On Saturday nights for a couple hours, the good old days still exist on National Public Radio. For nearly 30 years, Garrison Keillor’s old-fashioned variety show A Prairie Home Companion has transported its listeners to a simpler time with musical performances from American folk musicians, celebrity guests from the literary…
Nobody wrote down what Lee Harvey Oswald said during the many hours he sat under interrogation in the office of Dallas police Captain Will Fritz on November 22, 23 and 24, 1963. Nobody turned on a tape recorder or called in a stenographer. So most of what playwright Dennis Richard…
The two-time Tony-winning musical that’s kept Broadway rooms booked since its 2012 release is coming to Dallas. It was just announced that Newsies will have a two-week special engagement run at the Winspear Opera House, anchoring the 2014-2015 Lexus Broadway Series. Details on tickets and dates haven’t yet been announced…
Playwright Dennis Richard leaves it up to the audience to argue conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination. His play, Oswald: The Actual Interrogation, onstage in its regional premiere at Casa Manana Fort Worth November 9-17, just sticks to the facts. Or as many as Richard could find about the hours…
Maxine is a well-to-do old widow living out her last days in a nice nursing home. Or is she dying a little sooner than she should be? She thinks so. Maxine believes her demise is being hastened by her inheritance-hungry daughter, who’s in cahoots with the Haitian nurse, Tina. Deadline…
“Do you really cut into someone’s arm during the show?” Dallas-based playwright and performer Brad McEntire hears this question after almost every performance of his kinky solo show Chop. “An uncomfortable number of times, actually,” he says. Since premiering at WaterTower Theatre’s Out of the Loop Fringe Festival in 2010,…
When Seth Romatelli and Jonathan Larroquette pair up for their weekly podcast “Uhh, Yeah Dude,” they morph into twinspeak, dissecting American culture’s warbling state through the lens of modern men. It’s a topical kaleidoscope, ripped from the recesses of magazines, newspapers, television, science reports or just all-around living. What keeps…
We’re lucky that some of the great American dramas have graced Dallas stages in recent seasons. To Kill a Mockingbird, Inherit the Wind and The Grapes of Wrath all feature leading characters with a conscience, and they explore with great literary style important themes about justice and enlightenment of the…
On these Monday nights, the Hamon Hall turns into a safe place for revealing intimate details and sharing heartwarming or gut-wrenching stories.
The state of Missouri is No. 1 in crystal meth lab accidents. According to comedian and Missouri native Kathleen Madigan (who dares you to Google the stat), it’s basically an affront to the Missouri school system. They just can’t teach science. Rednecks plus chemistry equals a disaster. She would give…
Last night two of our number saw the frankly magnificent Dylan Moran swoop through Dallas. A lot of his set is a stream of consciousness, and so being in Texas, he had some typically European thoughts, served with a dash of surrealism, about our state that we thought were worth…
Master Pancake is an Austin staple, run by former Jeopardy champion, host of KO-OP radio’s Elk Mating Ritual and all-around Chill Dude John Erler. He and his revolving clutch of film mockers occupy the Alamo Drafthouse’s front row to riff on popular movies. They even break the things apart, halting…
Comedian Dylan Moran is a freewheeling delight to behold in person. A veteran of the comic circuit (as he admits, as part of a fantasy sequence, he’d really like to have a job, he’s just never had a real one), he doesn’t seem to have a plan as such. Sure,…
This Friday Whitney Cummings takes the stage at House of Blues on her first tour since launching two sitcoms back in 2011. Though the eponymous Whitney has been cancelled, 2 Broke Girls is still trucking, and Cummings talked to us about being back on the road and the inexplicable flak…
Dylan Moran, the star of the British sitcom Black Books and actor in movies such as Shaun of the Dead, Notting Hill and Run, Fatboy, Run — and who is now writing a pilot for ABC — spoke to Mixmaster about what topics he plans to tackle when he takes…
Plasmatically speaking, let’s give the new musical Fire and Blood, making its debut at Richland College, a B-negative. It’s a big, ambitious mess of a show, with book and lyrics by Richland drama prof Andy Long (who also directed) and music by Dallas composer and musical director Adam C. Wright…
The material has promise, but the production of TeCo Theatrical’s latest at the Bishop Arts Theatre, Black at the Assassination, doesn’t do it any justice. And justice is what this new play by Dallas writers Kyadal Robertson and Camika Spencer is all about. Connected by one event, the assassination of…
This year marks the 75th anniversary of actor, director and noted healthy eater Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. It famously led anxious Americans to believe that aliens were landing and sparked a height of panic and rioting that wouldn’t be seen again until Detroit’s last World…
Depending on your sense of humor and/or level of empathy, you might be amused to learn that a lot of the life and times of the tragic comic figure Karl Welzein, star of the @DadBoner Twitter feed and subject of the humorous journal novel Power Moves, comes from the real…
Sandra Bernhard is an actress, comedian, writer, singer, advocate and in general just kind of a badass bitch. And she knows it. Bernhard’s latest show, The Comedic Prophesies of Sandra Bernhard, is playing at The Kessler at 8 tonight. Tickets range from $25 to $300 and are on sale at…
Comedians don’t like our Texas heat. It melts their humor, and that’s a puddle nobody wants to step in. Now that our city’s cooled off, we’re getting those big names back in heavy rotation. This week’s talent pool is exceptionally strong, so if you like great comedy (nod), here’s six…
When you interview comedian Kathleen Madigan, whose upcoming show at the Majestic happens Friday, there’s no cutting corners. Before making it big, she worked in print journalism for Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. A passion for journalism was lacking, but she could “write a sentence,” so it was something…
