Austin’s comedy scene has become a big conversation. Unconventional venues have sprung up across the city, improv classes are a standard activity for young adults and events like Moontower Comedy Festival pair big names (Maria Bamford, Anthony Jeselnik, Reggie Watts, and Amy Schumer) with the best in upcoming stand-up, sketch…
This Saturday night, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra gets Dallas’ gala season started with a glitzy bash at the Meyerson. Big bucks demand big stars, and so this year’s post-dinner/ pre-party concert will feature American opera superstar Renée Fleming. When it comes to the American opera stage, there’s hardly a bigger…
Alessio Bax is not a native North Texan, but we’ll claim him as our own nonetheless. After all, the Italian pianist moved to Dallas at age 16 to study piano at Southern Methodist University and made his home here for more than a decade. When Bax returns to Dallas to…
Tomorrow’s opening of the Texas State Fair doesn’t just mark the start of another heat stroke inducing, artery clogging, diabetes causing month of fun. No, this one is special because we get to say hello to an old friend who can’t say hello back because he’s a giant inanimate object…
Word on the street is Big Tex got a booty upgrade, so when you go to the Fair’s opening weekend, you’ll want to admire his new assed-up Dickies. Not ready for fried? Fine, there’s plenty to do this weekend, like a great comedy show at Texas Theatre; a burlesque party…
October may be synonymous with Halloween, Oktoberfest and diabetic comas from all the candy and beer drinking that happens throughout the month. So you may not know that October is also Literacy Month. That’s probably because of all the comas and beer. Maybe it’s because of all the drunken revelry…
Last night they flipped the breaker, turning on this year’s bigger, brighter and more brilliant Chinese Lantern Festival for a private media preview. It’s changed a lot since we last saw it: there are 17 new scenes, making 24 total, and the overall layout and groupings are more orderly. It…
When a relatively young actor dies suddenly, as James Gandolfini did in June, it’s tempting to wonder about the roles he’ll never get to play. When we didn’t know we’d be losing him so soon, it was always fun to see Gandolfini show up, a casual surprise: In 2012 alone…
It’s 1976, a year when all the groovy girls are traipsing around in tiny suede skirts and all the cool guys have Badfinger hair. One of those guys was English racing driver James Hunt, the charismatic rapscallion who won that year’s Formula One World Championship — the embroidered badge on…
As a big, important American classic, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun deserves every bit of the respect and care it’s getting in Dallas Theater Center’s latest staging (the third in the company’s history) at the Wyly Theatre. What a beautiful production, every moment crafted for maximum impact. An…
Peter Pan not only won’t grow up, he just won’t go away. We’ve had Cathy Rigby flying around as the little green elf for about half a century on national tours. More recently Dallas Theater Center’s new musical Fly let a young boy play the role in about as depressing…
Mild spoilers up to The Bridge’s ninth episode below. Artisanal murders are all the rage these days. On Showtime’s Dexter, NBC’s Hannibal, and Fox’s The Following, small-batch, labor-intensive, sold-with-a-story slaughters have become TV’s equivalent of the Cronut. Handsome, intelligent, and mannered as court eunuchs, serial killers have become the new…
To paraphrase the Bee Gees, Joseph Gordon-Levitt should be dancing. He’s already done it in (500) Days of Summer, where he led an exuberant ensemble routine that out-Dr Peppered any Dr Pepper commercial. Then there was his smashing Saturday Night Live re-creation of Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” — like…
The single biggest predictor of a child’s academic success is their exposure to reading at an early age. The single biggest predictor of a parent’s ability to make it through the 1,000th reading of Madeline is their access to the occasional alcoholic beverage. And so, by our math, Booktoberfest increases…
7 Deadly Sins Burlesque and Sideshow solemnly swears to be “dark, diabolical and dangerous,” and after seeing the promo pics there’s no doubt they’ll deliver. Perhaps you’ve heard of the DJ? Satan! He’s pretty hard to book what with that torturing souls in eternal damnation thing, but DJ Frausun, the…
There was a time when Dallas was more than an optional post-Austin stop for musicians. From the ’50s to the late ’70s, this city was the Southwestern hub of the music industry and every band worth its spit targeted the place. Dallas was where you went to get your name…
The “art” of Instagram has its admirers and its detractors. While some say it waters down the craft of photography, lowering the value of the medium as a whole, others would counter that availability creates a more photo-appreciative world. There’s a new show opening Friday that celebrates the filtered square…
Down in our neighborly city Austin, the comedians have taken over. Local radio programs, movie theaters and start-up venues blast the stuff out nightly, nurturing an increasingly rich talent pool that you should know about. Friday at Texas Theatre’s Behind the Screen Comedy series (231 W. Jefferson Blvd.), where folks…
Gentlemen, it’s unlikely you’ve given much thought to high heels before, let alone how you might be able to use them for the greater good. But it’s time you gave them some consideration. The Dallas County Sexual Assault Coalition is hosting the International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault…
You can argue WWE’s golden age has faded with the departure of wrestlers like The Rock and The Undertaker. You can argue WWE’s golden age has returned thanks to personas like John Cena or C.M. Punk. What you can’t argue is the excitement and electricity in the air when a…
Jesse Pinkman pulls up to Walter White’s house, grabs the gasoline tank, pours it all over the inside … and the episode ends. You (mentally or physically) scream “Are you effing kidding me?!?” and text all your Breaking Bad friends about the possible scenarios. If the above sounds familiar, stop…
Sometimes we need to be reminded how much things suck. It’s a sad fact that getting too happy with our current situation is not only unhealthy but unwise. Which is why the sagacity of Lewis Black is so welcome. Black takes the stage at Bass Performance Hall, 525 Commerce St…
