Performing Arts

Theater season is in full swing. Here are a few picks for your month…

This morning, KERA’s Jerome Weeks commented on my Facebook check-in at Shakespeare in the Bar last night with a link to a New Yorker article about Drunk Shakespeare, pointing out that New York did it first. I squinted at the screen, rubbed my aching head and thought, damn it, it’s…

Some rebellious theater kids take over The Wild Detectives tonight for the first-ever rendition Shakespeare in a Bar. Well, we’re pretty sure we’ve heard some drunken actors (maybe even some of these guys) reciting lines of iambic pentameter over a double whisky on the rocks. Now it’s just a bit…

Donald Byrd has a dance career to would make anyone envious. For more than four decades, he has been living his dream of creating, performing, and educating. Oh, and he cut his teeth working for Twyla Tharp. His impressive career started in 1978 and includes prestigious credits like The Joffrey…

Have you been shivering with antici … pation for a new Rocky Horror Show? That not only does the Time Warp but the Bristol Stomp, a Rockette kick line and maybe a little Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies, but with sequined 20-inch dildos? Dallas Theater Center has opened its season…

Shakespeare Dallas’ fall production, Antony and Cleopatra, sports two sexy leads in Daniel Duque-Estrada (who’s also a company member at Dallas Theater Center) and the lush-voiced Joanna Schellenberg. As the Bard’s title characters, they create sizzling chemistry, obvious even from the back of the sprawling Samuell Grand Amphitheater. They speak…

Fake rain drips from the ceiling at the end of Thinner than Water, a dreary play by Melissa Ross, directed by Chris Carlos, now on in the smaller of two spaces at Kitchen Dog Theater. Really, the whole two-hour drama is a soggy slog through one family’s shriek-storms. Daddy’s dying…

Last Friday’s Oddball Curiosity and Comedy Festival at the Gexa Energy Pavilion wasn’t as memorable as the first time Funny or Die brought a comedy showcase to our town. That’s not to say it wasn’t good. For a lot of comedy nerds in attendance, it will be one of the…

Unicorn, gryphon, bisexual man: Pick the one that’s real. The usual answer is “none of the above,” with the bisexual male lumped in alongside the Yeti, Easter Bunny and plus-sized supermodel as imaginary creatures. Yet Dallas playwright and director Bruce R. Coleman insists in his new comedy Mythical Beastie that…

By Sarah Wyatt Aziz Ansari is a man built for an arena act, a master of crowd control. The night’s opening act was a Michael Jackson impersonator with his own backing applause soundtrack. It seemed fitting with the ego and presence that Ansari puts out to the public as a…

Most critics of comedians who love to take their audiences to dark places usually have a single criticism in mind when they prepare to launch their arsenal of self-righteous indignation. “The dark, sad things you’re trying to make people laugh about wouldn’t seem so funny if they happened to you,”…

Many people wondered what would happen to the Bruce Wood Dance Project (BWDP) after the untimely passing of their artistic director and choreographer. Would the company fold once again? Or would they continue to pursue the mission set forth by their founder? It seems as if fate, this city, the…

One of the first shows that comedian Chris Tellez organized sounds like the nightmare scenario of any aspiring comic. He started a regular monthly stand-up show called “Pillow Talk” at a dive bar in Oak Cliff that didn’t have working air conditioning. The place was packed with sweaty people trying…

“I can’t go a day without clicking my camera. Capturing the personalities in the flowers, capturing the personality of the ice that forms on the lake by my house…I see the dancers in those flowers and that ice.” Moses Pendleton, artistic director of the dance company Momix, is wired to…

Seeing a show at Lyric Stage isn’t just a chance to revisit a beloved piece of American musical theater; it’s an education in how musicals were done, and still can be done, on a grand scale. Lyric’s specialty, its sole focus, is reviving big American musicals, so the draw of…

It’s little wonder Gordon Dahlquist’s newest play is science fiction. The first words of the upcoming Undermain Theatre world premiere,Tomorrow Come Today, were penned at a 10-day silent retreat in West Texas. “It’s not just not talking,” the Brooklyn-based playwright explains over lunch at All Good Cafe. “It was eight-and-a-half…

This weekend, one of the country’s funniest foodies stops in at the American Airlines Center. Aziz Ansari brings his latest comedy tour, Modern Romance, to town at 8 p.m. Saturday night and according to him it’s so dope, he wants to give the tickets away. “I think this is my…

It’s rare that one of the more difficult categories to choose for the DFW Theater Critics Forum Awards is “Best New Play or Musical.” But with Dallas Theater Center leading the charge and the smaller companies rising to the occasion, this year in Dallas/Fort Worth theater featured numerous new plays…

At the biggest comedy event in Dallas/Fort Worth this year, three names on the bill are a little bit more local than the rest. Stand-up comedians Christopher Darden, Josh Johnson and Clint Werth have been touring the local clubs, bars and any other places that will let them set up…

Dark Circles Contemporary Dance has already scheduled an additional performance this weekend. Saturday night sold out quickly. The season premiere of one of Dallas’ top emerging companies expects full houses at the Sanders Theatre in Fort Worth. Originally founded in Seoul, South Korea in 2010, DCCD moved state-side in 2013,…

By Monica Hinman How to deal with the trials and travails of life? Anxiety about the future, the disappointments of today and the scars from yesterday can be ameliorated with a Xanax or a bottle of wine, a little shopping or a gallon of ice cream. Or if you are…

If therapy has ever been in vogue, it started somewhere after the mid-20th century. When Chrisopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy first premiered in New York City in 1981, this idea of therapy was almost trendy. A hip socialite might ask, “who’s your therapist?” directly after asking about the designer of your…