The folks over at Fun House Theatre and Film can do no wrong. They’ve earned critical acclaim and numerous awards for new perspectives on works by everyone from Edward Albee to David Mamet. What’s different about them? They only cast kids. This weekend, masterminds (at least according to us) Jeff…
Fashion fever is not new to Dallas. Have you ever been to friggin’ NorthPark Mall? People in this city earn and burn money fast and they spare no expense to look good. Why? Photographs, for one. For society pages, we’ve got Paper City, Beverly Drive magazine, Modern Luxury, and Patron…
The Dallas comedy scene has grown up so much so fast that among our evolving flock of chuckle monkeys, we now have “young comedians,” which in show business terms is somewhere in between the “neurula” and “tadpole” stages of comedy stardom…
All through The Fortress of Solitude, the huge new musical playing now at Dallas Theater Center (co-produced with New York’s Public Theater), we wait for that magical moment. Musicals need that moment. The good ones all have them. Eliza Doolittle’s “rain in Spain” linguistic breakthrough in My Fair Lady. The…
If you count forward from Jim Henson’s mid-1960s TV appearances with a fringy pup named Rowlf and the lizard, made from an old winter coat, that would later become Kermit the Frog, the Muppets have outlived most of their early puppet peers by more than two generations: You don’t see…
Here’s the rare current-affairs documentary that doesn’t just show us something gone wrong in some part of our world. Rachel Boynton’s first-rate Big Men instead peels the skin off the world itself, revealing the gears as they grind away, casting familiar doc scenarios in shades of illuminating gray: The heroes…
For more than two decades, Alain Guiraudie has been unrivaled in depicting desires that upend convention, whether homo or hetero. In the comedy The King of Escape (2009), for instance, a middle-age gay man falls in love with a 16-year-old girl. The film ends with an all-male gerontophilic ménage quatre…
Dystopian movies don’t have to make sense. As the audience, we’re obligated to sit down with our popcorn and soda and pretend that yes, of course, in the future monkeys rule the earth, women can’t bear children, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is an everyday construction worker. It’s a mutual contract of…
Somewhere in between black and white there are shades of gray. The varied tones of this intermediate color have inspired novels. At the intersection of black and white you discover lead or ash. Kettle Art Gallery’s new exhibit focuses on these Silver Linings with an exhibition composed entirely of grisaille…
Where does a memory rest? And more important, what does it look like? Could an artist capture it in a painting? In her latest series, Rebecca Carter attempts exactly that. Using machine stitching on digitally generated color fields, she uses linear forms to create images both familiar and strange. She…
The only thing better than supporting local vendors is doing it while you throw out a high kick or two. That’s Rock & Shop hosted by Mad Girl Productions. It’s an all-day shopping extravaganza-bonanza where $15 gets you unlimited re-entry and free drinks. (Tickets are $5 without drinks, but no…
Surrealism, born out of Dada in the 1920s, is one of art’s most important, influential and lasting movements. It dominated the 20th century, inspiring artists of all media, often leading them to create new media altogether. While the names Dalí, Miró and Duchamp come to mind when surrealism is discussed,…
Few moments in life feel more fulfilling than telling some horrid, debilitating disease to go do something to its mother that is anatomically impossible, even for a microscopic organism. You’ll be able to do just that at 8 p.m. Saturday at The Grotto in Fort Worth. The appropriately named nonprofit…
Bach played at speed-metal tempo: check. Tap dancers sweating buckets: check. Side story about Mozart in a comedic love triangle: check. This is The Bach and Wing — Live Classical Music Tap Dance Extravaganza, the latest from Open Classical. They’re the mad classical geniuses who brought you amplified chamber music…
You could, one supposes, redo Star Wars without lightsabers, Spider-Man without shooting webs or Peter Pan without wire rigs. But why? That’s the question that arises with Pegasus Theatre’s staged reading of A Degree of Death!, one in a series of 16 comedy-mystery spoofs by playwright Kurt Kleinman. For nearly…
On Thursday, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and 23-year-old piano phenom Anna Fedorova perform Rachmaninoff’s gorgeous and seductive “Second Piano Concerto.” Fedorova was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and gave her first public recital at age 6. Since then she has been wowing audiences in the world’s greatest concert halls with passionate,…
Just a few days before he performs the same program at Lincoln Center in New York, pianist Alessio Bax gives a recital at SMU’s Caruth Auditorium that features Beethoven’s always impressive “Hammerklavier” Sonata. Bax’s recitals are always stunning. He plays with ease and virtuosity in addition to a compelling sound…
Try saying this: orthotics, carbo loading and rock ’n’ roll. Hmm. Nope. Doesn’t have the same ring as sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, does it? Can’t really picture Keith Richards doing split laps or Jerry Lee Lewis running from anything, except maybe the law. But this is now, when…
The Fort Worth Symphony has a reputation for innovative programming and presenting newer, unfamiliar music alongside more traditional fare. This weekend’s concerts in particular include some fascinating sounds, including music by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (“Earth Cry”) that features the music of a didgeridoo, a 1,500-year-old wind instrument invented by…
The Fort Worth Symphony has a reputation for innovative programming and presenting newer, unfamiliar music alongside more traditional fare. This weekend’s concerts in particular include some fascinating sounds, including music by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (“Earth Cry”) that features the music of a didgeridoo, a 1,500-year-old wind instrument invented by…
Theater programs at high schools are filled with uninspiring monologues from Shakespeare, unsexy productions of Grease and scenes from The Crucible. Out in Plano, Fun House Theatre & Film serves as a counterpoint, skipping the usual riffraff and heading straight for the controversy. Playwright Neil LaBute with 15- and 16-year-olds?…
Kenneth Goldsmith was the poet laureate at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. What does that mean? I imagine him wandering through halls, writing poems about Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. If anyone deserved the title, it’s Goldsmith. He’s the founding editor of an online archive UbuWeb, a…
