Performing Arts

Just before the show started — after I’d taken my seat between Mom and Dad in the front row at the Dallas Theater Center’s in-the-round production of Hair — an usher started talking about the view we were going to get. Dad’s attention was on his Toblerone, but Mom saw the…

After a tour in South Korea, artistic director Joshua Peugh’s home away from Dallas, Dark Circles Contemporary Dance will open its fifth season in its hometown of Dallas this weekend. Big Bad Wolf and Les Fairies will focus on dance pieces inspired by cautionary tales, or as Peugh describes, “the ways…

Halloween time is the perfect time for scary movies, but what about scary plays? Horror film fanatics should not discount the immediate experience of seeing a live performance when they’re in the mood to jump in their seats. House Party Theatre is attempting to make you do just that with…

Start with ABBA and throw in some Prince and the Muppets’ Swedish Chef, and you’ve got the recipe for the Drama Club’s new musical, Parables (for sleeping in daylight or dark). Its writers, Ian Ferguson and Michael Federico, are no strangers to musical theater. Ferguson, a musician, is a member…

Prism Movement Theater, Dallas’ wordless theater company, is starting a new season that will give the community a chance to learn the ways of the wordless. Following the success of its 2016 production Animal vs Machine and subsequent 2017 remount as Bruises, Prism proves once again that it is interested…

Men and women are about as opposite as any two forces on Earth. Yet many people spend their whole lives trying to find just one person of the opposite sex who is willing to just put up with them. Brian Howie, a writer, author and comedian who hosts The Great…

The yarn-dressed trees dotting the Arts District are proof that Kevin Moriarty is serious about providing a “fully immersive” experience with his newest musical production. Hair  opens this week at the Wyly, and if you think the trees outside are over-the-top, just wait until you see the inside of the theater…

Jim Norton will perform at Texas Theatre this Friday, Sept. 29 Comedian Jim Norton can’t remember the first embarrassing, sexually perverted story he told. All he remembers is where it happened and that two other comics found it hilarious. “It was a Radisson hotel [in New Jersey] that had a…

Spending the majority of the year on the road isn’t a new experience for seasoned comedy couple Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher. They first met in the Chicago comedy scene and got to know each other while doing road gigs together. So what makes their Back to Back tour, which…

As temperatures begin to drop in Dallas, it’s perfect weather for sitting outside on a nice lawn with a bottle of wine while watching a stage fill up with blood. For the first time in its 46-year history, Shakespeare Dallas will present one of Shakespeare’s most violent plays, Titus Andronicus…

All the characters in Miller, Mississippi at Dallas Theater Center die. And playwright Boo Killebrew traps the audience in the house with the family as the body count piles up. Miller, Mississippi paints a harrowing portrait of a politically active, white family as the civil rights movement shakes the foundations…

Matthew Paul Olmos sometimes gets a little embarrassed when he hears the words he’s written. In the soft-spoken playwright’s unconventional script, women play male characters. And not just any male characters: Mexican drug cartel members. The dialogue is a little rough. The play, so go the ghosts of méxico, part…

In the essay “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion wrote, “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.” Justin Lemieux, looking back on a childhood friendship in his poignant solo play Warm Soda, has a similar problem. He doesn’t remember the last time…

“To be from Mississippi is to be aware that there’s blood in the soil,” playwright Boo Killebrew drawls. The Gulfport native’s play, Miller, Mississippi, is having its world premiere at The Dallas Theater Center. It’s a hard play, Killebrew says, but there’s a reckoning coming, and it’s a story she…

Emily Heller had her entire career to write her first comedy album, Good For Her. On that album, she’s single and, she says, immature. Now she has a boyfriend, and she wants her comedy to reflect life in a relationship and what she thinks about being in one — even…

Carla Parker is making history at Dallas’ scrappy Ochre House Theatre, which produces all original work. Her world-premiere musical, Kaptain Kockadoo, marks the first time the theater will feature a play by a female playwright. Parker, who became a company member in 2012, says the theater has become a home for…

If you’re a fan of Canada, sketch comedy or both, then you’ll be happy to learn who will receive the Ernie Kovacs Award at this year’s Dallas VideoFest. Comedians Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley, two of the five members of the renowned stage and TV comedy troupe The Kids in…

The AT&T Performing Arts Center is doubling down on its Elevator Project series, which began in 2014 and provides grants and performing space to local performing arts companies. There are eight companies on the lineup for the recently announced third installment — three more than last year — and they…

One Minute Play Festival is, amazingly, exactly what it sounds like. Thirty mini plays submitted by new and established Dallas-based writers will run back to back at Kitchen Dog Theater. This is the fourth year the theater has hosted it, and the goal to create a locally sourced community event and showcase…

Female comedian Ever Mainard caught some flak years ago for a joke about walking alone at night and feeling uncomfortable around a man who was acting strange. The joke became controversial because the man in question was black and Mainard is white. However, she touched on some thing that almost…

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull. It was the offspring of Minos’ wife and a beautiful bull Minos was meant to sacrifice but kept instead. To punish Minos, Poseidon made Minos’ wife fall in love with…