There are a number of playwrights whose names you hope to see on an Undermain Theatre season announcement. The company has its go-to living playwrights, like Erik Ehn, Meg Miroshink and Len Jenkin. They work closely to commission or develop work by these writers, often to incredible results. Such was the case with Jenkin's Jonah, which Undermain's artistic director, Katherine Owens, developed alongside him at the Sundance Theatre Lab. Owens directed the world premiere of the work this year to critical acclaim. The frenzied take on the Biblical beach tale featured kaleidoscopic characters and heartwarming stories interwoven in a way that was meaningful, intellectual and fun — an Undermain hat trick. It was also one of the best uses of the basement theater space we've ever seen, thanks to John Arnone's theater-in the-round design, which put the audience inside a circus tent.

This year theater collective The Tribe workshopped and produced the first play written by Dallas actress Janielle Kastner. Ophelia Underwater revisited Shakespeare's Hamlet and told the story from the perspective of a modern-day Ophelia: a feminist statement on how her character in the play is trivialized and dismissed as crazy, as is so often the case with female characters in the literary canon. The one-woman show went up at Margo Jones Theater in Fair Park and actress Zoe Kerr handled the part beautifully, keeping the audience engaged throughout and highlighting Kastner's talent for juxtaposing timeless concerns, in this case how women are expected to behave, in the context of current trends and technology. While Kerr technically carried the show alone, Kastner's script allowed for Ophelia's boyfriend, Hamlet, to occasionally be present via Skype. This and various other ingenious techniques allowed the world of Ophelia Underwater to expand beyond the walls of the small theater for a rich and exciting first play. We look forward to seeing what Kastner does next.

Since opening in 2012, Circuit 12 Contemporary in the Design District has brought in exciting up-and-coming or mid-career artists working in new media, and no exhibit better showed the appeal of what owners Dustin and Gina Orlando are doing than Mathew Zefeldt's Marble Head From a Herm, which was on view May through July. California-based Zefeldt took inspiration from a Roman copy of a Greek statue that he'd seen at the Met in New York, which he replicated across various paintings, including one giant mural that cast a pixelated shadow on Circuit 12's floor. The exhibit juxtaposed clip art and emojis with famous classical images of ambiguous origin to show how the meaning of an image can be lost or altered when it becomes a commodity that is endlessly repeated; it was fun, evocative and just the kind of work we've come to love Circuit 12 for bringing to Dallas.

Readers' Pick:

Kettle Art Gallery

Since developers such as Westdale have bought up land in Deep Ellum, there have been jokes about the imminent arrival of Baby Gap stores and juice bars. Before we get all doom and gloom, let's take a moment to appreciate that it has been revitalized at all. The new Deep Ellum bears little resemblance to the old one, it's true. It has lost some of its cool, grunge factor. But it's also a lot safer than it was in the '90s and on weekends the streets are teeming with people, compared with just five years ago. And it's still home to the best music venues in the city such as The Bomb Factory, Club Dada, Three Links and Trees; galleries that support underdog artists such as Kettle Art; and upstart business like the thriving Dallas Comedy House. It still has its artist's soul, not to mention that the neighborhood has quickly gone from a restaurant desert to a mecca with some of the most interesting options in the city, representing a variety of cuisines, from barbecue at Pecan Lodge to dressed-up Southern at new Matt McCallister outpost Filament to falafel at D.C. import Amsterdam Falafel House. You rock, Deep Ellum, and it's OK to change.

Readers' Pick:

Deep Ellum

This summer, WaterTower Theatre in Addison underwent a major sea change when producing artist director Terry Martin vacated the position he's held for 17 years to head up the fine arts department at Greenhill School. Martin deserves to be commended for all he accomplished during his tenure at WaterTower. He turned a small theater in a Dallas suburb into one of the very best in the area, leaving it with an operating budget of $1.8 million, nearly five times the budget he started out with. His last year on the job was also one of the theater's strongest, culminating with the regional premiere of Tony-winning musical comedy One Man, Two Guvnors, directed by Martin himself. The superb and fun show served as an excellent note for Martin's departure. (That show was also special because it starred Dallas native Brian Gonzales in the lead, and Gonzales had been the lead understudy in the original Broadway production.) WaterTower is a gem that Martin polished, and it will be exciting to see how the new leadership carries what he built forward in WaterTower's 20th season, which begins Oct. 7 with the Johnny Cash musical Ring of Fire.

Readers' Pick:

Matthew Posey, Ochre House Theatre

Normally, it takes a very generous person to willingly watch high school students perform in a production of anything. If it's your child, sure. But nieces, cousins, children of friends? Unless you're a saint you're probably not going to sit through The Crucible for them. But you would if Jeff Swearingen were directing it. Along with Bren Rapp, he heads up Fun House Theatre and Film in Plano where young kids act in roles normally reserved for people much older. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman came together beautifully in November, with Swearingen acting in the lead role and 14-year-old Kennedy Waterman giving a moving performance as his wife, Linda. The age disparities, though they sound awkward, are handled with grace, and the quality of the performances matches or exceeds that of many of the serious small theaters in town.

The Dallas Museum of Art has had a phenomenal year for special exhibits, the most impressive being the Jackson Pollock exhibit Blind Spots, only the third major exhibit in the U.S. to focus solely on the artist and the largest survey to date of Pollock's lesser-known black paintings. A retrospective of photographer Irving Penn's work, Beyond Beauty, was not far behind. While these exhibits required a fee to view, one of the most exciting moves the DMA has made in the last few years was the decision to return to free admission to the general collection by director Max Anderson, who recently left the position. This effort has seen a swell in attendance at the monthly Late Night events, and the crowds are proof that the museum has earned its designation as not just the largest, but also the city's most important museum.

Readers' Pick:

Perot Museum of Nature and Science

The pinball industry has been struggling since the '90s, but in the last couple of years it has made a comeback with new manufacturers producing colorful, cleverly designed games with LED lights and sometimes multiple levels of play. While Dallas is home to a yearly convention, the Texas Pinball Festival, that brings out tables new and old from all over the country for people to play, there are only a few arcades in Dallas that offer pinball fans a selection of tables. The best of these is Nickelrama. For admission of just $3.25 you can play 12 tables that accept nickels, including Game of Thrones, Star Trek, The Walking Dead and the newly released Ghostbusters. They seem to almost always be unoccupied, which can't be said for the rest of the Dave and Busters-type games. They are usually hogged by kids on the weekend. The real draw here is to play pinball in peace.

In October, Dallas' wackiest charity event went up for the fourth time, this time in Oak Cliff's Jefferson Tower Building to raise money for the maintenance of the nearby historic Texas Theatre building. The event invites people to submit dioramas, 3-D models that show a scene or moment in time in miniature, to be auctioned off to benefit the named charity. Everyone from veteran artists such as Bruce Lee Webb to curious amateurs pitched in for a total of 70 dioramas that raised over $12,000. Ten bucks got you in to the event and after-party at Texas Theatre, played by New Fumes, and drinks and tamales were available for purchase. Given the success of the October event, its founders, Jennifer Dunn, Shannon Driscoll, Holly Jefferson, Malina Pearson and Ariel Saldivar, have talked of making Diorama-O-Rama annual, but as of yet there's no word on this year's. We hope it becomes more frequent, because in a town that's known for its love of high-profile charity work, there isn't a single event that's as fun, low-key and positive as this one.

For the past few years, the Dallas Opera has been getting creative and producing works in more contemporary settings, but this year they made their most daring choice yet when they put on Show Boat, which, far from an opera, is a Broadway musical. Sure, the 1927 production about performers on a showboat on the Mississippi river, adapted by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II from a book by Edna Ferber, involves people spontaneously breaking into song, but that's about where the similarities end. Show Boat addresses subjects not often tackled in opera, such as racism, and the songs in English, even delivered by opera singers, were far from typical. But the result was refreshing. The costumes and set, originally built for the Chicago Lyric Opera, were as spectacular as anything seen in New York and Morris Robinson's delivery of "Ol' Man River" gave chills. If Dallas Opera's goal with Showboat was to prove opera's accessibility, they succeeded.

Readers' Pick:

Wicked, Dallas Summer Musicals