Thursday March 26 America’s intellectual elite hammers us daily with how television has rotted our brains. But the explosion of popularity in staged readings, poetry slams, and spoken-word performances suggests to us that many people have reached the saturation point with electronic sounds and images; the live, one-on-one exchange of…
New Theatre Company may have lost a terrific space with the closing of the Theatre on Elm Street, but they got a helluva consolation prize: the almost-black box space called Theatre Too in the basement of Jac Alder’s Theatre Three in the Quadrangle. New Theatre’s artistic director, Bruce Coleman, admits:…
I recently spoke before about 30 members of the local volunteer arts fundraising group 500 Inc.–with more than a little trepidation. I was the guest of the Undermain Theatre, which, like all major recipients of grants from this group, must provide free “Sample The Arts” events for the organization. My…
Can I compose a critical mash note to Dallas actor Terry Martin, star of the Texas premiere of Dan Butler’s The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me, that doesn’t sound foolish? Probably not, but any such effort would contain some sentiment like: It’s hard as hell to make…
thursday march 19 Locally based documentary filmmaker Cynthia Salzman Mondell has done a Mike Wallace on one of the most exclusive and secretive realms of public life–the Amazonian domain of the ladies’ restroom. The Ladies’ Room is her new seriocomic documentary about the conflicts and confidences that occur when female…
For all the major American film critics who conspired to cram the ludicrously overpraised L.A. Confidential down the country’s throat, I have found a penalty befitting the crime. Fess up now that you got a little careless after downing a few too many macho-celluloid cocktails shaken by the likes of…
thursday march 12 Raymond Nasher: You may know him as the filthy-rich Dallas bigwig who owns more than 250 artworks by Rodin, Picasso, and de Kooning. But businessman-art lover Raymond Nasher is a key player in the revitalization of the downtown Dallas Arts District, which means his expertise in the…
In print advertisements for its current production, Dallas Theater Center declares Eugene O’Neill’s 1940 Long Day’s Journey Into Night to be America’s greatest play. Leaving aside the strained hyperbole of calling any piece of art the greatest in its field, there are certainly other contenders for this specious honor, from…
thursday march 5 The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me: Forget all those straight actors reviving their careers playing “the good gay neighbor.” The real revolution is an openly gay man playing a chick-hungry hetero: Dan “Bulldog” Butler does it every couple of episodes on NBC’s priceless sitcom…
We’re living in a world where Dilbert creator Scott Adams, supposed hero of the corporate grunt and Office Depot shill, has gone on the record with a major national newsmagazine with the comment that, ya know, downsizing may not be such a bad thing after all. Actually, you could argue…
For 11 years now, the Dallas Video Festival has been better appreciated across the country and around the world than it has in the city whose name it bears. You could offer this as evidence that Dallas has earned its reputation: that of a Southwestern money mecca whose residents would…
Robert Smigel, denizen of late-night TV and member of the new creative royalty of animation for adults–a white-hot humor elite that includes the masterminds of South Park and King of the Hill–is set to receive the Dallas Video Festival’s Ernie Kovacs award this year for his pioneering work in TV…
thursday february 26 Carol Shields: For much of her 22-year career as a novelist, Illinois native Carol Shields has distinguished herself in the genre of what a colleague affectionately calls “chick fiction”–women telling the stories of their lives with a minimum of sentimentality and a maximum of emotional yearning. She…
If you’re Anglo, you might approach a night of theater titled Latin American Evening with the smug assumption of someone who knows what’s inside the tamale before you even unroll the corn husk. It’s a mindset whites would never have when confronting a show called “Anglo-Saxon Evening,” but then again,…
thursday february 19 Elmo’s Coloring Book: Some people think Elmo’s wide-eyed enthusiasm is really a cover for a seriously pushy personality, but compared with passive-aggressive Big Bird, he’s far more honest about his feelings. He just wants to color the world with his particular shade of joie de vivre. Case…
In taking five of author Willa Cather’s early short stories and distilling them into a brand-new musical he calls Cather County, composer-librettist Ed Dixon would seem to have located one of the great themes of a great American writer: how the land transforms us even as we transform the land…
thursday february 12 Conversation Pieces: Short Stories From Long-Term Memory: Texas artist Kathy Lovas found herself in the horrible state that thousands of other adults do every year: working with an aging parent who has Alzheimer’s. That degenerative condition creates a unique situation: Short-term memory zaps out, but long-term recollection…
Ludovic, the fiercely determined young hero(ine?) of writer-director Alain Berliner’s half-hilarious, half-tragic feature debut Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), proves how age, culture, and time all conspire to decide the difference between being feminine and being effeminate. Sure, he likes to wear frilly dresses and wants to…
A colleague confided that he feared The Winter Guest because he didn’t want to watch Emma Thompson talking to her mom for two hours. This perfectly summarizes the kind of trap Alan Rickman’s directorial debut could’ve laid for art-house patrons: Hire one respected English actor to oversee a film starring…
If you’re looking for a tax write-off that also fortifies the First Amendment, not to mention the cause of artistic richness and innovation in our city, a wealthy Dallas businessperson could do worse than to drop a big wad of money into the lap of the Undermain Theatre. It prides…
On February 21, volunteers, local artists, and arts board members will gather at the Fairmont Hotel for the 1998 Gala for the Arts fundraiser for 500 Inc., the nonprofit organization that last year coughed up $350,000 for more than 40 Dallas performing arts groups. Depending on whom you ask, the…
Normally when he’s on tour publicizing his movies, writer-director Alan Rudolph likes to plan his day around tying one on. Relieved from the responsibility of writing, handling actors, and working with the cinematographer–but with the added stress of a hectic international travel schedule–he likes nothing better than to knock back…
