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…
Now, I like Eddie Izzard. I do. Like you, I watched his tapes (yes, they were tapes then) at college while doing things I can’t tell my parents or any potential employers about, and his sheer commitment to ridiculousness endeared me to him in a way it did with few…
Summer is Shakespeare season on both sides of the Trinity River. If you like soaking up your classical works in a steam bath with added sound effects from drag racers, police sirens and cicadas, head over to the grassy outdoor amphitheater at Samuell-Grand Park in East Dallas for productions by…
The Comedy of Errors at Trinity Shakespeare Festival in Fort Worth offers some of one and too much of the other. It’s a weak play by Shakespearean standards, a one-note farce that blows that same note over and over and over. Director Joel Ferrell tries to liven things up with…
Funny or Die’s touring comedy show, the Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival, is coming back to Dallas this fall, with an even stronger lineup than last year: Louis CK, Marc Maron, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Jeff Ross, Whitney Cummings and still others. The show is Friday, September 19, at Gexa…
For 32 years, Ballet Concerto has been ringing in summer with an outdoor end-of-the-season concert series at the Trinity Park Pavilion in Fort Worth. Well attended every year, with more and more people coming out, laying down their blankets, and cuddling up with a glass of wine, and chowing down…
