Thursday, Aug. 13 God of Carnage After their grade-school sons fight in a public park, two pairs of parents have what is intended to be a quick, friendly meeting to discuss the matter. But the conversation is drawn out and the parents start behaving childishly, fighting among themselves and with…
For the life of me, I can’t remember what the word was that tripped me up. I just remember it was embarrassing because prior to taking my turn in the preliminary run of the trials for something that might have been the National Spelling Bee, I had been talking to…
Frank Artsmarter isn’t here to judge you. He wants the general public to judge you. Which is why he has partnered with Glasstire to create the ArtSmarterPrize, an open call contest that has been described by some as “an artist invitational in which every artist, no matter his or her…
We are just a few weeks from summer ending, school starting and the return of the arts in Dallas. Enjoy these final quiet days before your calendar again fills up with events you cannot miss and art you want to see. In the meantime, here are three things to fill…
For multiple generations, episodes of The Simpsons contain an entire lexicon of examples and comparisons. “That’s just like one time Bart did …” Or “That reminds of the episode when Homer said…” The show has more than 25 seasons under its belt, so avoiding the references to the bright yellow,…
On a Monday night last September, a gaggle of verbose, bright-eyed young people dressed in miniskirts, jeans and tennis shoes filled with the backyard of the Oak Cliff literary watering hole The Wild Detectives. With little warning and at a great volume they began to tell jokes and sing poetry to…
There’s a long held idea, fabricated by an optimistic adult that the stories we tell teenagers should be optimistic, aspirational. Maybe that’s why it comes to picking books for curriculums we ban the ones that even sniff of hardship, violence or reality. But if you give a group of teenagers…
I don’t know why there are so many juried shows opening on the same weekend, and I’m not sure that I like the looks of them any more than any other summer group show. But I suppose if we can build a justice system on twelve impartial men, why not…
Kate Firth is one of the few artists in Dallas working in steel, not to mention one of the only women. And her art is getting bigger and better all the time. Last week, she completed her biggest project to date, a public sculpture called “I Feel You Feel Me,”…
When boredom strikes this weekend, pull these events up on your iPhone faster than a gun from a holster in a classic spaghetti western, speaking of which, you can see one of those at the Texas Theatre. Thursday, Aug. 6 Neo Camerata The phrase “summer tour” evokes images of a…
For three weeks in July, Undermain Theatre’s co-artistic director, Katherine Owens, was shuttling between a rehearsal hall and a luxurious mountain home, where she roomed with a handful of nationally renowned theater artists. Owens was there as part of Sundance Institute’s Theatre Lab to work alongside Len Jenkin in the development…
Thursday, July 30 The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams did reality TV before Survivor was a glimmer in Jeff Probst’s eye. He didn’t live his life on stage, but he did sneak a large portion of said life in the play, The Glass Menagerie. In it, Williams is Tom, son of…
I’m having a really hard time with the death of the Dallas Zoo’s baby giraffe, Kipenzi. Earlier this month, I lugged a video camera out to the Zoo, a place I hadn’t set foot in such childhood. To my mind, these baby animals were symbols not just of what attracts…
You’re running out of time to see a few of my favorite exhibitions so far this year, so I’ve made you a list that combines those and a few new openings. Closing this weekend: Concentrations 58: Chosil Kil This is the little show that can’t be ignored. London-based artist Chosil…
Thursday, July 23 Oak Highlands Brewery Launch Party There’s no such thing as too many breweries in a city. That would be like saying you can ever have enough cake, or french fries, or puppies. You can never have too many puppies. What about puppies in a brewery? Now that…
The second round of Special Support Grants for artists was announced this week with a large number going to theater companies. This marks a continued effort on the part of the city to support artists at their level, handing out grants of up to $5000 for projects open to the…
You never know when inspiration will strike. It might lurk between the pages of a history textbook. For 17-year-old Chris Rodenbaugh, inspiration struck sometime in the 20th century while reading about the Irish Republican Army. He remembers reading about this violent rebellion for the first time in Tom Clancy’s Patriot…
If summer is giving you a case of Holly Golightly’s mean reds, join the club. You can’t have the blues in Dallas summers because you can’t gaze out your window longingly at the rain, because the water is drying up in the soul-sucking summer sun. Instead, the dash from one…
Thursday, July 16 Othello They say love is a powerful thing. But I think fear is even more powerful. While love does have the ability to ruin lives, fear, jealousy and hatred can ruin love and life. It’s always been this way. We’d rather watch the dramatic fight than the…
If you’ve never seen a baby penguin waddle up to the water and then splash around, you’ll want to suffer the heat in the next few weeks to see little Marina as she learns how to swim. She’s one of four baby animals stealing the hearts of visitors to the…
Nature in Our Backyard & Vida Cubana Currently on display at Sun to Moon Gallery (1515 Levee St.) is a photographic exploration of the Trinity River and the Great Trinity Forest called Nature in our Backyard. One of the only galleries in Dallas to specialize in photography, specifically that of…
For Internet junkies, it’s been difficult to avoid Google’s “Deep Dream” software, for which the company recently released its open source code. From everything we know, basically what it does is send an picture or a video through a microcosm of the Internet, allowing it to gather new data along…
