Arts & Culture

Good art can either slap you in the face or seduce you. It’s been long debated that one of those experiences is better than the other (with rallied arguments for both sides), but I tend to be sort of bicameral in my art appreciation. It depends on my mood, and…

Area cat-sitters, prepare yourselves. Science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts will be requiring your services for the better part of the weekend. That’s because FenCon, the region’s hottest fan-run literary sci-fi and fantasy convention, is upon us. FenCon IV hosts more than 50 guests (among them Hugo Award-winning author Connie Willis,…

Documentaries that make us, as humans, feel better about ourselves are few and far between, particularly in the last few years. For every heart-warmer like Mad Hot Ballroom, it seems like there are three or four films that just devastate us. An Inconvenient Truth was such a film, using graphic…

It’s all good! We’re cool with the city fathers’ attempts to remodel our sorry historical, homely carc-asses. A Boston area beer joint called Deep Ellum has even opened to immortalize the area as the “SoHo-like district in Dallas: a factory district, black ghetto, and urban-revival area.” We’re a legend in…

Ignore your skepticism about Texan actors doing Irish accents, as the Undermain Theater begins its 24th season with the acclaimed Shining City by young playwright Conor McPherson. I’m guessing dialect failures are unlikely, considering the excellence of past Undermain performances. Besides, are you so sure you know the difference between…

We dykes aren’t especially well known for our humor. I once had a queer comedian friend booed off stage at a Pride event for making a crack about lesbians and their dogs, and I was all, hello—ever hear of laughing at yourself, as she was pelted with vegan cookies and…

Founded in 1999 by Eduardo Vilaro, Luna Negra Dance Theater is now the country’s only professional company that presents the work of Latin choreographers. Specifically, those dedicated to giving Latino dancers and dance artists a solid, culturally supportive way of expressing themselves as well as their traditions. Luna Negra has…

DMB is a crippling disease that affects hundreds of thousands of people every year. Symptoms include a strong desire to learn how to play the White Blues on the guitar for your girlfriend, a penchant for smoking out at least three times a day and in rare cases, the popping…

Life’s challenges, while harrowing and stressful, are made happily more tolerable if one has a trustworthy friend by one’s side. Especially if that friend’s name is whiskey. Ever faithful, always smooth in a pinch, whiskey makes even the most painful of situations, like an ex’s wedding or an early staff…

It seems like water is either elusive (drought) or obtrusive (floods). And, for something so plain, it sure is taken seriously. We’re not knocking the importance of the wet stuff, but the musical comedy Urinetown does. It’s a musical comedy that distorts and exaggerates a malevolent city’s control over its…

Just because it’s September doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate October. That’s the way they do it in Addison, where the concrete is all shiny, the chain restaurants are king and calendars don’t mean a damn thing. Save the date—in Addison, April Fool’s will be in May. Oh, wait…a cursory check…

Junot Diaz created a lot of literary buzz with his award-winning collection of short stories, Drown. This kind of early critical acclaim could mean a couple of things. Either he’s going to have a long and successful literary career or his book was a flash in the pan. What we…

When I hear the term “Average White Band,” I automatically think, “Coldplay,” or maybe “The Killers.” If I’d come of age in the ’70s, however, I would probably think of the funky grooves laid down by Scotland’s greatest (by default) R & B export. Scoring hits like “Pick Up The…

Michelle Winder, a railroad switch operator, has taken hundreds of photographs over the years of graffiti-covered boxcars that have passed through Fort Worth railyards. Inspired by her mentor, photographer and gallery owner Perry Caldwell, the graffiti Winder has chosen to capture on film is more than the sort of hastily-done…

Somewhere along the road, dysfunctional families became normal. June and Ward Cleaver were replaced by Peg and Al Bundy and all hell broke lose. But the story of dysfunction and abuse started long before that. Take the Hunsdorfer family. In Paul Zindel’s 1971 Pulitzer Prize winning drama The Effect of…

Fort Worth artists Stuart and Scott Gentling are best known for the mural that adorns the dome of Bass Performance Hall, though their work can be seen in many museums and private collections across Texas. The twin brothers are also beloved by birding enthusiasts for Of Birds and Texas, a…

It’s no surprise that lavish Disney musicals are phenomenal visual displays. The stories and music are already bona fide hits via the silver screen, but Disney knows a whole heckuva lot more is needed for a stage production and without fail, they deliver. It was such a big deal when…

I love history, especially Dallas history, but I wouldn’t want to live all of it. I’m perfectly fine with my air-conditioned flat in East Dallas and my gas-guzzling, smallish SUV on somewhat smooth cement roads. When I need to revisit our local past, I just head out to a museum,…