You can almost hear the silence at KKDA-AM (730) these days. “Soul 73,” long hailed as the voice of Dallas’ African-American community, is not talking anymore. The talk shows that for years measured “the pulse of the African-American community,” in the words of Dallas City Councilman Al Lipscomb, were canceled…
Paula Vogel has guts. Writing about incest, child abuse, and a girl’s sexual awakening without being melodramatic or making an audience cringe is tough. Writing a play about the seven-year relationship between a teenage girl and her uncle without turning the situation into a simplistic battle of good versus evil…
One of the hottest summers in recorded history seems finally to be subsiding, or perhaps just giving us a week’s respite. In any case, there’s no better way to celebrate what feels like the first days of autumn than to step outside, pull up a chair or stretch out a…
No question about it, Mark Lannoye stands out in a crowd. Even at Mesquite High School, with hundreds of other teenagers vying for each other’s attention, the lanky sophomore catches the eye. At 15, he stands 6 feet 2 inches and sports a shock of blond hair. But his height…
Alexander Troup leaves you wondering at first. He talks a bit too fast, and his conspiratorial tone can make a listener wary. But once he draws you into the half-forgotten world that has been his hobby and obsession for most of his life–turn-of-the-century Dallas–his enthusiasm is contagious. Looking at a…
Long before Stephen King made horror a national pastime, there was Shirley Jackson. Born in San Francisco in 1919, the author of the wickedly creepy classic The Lottery settled in North Bennington, a small village in Vermont, after her marriage to author and literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Once there,…
Michael Capehart likes to talk. If given the chance, this 52-year-old Oak Cliff native will keep you riveted, his lilting voice filling a room, twisting vowels and turning phrases in a way only a native Texan can. And talking is what he’s been doing these days, as often and as…
Is feminism dead? When Time magazine’s June 29 cover posed that question alongside a picture of TV’s short-skirted, ditzy attorney Ally McBeal, it was not in attempt to answer it as much as to render it moot. Indeed, one wonders what happened to feminists, as the women’s movement seems to…
It’s state fair time again, and parents all over the metroplex are bracing themselves for the yearly ritual of corny dogs, endless carnival rides, and hours of lining up in the sun. Sounds like a recipe for exhaustion and acute nausea, doesn’t it? Well, this year the Science Place is…
As waves of turn-of-the-century nostalgia follow in the wake of Titanic, the unsinkable, ever profitable movie, trendees are showing newfound interest in the era by romanticizing it with dinners at Maxim’s, art nouveau, and, well, luxurious voyages on ocean liners. Lucky for us, the Dallas Museum of Art is offering…
Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once described the U.S.-Mexico border as a 2,000-mile-long scar. The frontier, drawn at the end of the U.S-Mexico war, is a permanent reminder to Mexicans of their country’s humiliating defeat in a war that resulted in America’s claiming half of Mexico’s territory as its “manifest destiny.”…
Not long before he died, Bertolt Brecht asked a reporter to “write that I was inconvenient and intend to remain so after my death. Even then there are certain possibilities.” Well, he must be laughing to himself these days. As theaters around the world celebrate the centenary of his birth,…
You work downtown. You’re tired of the standard lunchtime fare. Eating at your desk just doesn’t do it for you either. So you take a stroll, head down Commerce Street, looking for something new to break the boredom. What you stumble across is a small, unassuming building–the home of Teatro…
