Best Theater Director 2011 | Joel Ferrell | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Theater Director

Joel Ferrell

Dallas actors don't just love working for director-choreographer Joel Ferrell, they worship the guy. With back-to-back productions this year at Dallas Theater Center, the Horton Foote play Dividing the Estate, followed by the super-sexy staging of the musical Cabaret, Ferrell, a resident artist at DTC, showed what he can do with big shows on a big stage. For the Foote, he turned the Wyly Theatre space into the crumbling mansion of a fearsome Texas family down on their finances. For Cabaret, the audience, seated at café tables with booze service, became patrons of the show's louche Kit-Kat Klub in 1930s Berlin. Able to draw career-best performances from actors and to surprise the most jaded audience members with provocative ideas, Ferrell is taking local theater in all the right directions.

Best Alternative to Summer Homework

Kids Camps at Oil & Cotton

At the risk of sounding old, back in our day, summer vacation meant no school. Meaning no homework. Meaning no summer reading lists, summer "mindwork" or whatever other euphemism teachers want to come up with for giving kids a bunch of busywork meant to keep their minds from atrophying over the summer but which in practice is just something that parents nag their kids about all summer, until the weekend before school starts up again, at which point the kids do the most half-assed job imaginable at rushing through a stack of paperwork. If only teachers would just let kids be kids during the summer — or have them exercise their creativity at art classes like Oil & Cotton's. Ranging from $10 hourlong craft classes to multiweek advanced sketching classes to four-day songwriting workshops, these instructional camps give kids something to look forward to while also keeping them from going brain-dead in front of the tube.

Best Reason to Stay Up Late

Late Nights at the DMA

The Dallas Museum of Art is hardly the first museum in the world to realize that people might rather spend a Friday night in the company of its collection than alongside the Drunky McDrunkerson set, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that they've taken the idea and truly embraced it. Every third Friday of the month, the museum bucks its self-inflicted 5 p.m. close time and entertains the masses until midnight. And we really do meant "entertain." Beyond the art, the museum comes alive with all sorts of events during these extended hours — there are DJs, tapas, movie screenings, live music performances (from the likes, even, of The Polyphonic Spree), yoga classes and guided tours. And it doesn't cost you a dime more than a regular trip here would: The same $10 fee you pay for admission during the daytime applies here; so, too, does the fact that children younger than 12 get in for free. It's a great family-friendly time — if your family can make it that late. If not? Well, it's a good date spot too.

Best Local Music Festival

Homegrown Music & Art Festival

The second annual Homegrown Music & Arts Festival saw downtown's Main Street Garden Park full of music fans gathered to hear a uniquely curated concert. Each band that performed had at least one thing in common — they all have strong North Texas ties. From Neon Indian and School of Seven Bells, whose members started here in town, to The O's and Seryn, who are still hanging around Dallas, the festival's lineup served as a showcase for the cream of the local crop. And 2011's installment went over quite well, with attendance more than twice that of 2010's inaugural festival.

Best TV News Show

Inside Texas Politics

It is the only news program on the local airwaves dedicated solely to, you know, issues — current affairs, as the old people say, shit that matters. Politicos stop to stump; you don't run for mayor in Dallas, Fort Worth or points in between without moving into the WFAA studios in Victory Park, otherwise a ghost town. And columnists slink by to opine; more Bud Kennedy, por favor? Brad Watson knows what he's talking about too, which always helps. Because most of the time, his guests don't seem all that sure. You know who else is pretty good? Gromer Jeffers, who's a little more press the meat than Meet the Press, but it'll do. But would it kill you to book Schutze? Scared, aren't you, Channel 8? Gordon Keith's about as cutting as your edge can handle. Admit it. Well, that's OK, then.

Best Radio Station

KNON-FM 89.3

There were a few instrumental voices in our young adulthood: George Gimarc on KZEW, Liza Richardson and Chris Douridas on KERA, Ron Chapman on KVIL and The Voice of the People, otherwise known as KNON since its sign-on July 30, 1983. (Kids today don't have a midnight-Saturday Pajama Party to attend each week, and that's the real problem with kids today.) The station always was, and will forever remain, a wonderfully, willfully eclectic hodgepodge of noise — rockabilly, metal (and, like, some out-there shit), blues, jazz, country, Tejano, Native-American, polka, Jewish ... the whole "sonic burrito," as Weird Warren would say. Something for everyone. No, like, literally. Makes KXT sound like KZPS. No — KVIL, circa 1982.

Best Radio DJ

Big Gus

We will forever have a soft spot for the late-night disc jockey, The Midnight Hour-man who rocks us to not-sleep while we polish off this one last drink and finish off this one last smoke and try like hell to nod off but just can't so you might as well play some Sonny James. Big Gus hosts Lonestar Underground, which is already the best six hours of music (real goddamned country) on local radio in a single stretch. He doesn't say much (the best ones never do), and when he does he drawls us through the wee small hours in a raspy how-y'all-doin' that reminds us to tump the ashtray and crack another cold one (sponsored by Shiner!) and that tonight might be the night when we see the sunrise if we're lucky.

Best Radio Talk Show

The Janine Turner Show

Really, you have not celebrated July Fourth Weekend till you've spent a Saturday night by the radio listening to Maggie from Northern Exposure read from the Declaration of Independence before welcoming on to the show Ann Coulter and Gary Sinise. "Gather family, gather friends," she beckoned on that magical eve, before y'all-ing her way through the doc while bells of freedom chimed in the background. Best Not Christmas Eve Ever! She's so right she's around the bend and says things like "I'm a Texan, but I'm also an American" and considers herself a Constitutional historian ("History is fascinating," she once said) and welcomes the likes of Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain and Peter Guber — a regular Tom Snyder, ladies and gentlemen. Like recent guest Kinky Friedman told her, when speaking of Governor Rick Perry and his presidential run, "You don't know where greatness will come from." Here, it comes from here.

Best Film Advocates

Aviation Cinemas Inc.

It hasn't been a long time since Aviation Cinemas took flight. In 2010, the group comprising Eric Steele, Jason Reimer and Adam Donaghey took over operations at Oak Cliff's newly reopened Texas Theatre. In doing so, the trio has brought life to the once-abandoned cinema by screening a wide variety of indie movies, documentaries and decades-old television series that otherwise would not have been seen in Dallas. Their love of film doesn't end with The Texas Theatre; each member has worked in film as an actor, producer or composer.

Best Filmmaker

Jun Kang at YouPlusDallas

Jun Kang is one of the videographers over at YouPlusDallas, and his work can be seen all over the website, where he's helped shoot FC Dallas games, chefs and food at local restaurants and even the Dallas Observer Music Award Showcases. His best work, though, takes place in the beautiful short films he's created, which have included several Dallas landmarks. In the wordless A Christmas Tale, Kang highlights the famous Neiman Marcus window displays and the Children's Medical Center Holiday Parade. He shot Greenwood Cemetery in the historic cemetery of the same name. Each of his films tells a story and explores a deeper meaning while using Dallas as the backdrop.

Best Of Dallas®

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