Anime Overload

Many moons ago, my friends and I — having long since burned through all of the Studio Ghibli offerings—found an ad on the back of a newspaper for a place that promised a large selection of anime titles. When we arrived at the windowless building just outside the city limits,…

Cutting The Strings

Life isn’t going as predicted for Scotty Mankin (Kevin Grammer) in the Ochre House’s newest original play Best Seat in Town. The down-and-out car salesman really messed up when he sold lemons to the puppet mafia. As we meet him, Mankin’s on a desperate mission to track down the mafia’s…

Murder: It Probably Isn’t Hereditary

If your mother died in jail, imprisoned for murdering your father, and your fancy new fiancé fears you harbor similar murderous tendencies, what would you do? While most of us would either kick the dude to the curb or run and hide from the everlasting familial tragedy, Carla Le Merchant…

The Greatest Show In Irving

The circus left town a few weeks ago and you’re still whistling “Entrance of the Gladiators.” Maybe you’re thinking about chucking it all and heading for clown college: Elephant training seems preferable to cubicle dwelling, and flying trapezes sound way less treacherous than the office gossip mill. It’s tempting. Then…

Beauty Lingers

If you’ve ever driven that stretch of Interstate 35 just south of Dallas and been floored that the miles of green pastures and wooded areas that lined the highway just a decade ago are now a perpetual tract of retail and restaurant and storage units, you’ll appreciate Debora Hunter’s exhibition…

An Entire House Will Be Planted Underground for Nasher XChange

Lara Almarcegui attracted international buzz when she filled the Spanish Pavilion with construction materials at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The 1922 building became the casing for its own eventual decay, with mountains of smashed rubble, bricks and building tiles authentic to the pavilion’s composition piled within. It’s work like that…

Oak Lawn Now Accepting Boy Scouts

Why is a billboard advertisement for 2-year-old Norman Rockwell exhibition at Irving’s National Scouting Museum lately beaming down on Lemmon Avenue, just shy of Wycliff Avenue? Earlier this year, the Irving-based Boy Scouts of America reversed a long-held ban on admitting openly gay Scouts. But only a few short weeks…

(NSFW) The Five Best Burlesque Photos from Friday’s Lollie Bombs Show

Local burlesque babes the Lollie Bombs held their annual breast cancer benefit show at Pocket Sandwich Theatre on Friday night, simultaneously satisfying its audience’s desires for snacks, do-gooding and boobs errywhere. We sent photographer Ed Steele to capture the action in photos and he came back with a whole slideshow’s…

The Nasher’s New Commission: Charity To Please Philip K. Dick

Charles Long’s futuristic XChange sculpture could be science fiction source material. Housed in NorthPark Mall, an area that’s already established itself as an art and commerce amalgamate, Long fuses new media with ritual, then tosses in an element of monetary exchange. The end result will be a large, chalice-shaped wishing…