Needless to say, Gregory doesn’t like what he sees now…
The Book of Mormon is a sacred text of the Latter-day Saints movement, which adherents believe contains writings of ancient prophets and was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith. The Book of Mormon is a religious satire musical that pokes fun at the beliefs of The Church of…
Winning a comedy competition like the annual Funniest Comic in Texas can be both a blessing and a burden. Just ask this year’s winner Dez O’Neal. The Dallas-born comedian won the title out of a pool of 500 comics in the competition’s final round last Friday at the Arlington Improv…
Did you ever wonder what happened to Frosty the Snowman after his 15 minutes of fame in the movie? Well, he took a turn for the worse. Now a depressive drug addict, Frosty has a new life in House Party Theatre’s musical Frosty: Songs of Redemption, The Musical!. House Party…
Maestra Marin Alsop is sitting near the harpist. She’s leaning back with her index finger resting across her cheek, observing the interaction between conductor Chaowen Ting and the orchestra. You can tell she wants more than she’s getting from this overture. Alsop gestures a cutoff and walks toward the podium…
Post-election doom and gloom are in full effect. Before you hit publish on another depressing Facebook post, think about getting out of the house and getting into the holiday spirit. There’s tons to see in Dallas and Fort Worth right now, from comedy shows to Amy Grant. You can’t throw…
If you were fortunate enough to see Sally Nystuen Vahle in 2015’s harrowing Medea, you saw one of the strongest performance on a Dallas Theater Center stage in a long time. The company cleverly used the “Down Center Stage” space (aka basement) for the production, and no other space could…
In a time when our country seems particularly divided, conversations about our differences can become tense quickly. Ignorance leads to fear in many cases, but it’s often especially true when that ignorance is over cultural differences. With the holidays rapidly approaching, many cultures begin to celebrate traditions that are different…
Ask any actor and they’ll tell you technical rehearsals are hell. The process of syncing every moment of a play to lighting and sound is exhausting for everyone involved. It usually means hours of starting and stopping and lots of sitting around. But often those long stretches of boredom can…
Some Louis C.K. fans may have been dissuaded from buying tickets to his back-to-back shows at Music Hall at Fair Park this week by the $50-per-head price tag and the fact that the shows are on weeknights. But one factor made the shows worth the sacrifice: The first of the…
On Friday night, the opera Moby-Dick returned to the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, the site of its world premiere in 2010. Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer have tightly condensed Herman Melville’s 800-page classic into a two act, three-hour opera. They stayed true to the mood of this…
Maria Bamford, the stand-up comedian who stars in the critically acclaimed Netflix series Lady Dynamite, is very open about her struggles and triumphs with maintaining her mental health. According to a New York Times profile published in 2014, she’s wrestled with obsessive compulsive disorder, binge-eating, anxiety and type-II bipolar disorder…
“Seven minutes ’til the sale starts!” Shakespeare in the Bar tickets are about to go on sale and my coworkers are coordinating the purchase over the tops of their cubicles. “How many am I buying?” one asks. “Are you going?” These are normal people counting down seven minutes until theater…
Brothers are naturally competitive. Comics and brothers Jon and Michael McBrine seem to defy the natural competitive nature that defines so many sibling relationships. They’ve both been selected as solo acts to compete in this year’s Funniest Comic in Texas competition and neither of them care about which one wins or…
Musa Ngqungwana basks in the warm embrace of Dallas’ southern hospitality and 80-degree fall days. He is visiting from the East Coast, Philadelphia and New York, where the days are already getting cool, and here he can wear his shorts and golf shirts in October. He says he is enjoying…
Ricardo Alarcon, executive director of the Mayan dance group Grupo Pakal, used to spend the night in the cemetery. While that might sound straight out of a horror movie, it is very common in Mexico during Dia de los Muertos. For many families, the loss of a loved one is…
Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, the names that make up the legendary comedy music duo Flight of the Conchords, have reached an unbelievable level of fame and creative freedom as actors, writers and musicians. Following the two-season run of the hilarious HBO sitcom that bore their band’s name, both became…
Thanks to Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions, which have turned into a flaming nuclear-powered train heading toward a brick wall, Texas could turn blue. A poll conducted by the University of Houston found that Trump and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton are in a virtual dead heat among Texas voters. National…
Political comedy is such a lazy and misleading way to describe a comedian’s work. The two-word term implies comedy that pushes an agenda and mines jokes from meaningless horse races or whatever stupid thing Donald Trump tweets at 3 a.m. because his staff is too scared to take away his…
