Fall in Texas means new seasons of theater have been announced. Dallas-Fort Worth audiences have tons of choices, from world premieres to classics by Edward Albee and Lynn Nottage, and the work of badass lady playwrights. Below are our top picks. A Lost Leonardo World PremiereBy David Davalos Oct. 13…
Carla Parker is making history at Dallas’ scrappy Ochre House Theatre, which produces all original work. Her world-premiere musical, Kaptain Kockadoo, marks the first time the theater will feature a play by a female playwright. Parker, who became a company member in 2012, says the theater has become a home for…
The AT&T Performing Arts Center is doubling down on its Elevator Project series, which began in 2014 and provides grants and performing space to local performing arts companies. There are eight companies on the lineup for the recently announced third installment — three more than last year — and they…
One Minute Play Festival is, amazingly, exactly what it sounds like. Thirty mini plays submitted by new and established Dallas-based writers will run back to back at Kitchen Dog Theater. This is the fourth year the theater has hosted it, and the goal to create a locally sourced community event and showcase…
Female comedian Ever Mainard caught some flak years ago for a joke about walking alone at night and feeling uncomfortable around a man who was acting strange. The joke became controversial because the man in question was black and Mainard is white. However, she touched on some thing that almost…
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull. It was the offspring of Minos’ wife and a beautiful bull Minos was meant to sacrifice but kept instead. To punish Minos, Poseidon made Minos’ wife fall in love with…
Joe Folsom is quick to defend one of the most influential and controversial performers of the 20th century, Lenny Bruce: “He’s wasn’t an asshole; he just didn’t suffer assholes,” he says. Bruce was famously misunderstood and was arrested numerous times for violating obscenity laws. Words and terms that are common…
A yearly showcase of small theater companies is making its return to the Bath House Cultural Center at the edge of White Rock Lake. Wingspan Theater Company founded the Festival of Independent Theatres in 1998 to aid local theater companies without permanent performance spaces. The festival begins this week and…
Be warned: Cry Havoc’s production of Shots Fired opens with gunfire. It’s a jarring beginning to 90 extraordinary minutes of documentary-style theater covering the July 7, 2016, Dallas police shootings by Cry Havoc Theater Company. Cry Havoc’s teen actors convey as much depth, empathy and emotion as any adult actors…
As Doug Curtis, CEO of AT&T Performing Arts Center, took the stage Friday night, he joked about the pressure of introducing an artist with such a devoted following. The Neil Gaiman fans were out in force at the sold-out Winspear Opera House, and for the two-hour performance, one of four…
In its 18-year history, Amphibian Stage Productions in Fort Worth has developed a reputation for championing new plays and playwrights that are fun and quirky. One play was such a crowd pleaser during its first run that Amphibian has received letters asking for it to be revived. Its subject matter…
Since 2012, Dallas’ Ochre House Theater has collaborated with the Dallas Flamenco Festival ever year on a new, original production. Ochre House has resurrected many because of their popularity and acclaim. Their 2012 Perro y Sangre got a revamp in New York’s Teatro Latea, while 2015’s Buñuel Descending played to…
During the mid-1960s, films about beach parties were all the rage. If you’re of a certain generation, or you have an affinity for classic movies, you may have grown up watching these niche films, escaping with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon to the simple joy of partying like hell in…
When Shakespeare is trending, it’s usually for historical reasons. Perhaps the burial site of Richard III has been discovered, or there’s renewed conjecture over whether the Bard wrote all of his plays himself. What you don’t see are many debates over content. In 400 years, we’ve worked that out —…
No one in the theater world works harder than an actress who’s also a mom. Don’t believe it? Gal Godot famously reshot certain scenes of Wonder Woman while five months pregnant. Google “baby brain.” That’s a real thing that happens where your kids suck all of your mental energy. When…
Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm is a playwright learning to channel his rage. In 2014, the St. Louis native was away from home when a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, a northern suburb of the city. The riots and protests that followed the highly disputed and emotionally charged…
Matt Lyle knows a thing or two about straddling worlds. The 38-year-old, Dallas-based playwright and dad got his chops doing theater in high school and college but realized early on that performing comedy was also in his bones, and he just couldn’t live without it. This month, he’s merging those…
Aaron Zilbermann was fresh out of college and teaching middle school in one of the worst neighborhoods in Oakland, Calif., when one of his sixth-grade students was shot and killed in front of the school. As the dying 13-year-old crawled in front of a crowd of children looking on, the…
Bill “Earl” Ray had one major goal upon taking the reins of Jubilee Theatre in early 2016: cut the theater’s deficit. Jubilee is North Texas’ longest-running African-American theater and was forced to replace its fourth artistic director since the death of its co-founder, Rudy Eastman, in 2005. After Eastman’s death,…
“I don’t give a shit what you do here.” That’s what Jeffrey Schmidt, newly appointed artistic director of Dallas’ longtime uptown staple Theatre Three, said to PrismCo, the young, movement-based theater that will produce a new take on King Lear this fall. Schmidt is giving full license to playwrights and…
James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece, Into the Woods, opens today at the Winspear Opera House, but it’s not the show you’re used to. This version is a bare-bones, stripped-down story that forces the audience members to use their imaginations and enter the woods themselves. But don’t worry, says music…
Last year, Stage West artistic director Dana Schultes came across a playwright who immediately resonated with her: Annie Baker. She’d read Baker’s 2010 The Aliens, which won an Obie Award that year for best new American play. It takes place in the alley behind a Vermont coffee shop and features…
