Back in 2007, the late writer and thinker Christopher Hitchens caught a forklift load of flak for writing a story in Vanity Fair titled simply “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” He reasoned that men were funnier and more clever in comedy than women thanks to a trait guys picked up in…
Dark Circles Contemporary Dance is back with their annual Winter Series, but don’t go to their usual performance location, because they’ve moved. Get your phones out and type this in to Google Maps: Erma Lowe Hall, 3000 S University Drive, Fort Worth. Dark Circles will be premiering two new pieces…
Drinks and sexist attitudes fly in The Explorers Club, the protofeminist farce now playing in a chortle-worthy production at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. Nell Benjamin’s 2013 play is set in 1879 Victorian London in the polished and paneled saloon of a poncy men’s club whose starchy members fancy themselves scientists and…
Every Paula Poundstone show is different thanks to the comedian’s ability to interact spontaneously with the crowd. Her shows take on the air of a dinner party — a host chatting with her guests before launching into stories about traffic, kids, cats and all things “everyday” — if dinner parties…
Suspend any expectation that the actor playing Truman Capote in the one-man play Tru, now on at Theatre Three, will attempt an impression of the author as accurate as the late Philip Seymour Hoffman did in his Oscar-winning performance in Capote…
Let’s do some basic forensics on how a thing as wretched as The Book Club Play got produced at the Dallas Theater Center. DTC is our big League of Resident Theatres professional showplace with a large staff dedicated to bringing top quality scripts, new and old, to audiences. There have…
The end of a movie marks the start of Annie Baker’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Flick, now on in a fastidiously directed and beautifully acted regional premiere at Undermain Theatre. The movie is The Naked and the Dead, a 1958 Raoul Walsh action film whose soundtrack throbs with the…
In her early 20s, at the beginning of her career as a professional dancer, Katelyn Harris thought she knew everything there is to know about tap dance. Then she started attending festivals. Part dance workshops and part performances, these weekend long events aren’t just places to work with some of…
Ronald K. Brown originally thought he would be a journalist or a playwright. Growing up surrounded by writers, it made sense; he had a knack for it too. But when he started doing musicals in high school, the dance passion took hold. During his childhood in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant, he…
“Everyone asks me what kind of dancing we do. If you asked a ballet dancer what I do, he would say that it is modern dance. If you asked a modern dancer what I would, he would say that it is ballet. I feel that at the edge of each…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. When you hear Linda Stogner’s act on stage, you get the sense that she lives in her own little world where common sense and normalcy don’t exist. But as Joel Hodgson once said, “That’s OK,…
It’s Monday. The weekend went by too fast, and you’re not jazzed about being back at work. You started your countdown to 5 p.m. the moment you walked in. But when 5 hits, you don’t really want to go straight home, and you did make that new year’s resolution to…
So much attention to detail goes into every show that Pegasus Theatre does in its trademarked “Living Black and White” style. Presented as a vintage piece of silver screen silliness come to life, the plays written by and starring Pegasus founder Kurt Kleinmann strip all the color from everything on…
2014 was an incredible year for dance in Dallas, but it did have its ups and downs. We had the rebirth of the Dallas DanceFest, Ann Williams, who founded and ran Dallas Black Dance Theatre, retired after 37 years (not down, but sad); yet, we gained the experience and expertise…
This was the year DFW’s favorite theater kids grew up. No longer newcomers on local stages — as actors, playwrights or companies — they did big things in big ways in 2014. Here’s a look back (and a glance ahead). Please hold your applause till the end. If you watched…
Once again, the Addison Improv hosted the final showdown for the Funniest Comic in Texas and this year’s honor went to two-time FCiT finalist and local comedian Linda Stogner. One-fourth of the Four Funny Females, Stogner went up against four strong sets from four equally talented comedians including Joel “Junebug”…
For almost six years, the players and performers of the Dallas Comedy House have turned a relatively small space on Commerce Street in Deep Ellum into a thriving hub for a form of comedy that most people have never seen around these parts. Now they need a bigger place to…
On Tuesday night, downtown was filled with gleeful, excited children. Their parents quickly grabbed their hands to stop them from running into the street. Where were they running? Well, only to the most famous reindeer of all. Rudolph. Yes, folks, it’s time to get your Christmas spirit on and take…
A series of 10 short plays dubbed A Very Nouveau Holiday is on for a few more performances at the Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park, and it’s a little naughty, a little nice. The collection is hit-and-miss, ranging from mawkishly bad to absurdly smart, but the actors — Ginger…
If you have soured on The Nutcracker or are humbugged by too many Christmas Carols, pull into The Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical, now onstage at WaterTower Theatre in Addison. It’s a hot mug of sassy-crass tea, two hours of low comedy with a high-caliber cast. Christmas season has…
The Dallas dance scene is alive and well, and if 2014 is any indication, 2015 is going to provide us with a lot of entertainment, opportunities to perform and chances to expand the community. In an effort not to sugarcoat anything, I will say that we are still facing issues…
Christmas comes early thanks to the group over at the Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park. Nouveau 47 is back with the second annual A Very Nouveau Holiday, and keeping with the group’s commitment to developing new works, the entire show is 100 percent new. All ten of the plays…
