Sunday night the Dallas Symphony Orchestra revealed its recipe for the 2015/16 season, which is a delicious cocktail of grand symphonies, music written for opera, and world premieres. They’ve combined the drama of Wagner with Act 1 of Die Walküre with the spice Mahler’s Das klagende Lied and the sugar…
If you pitched me a musical theater revue in the end times that weaves obscure show tunes with original music, I’d spit my burnt coffee in your face. But we’re talking about you, not Taylor Mac and Mandy Patinkin. Those two could spill a jar of toothpicks and spend two…
If you’ve ever considered yourself a “theater person” or the type of human who enjoys a good performance, then run don’t walk to the Eisemann Center this weekend. Mandy Patinkin (you know, Evita… or Princess Bride… or “Homeland”…) is joined onstage by the endlessly likable Taylor Mac in The Last…
On Valentine’s Day, if you were wandering the streets of Deep Ellum, it’s possible you saw a woman plucking at a typewriter outside Twilite Lounge. A closer look would’ve told you that this woman was writing poems by request for total strangers. Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi has been setting up her…
Mary Helen Specht’s debut novel, Migratory Animals, is a story of friendships that stretch into adulthood. She writes elegantly of the heartbreak of drifting away from the people you care about, and about fear and loss. She builds recognizable characters and sends them on separate journeys, all the while weaving…
“I wanted to have a group show with myself at different stages of my career,” explains Vincent Falsetta, as we walk through Agendas — Several Decades of Painting, on display at UNT on the Square in Denton. He hesitates to call the show a retrospective, although in many ways that’s…
Stephen Lapthisophon, Jeff Gibbons, Vincent Ramos Conduit Gallery presents exhibitions by three artists who couldn’t be more different. Stephen Lapthisophon is one of Dallas’ veteran artists, who incorporates surprising materials into his work on canvas, including spices, coffee grounds, or pigmented animal fats. Concurrently there will be an exhibition by…
If you’re an artist in Dallas, chances are you feel undervalued. It’s easy for this city to get lost in the mentality of proving one’s worth with monetary value, or asking not what a city can do for its people, but what its people can do for it. Especially its…
One of the most striking passages of Mary Helen Specht’s debut novel Migratory Animals comes in the final pages. After hundreds of pages in which she weaves together a story of friendships, family, love and loss, the novel’s protagonist, Flannery, reflects on her attitude arriving in Nigeria as a scientist,…
Five decades is likely more than half a life. That’s more than 18 thousand days and nearly a half-million hours. It’s a long time to live. It’s a long time to be creating art. To see an artist’s work spanning 50 years is to stand in the presence of mastery;…
In a crazy combination of desperately needing a new place to rent and six degrees of separation, I currently find myself subletting the East Dallas residence of filmmaker Toby Halbrooks. He’s currently on location in New Zealand working on the Disney big-budget remake of Pete’s Dragon with another Dallas filmmaker…
Perhaps the most ambitious photography project to ever take place in Dallas was announced this week by photographer Richard Andrew Sharum. Known around the globe for his street photography, Sharum has recently been focusing his efforts around downtown Dallas. Last year he created a small-scale version of this project, in…
This weekend there are plenty of reasons to leave the house and no, 50 Shades of Grey is not one of them. From masquerade balls, to an ’80s prom at Doublewide, to video art screenings, performance art, theater and more. We’ve compiled a list of what we recommend you spend…
If we’re honest, no one wants their love affair to play out like Romeo and Juliet’s. I mean, they both end up with eyelids closed, arms crossed, six feet underground. But the ill-fated, star-crossed romance is certainly a thing of legend. It’s performed everywhere, but almost always acted by people…
Two of theater’s most talented performers are Taylor Mac and Mandy Patinkin. In my opinion, there aren’t many people who hold a candle to these two. Throw director and choreographer Susan Stroman into the equation and you’ve got a dream team of contemporary American theater stars. On the value of…
Two of the most beloved characters in the Dallas art scene are known together collaboratively as Chuck & George, in daily life as “The Brians” or individually as Brian Keith Jones and Brian Scott. For more than two decades, these two have been working together or in tandem on art…
After long debate over the viability of restoring a piece of public art at White Rock Lake created by Frances Bagley and Tom Orr, the city revealed the results of an engineering study today that estimates a full restoration would cost $198,375. Considering the limited funds the city has for…
Here at Mixmaster we don’t do things the normal way. You can wine and dine us all night on Valentine’s Day and we’ll still be waiting for the good stuff. You know, the creative stuff. We’ve compiled a list of activities that might make acceptable celebrations of Valentine’s Day. Maybe…
Most people greet the mention of performance art with an eye roll. The dirty word of the art scene, it’s probably safe to say that performance art gets a bad rap. Now, I’m not here to defend the navel-gazers who push their every impulse on over-eager art consumers, but I…
Somebody over at the AT&T Performing Arts Center knows what’s up. Which is selfishly to say that lately I’ve been buying what they’re selling, picking up what they’re putting down, digging what… you get the point. Like the announcement today of the new summer speaker series, #thinkspeak, which includes contemporary…
It’s hardly fair that weekdays outnumber weekends. If only life could be a string of weekends! But “the man” has planned otherwise for you, which is why you need to make the most of the Saturdays you get. We’re here to help you spend your weekend doing awesome. From world-excusive…
Have you ever wondered what color your aura might be? This mystical description of the way a person’s energy affects the room they inhabit might seem silly, but we use color to categorize things all the time. Red light means stop. Green, go. White for the wedding dress; pink for…
