Addison Holmes always knew she wanted to give back. As a teenager, the local dancer-choreographer worked alongside professionals in the Texas Ballet Theatre, with whom she performed at Bass Hall and Fair Park. These experiences among the best in Texas molded Holmes as an artist and, eventually, an educator. “I…
“Math was my Waterloo,” Dennis Maher says, explaining what attracts him to the role of Albert Einstein, whom he’ll play at Theatre Arlington beginning this month. The longtime University of Texas at Arlington theater arts professor has brought many historical figures to life on stage, but Einstein immediately stood out…
Joe Folsom is quick to defend one of the most influential and controversial performers of the 20th century, Lenny Bruce: “He’s wasn’t an asshole; he just didn’t suffer assholes,” he says. Bruce was famously misunderstood and was arrested numerous times for violating obscenity laws. Words and terms that are common…
A yearly showcase of small theater companies is making its return to the Bath House Cultural Center at the edge of White Rock Lake. Wingspan Theater Company founded the Festival of Independent Theatres in 1998 to aid local theater companies without permanent performance spaces. The festival begins this week and…
Be warned: Cry Havoc’s production of Shots Fired opens with gunfire. It’s a jarring beginning to 90 extraordinary minutes of documentary-style theater covering the July 7, 2016, Dallas police shootings by Cry Havoc Theater Company. Cry Havoc’s teen actors convey as much depth, empathy and emotion as any adult actors…
In its 18-year history, Amphibian Stage Productions in Fort Worth has developed a reputation for championing new plays and playwrights that are fun and quirky. One play was such a crowd pleaser during its first run that Amphibian has received letters asking for it to be revived. Its subject matter…
In early June, Shakespeare Dallas began receiving death threats from passionate supporters of President Donald Trump. These callers confused the Dallas company with New York’s Public Theater, which was producing Julius Caesar with a title character who closely resembled the president. But Shakespeare Dallas wasn’t parodying Trump in its summer Shakespeare…
Since 2012, Dallas’ Ochre House Theater has collaborated with the Dallas Flamenco Festival ever year on a new, original production. Ochre House has resurrected many because of their popularity and acclaim. Their 2012 Perro y Sangre got a revamp in New York’s Teatro Latea, while 2015’s Buñuel Descending played to…
During the mid-1960s, films about beach parties were all the rage. If you’re of a certain generation, or you have an affinity for classic movies, you may have grown up watching these niche films, escaping with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon to the simple joy of partying like hell in…
When Shakespeare is trending, it’s usually for historical reasons. Perhaps the burial site of Richard III has been discovered, or there’s renewed conjecture over whether the Bard wrote all of his plays himself. What you don’t see are many debates over content. In 400 years, we’ve worked that out —…
Dancer Jesse Morales path to becoming a professional dancer is almost magical.
No one in the theater world works harder than an actress who’s also a mom. Don’t believe it? Gal Godot famously reshot certain scenes of Wonder Woman while five months pregnant. Google “baby brain.” That’s a real thing that happens where your kids suck all of your mental energy. When…
Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm is a playwright learning to channel his rage. In 2014, the St. Louis native was away from home when a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, a northern suburb of the city. The riots and protests that followed the highly disputed and emotionally charged…
Demetri Martin performs at the Majestic Theatre on Thursday, June 15. Between national tour dates and pesky deadlines for his third book, If It’s Not Funny, It’s Art — due out later this year — comedian Demetri Martin has a pretty hectic schedule. Last year, he decided to complicate his life…
Heather Chandler is popular, pretty and pitiless. She says things like, “Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” She treats her friends, two of them also named Heather, with deep contempt, and she treats her enemies worse. Another girl invites her to lick up a puddle of vomit. One morning,…
Matt Lyle knows a thing or two about straddling worlds. The 38-year-old, Dallas-based playwright and dad got his chops doing theater in high school and college but realized early on that performing comedy was also in his bones, and he just couldn’t live without it. This month, he’s merging those…
Aaron Zilbermann was fresh out of college and teaching middle school in one of the worst neighborhoods in Oakland, Calif., when one of his sixth-grade students was shot and killed in front of the school. As the dying 13-year-old crawled in front of a crowd of children looking on, the…
Bill “Earl” Ray had one major goal upon taking the reins of Jubilee Theatre in early 2016: cut the theater’s deficit. Jubilee is North Texas’ longest-running African-American theater and was forced to replace its fourth artistic director since the death of its co-founder, Rudy Eastman, in 2005. After Eastman’s death,…
“I don’t give a shit what you do here.” That’s what Jeffrey Schmidt, newly appointed artistic director of Dallas’ longtime uptown staple Theatre Three, said to PrismCo, the young, movement-based theater that will produce a new take on King Lear this fall. Schmidt is giving full license to playwrights and…
Baby boomers love Julianne and Derek Hough. Old women especially. Their old-man husbands are just there because their wives forced them out of the house to see two blond-haired, blue-eyed siblings tango with each other. But the men aren’t too upset because they love Julianne. But the women really love…
James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece, Into the Woods, opens today at the Winspear Opera House, but it’s not the show you’re used to. This version is a bare-bones, stripped-down story that forces the audience members to use their imaginations and enter the woods themselves. But don’t worry, says music…
Last year, Stage West artistic director Dana Schultes came across a playwright who immediately resonated with her: Annie Baker. She’d read Baker’s 2010 The Aliens, which won an Obie Award that year for best new American play. It takes place in the alley behind a Vermont coffee shop and features…
