A new TV show is trying to bring stand-up comedy back to mainstream television in a way that doesn’t pit eager chuckle monkeys against each other in a battle of meaningless challenges that have nothing to do with comedy. Two names who first took to the mic in Dallas’ burgeoning…
It’s little wonder that no theater until Dallas’ Uptown Players has attempted the bio-musical The Boy from Oz in the decade since it closed its run on Broadway. Hugh Jackman won a Tony in that Broadway production, starring as its flamboyant title character, bisexual Australian singer-songwriter-showman Peter Allen. When Jackman’s…
WWE returned to American Airlines Center this Sunday, and this being a culture blog, we asked Jaime-Paul Falcone to go and send a sketch of what exactly goes at a WWE Live event. Drama, that’s what. Lots of drama, plus merchandising. ACT I Scene 1: Thousands of neon-clad children run…
Shuffle, ball, change. Aaaaaand, dig! Those are the only tap dance words that stuck with me from the beginner adult class I took last fall. Turns out, you need rhythm to tap, and I’ve got zero. But it just looks so darn fun when dancers fly around the stage creating…
Saturday is National Dance Day, another day that you can celebrate through clever Facebook status updates, Instagram hashtags, and throwback photos to your drill team days and those terrible costumes your dance teachers used to make you wear. Or, you could actually get off your butt and dance. Novel idea,…
Like an old actor no longer able to remember his lines, maybe the Festival of Independent Theatres needs to be led gently out of the spotlight for good. The annual FIT fest, as it’s redundantly known, was conceived 16 years ago to give small companies a chance to produce new…
There’s a running joke among critics that the reason they are given aisle seats is that they are statistically more likely to die during a play than another audience member. On the aisle, the dead critic is more easily removed from the theater. The death of the critic is something…
The Dallas DanceFest is back. After a 10-year hiatus, the festival that began with outdoor performances at the Annette Strauss Square returns with the same premise but a new venue, the Dallas City Performance Hall. Its original debut in 1985 started off small, featuring only three companies: Dallas Black Dance…
Jonathan Norton almost didn’t apply for the Artistic Innovations grant twice. But the third time was the charm for the local playwright, who was awarded a $15,000 grant from the Mid-America Arts Alliance this week. Of 137 applicants, Norton was one of 15 recipients of the grants, “awarded to support…
From the first line of Christhelmet, you know you’re in for something special in this gritty, great new musical written, directed by and starring Matthew Posey at his 40-seat Ochre House Theatre. “There’s gonna be a lot of feelings felt this summer,” warns Rosie (Dante Martinez), the jaded barkeep of…
The annual Festival of Independent Theatres is underway at the Bath House Cultural Center. Opening night featured two of the eight shows by companies too small to have their own permanent spaces. Instead of a dazzling launch for the four-weekend fest, however, the productions by PrismCo and Nouveau 47 were…
For four years, Uptown Players has taken a week to celebrate its existence as the city’s LGBT-centric theater. In every season, the company presents shows that that connect with or describe the gay identity, but during the Pride Performing Arts Festival, the shows are more unabashed. This week, Uptown Players…
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, better known by first name only, are the radical comedy duo that speaks directly to the sensibilities of an entire generation of fans, while the generation before it struggles to understand just what the hell is so funny. It can be fun to observe parents…
Standing outside the light brick structure of the Bath House Cultural Center that lies nuzzled against one of the less-trodden sides of White Rock Lake, Shelby-Allison Hibbs happily admits that the artistic hub has been like a second home to her. Hibbs, a theatre director who obtained her MFA from…
Turns out the revolutionary way to stage Les Misérables is to take the French revolutionaries out of it entirely. No frilly shirts. No peasants waving big red flags. None of that ghastly marching-in-place every other Les Miz (or Les Mis, if you prefer) uses for clap-bait toward the end of…
Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth wants you to help them choreograph their next piece. Really. If you have the desire to make somebody’s body wiggle, this might be your chance. With their latest offering, Some Assembly Required, Artistic Director Kerry Kreiman and her dancers are reaching out to the social media world…
Tucked into a sleepy neighborhood on the edge of White Rock Lake, the Bath House Cultural Center is one of those venues only locals know. It’s part theater, party art gallery and the terrace overlooks the lake with a view of downtown Dallas in the distance. When the Texas sun…
It can seem a bit quiet around this city during the summer, because in case you just moved here, it’s about to get really freaking hot. Sure, these summer storms have kept the temperatures in the refreshingly high 80’s, but beware the “searing pain” our weather blogger predicts in regard…
One of the hallmarks of almost any production at Theatre Three, one of Dallas’ oldest theater companies, is how much time they waste moving furniture between scenes. So often the shifting of sagging sofas and rickety tables in and out of the in-the-round space seems unnecessary. T3’s penchant for choosing…
The first and last time I saw Forbidden Broadway, one of the sketches lampooned Les Miserables by having the actors run in circles, executing costume changes and singing dramatic songs. The 1985 musical about a man who stole a loaf of bread is infamous for having a stage that rotates…
Summertime can lead to feelings of wanderlust, boredom, and – if you’re lucky – a really good tan. In the summer, it’s super easy to just want to relax all day long, stare out your window, and daydream. But it is in those dreams that something great can come. The…
Paul Varghese, one of the funniest men in Dallas, has organized another Dallas Observer Comedy Crawl. After last fall’s inaugural crawl was hilariously successful, we couldn’t even wait a year to bring back more laughs. If you’re sick of listening to your friend’s jokes at a bar, but still want…
