Wide Awake & Dazzling

If comedic gender swapping and spot-on drag costuming got actors Oscar and Tony nods, the talented Uptown Players would have the award market cornered. The company is known for its gender-bending comedies and edge-teetering satires, and fortunately for all with a charitable and theatrically bent pocketbook, their fund-raisers don’t shy away from the fun. The annual Broadway Our Way show (this year themed “Divas Awakening”) will once again feature hand-picked selections from beloved Broadway shows, this time pitting the girls against the boys to see just who can be the biggest stage diva. Based on the Uptown Players’ rave reviews for Legends and The Facts of Life: The Lost Episode, it’s easy to assume the boys dressed as girls will get the diva award…but we’re all about a little onstage talent catfight, and we’re hoping the outcome hasn’t already been scripted. And we aren’t the only ones. This show has sold out six years in a row; the same is foreseen come this Awakening. Performances take place at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, with matinees at 2 p.m. Sundays, from Friday through January 18, at KD Studio Theatre, 2600 N. Stemmons Freeway. Tickets are $40. Call 214-219-2718 or visit uptownplayers.org.

Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: Jan. 9. Continues through Jan. 18, 2009