With its devotion to producing American musicals the way their writers and composers intended — full orchestra, full dance numbers, big chorus and big voices — Steven Jones' Lyric Stage in Irving is starting to get the national attention it deserves. Composer Charles Strouse, in his 80s, came to see Lyric's versions of his shows Bye Bye Birdie and Rags (and he loved them). The Rodgers and Hammerstein estate helped with research for this year's magnificent staging of Oklahoma!, which used original orchestrations and added back several numbers usually cut for time. The lavishly produced three-hour show was directed by Dallas' Cheryl Denson, with the 40-piece pit orchestra directed by Jay Dias. Nobody's done an Oklahoma! this size for decades, including the recent revivals in London and New York. Lyric's cast was young and sexy; the singing and dancing sublime. Oh, what a beautiful evening.

Dallas actor and director Jeff Swearingen has created a small but exciting theater company for kids up in Plano. They do plays, musicals and short films, sometimes all in one production, on shoestring budgets. Best of all, he isn't teaching his young thesps the hammy habits some kiddie theaters inflict. Swearingen's actually getting subtle, intensely interesting performances out of very young beginners. His production of Matt Lyle's comedy The Chicken Who Wasn't Chicken made brilliant use of simple props and costumes, but also included impressively done film sequences placing barnyard characters into famous movie scenes. Cute kids dressed as chickens doing dialogue from Gone with the Wind and The Godfather is just downright genius. His adaptation of The Little Prince was another multimedia triumph. This company's latest is an all child-and-teen production of the musical Man of La Mancha. Keep dreaming impossible dreams, Mr. Swearingen. You're doing amazing work.

First, let's get one thing out of the way: Follow Brett Shipp on Twitter and you'll find him to be whiny, self-righteous and enamored with Brett Shipp. That said, the man — not to mention his amusingly large eyebrows — makes great television. In 17 years as an investigative reporter at WFAA, he's broken a ridiculously impressive list of stories and won a slew of awards for his reporting. What makes him truly great, though, is his uncanny knack for provocation. No one else in local journalism could get punched by County Commissioner John Wiley Price, chased across several lanes of traffic by Deion Sanders' football team and get it all on tape for the nightly newscast. The man is an institution.

It had us at the opening theme music. As the camera swooped in for its first shot of Southfork Ranch and then the rising towers of downtown Dallas, we were happy to go along for the ride — again — with the feuding Ewings. The new Dallas series on cable's TNT has sucked us right back into its vortex of sex and villainy with its next generation of young millionaires: John Ross (played by Josh Henderson) and Christopher (Jesse Metcalf). They're still fighting about fossil fuels. Only this time, the hero, Christopher, is the environmental crusader; John Ross is the fracking evildoer. Looming over all the plot twists, as usual, is Dallas' eyebrow-twitching Lord Voldemort, J.R., played as ever by Larry Hagman, who grows younger and more amusingly maniacal each week. Brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy, television's greatest whisper-actor) is still trying to save Southfork from developers. J.R.'s ex-wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) is off the sauce and into politics. She may be the next governor of Texas. That's all fine by us. After a 21-year break, Dallas has roared back to life and we approve. New episodes start up again in January.

Dad Barry and daughter Barrett Nash have each accomplished something special as actors: They've both starred in one-person shows on Dallas stages, giving gripping performances all by themselves. Barry Nash played the title role in Bob Birdnow's Remarkable Tale of Human Survival and the Transcendence of Self at Second Thought Theatre (after debuting the piece by Eric Steele at the 2011 Festival of Independent Theatres). He's repeated the role, about a pilot who survives a crash that kills his best friends, in Steele's film version, now in production. Barry's daughter Barrett wowed FIT audiences this summer in the one-woman play My Name Is Rachel Corrie, playing an idealistic peace activist who loses her life in a protest in Gaza. Holding an audience's gaze for an hour of live theater is no easy feat. Making them love you is a gift. And there's something about the acting Nashes that simply commands your attention and welcomes your embrace.

Matthew Posey's tiny storefront by Fair Park showcases his brilliant, always shockingly original productions of plays and musicals. This year audiences laughed at The Butcher, a play starring the puppet-corpse of a dead pig, and they shuddered at the musical Mean, about the meeting of Charlie Manson and Tex Watson. You could laugh and cry at Morphing, Posey's multimedia reconstruction of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. He also wrote bio-plays about Frida Kahlo and Henry Miller. You never know what Posey and his "Ochre House Boys" will come up with next, but it's a good bet it'll be something you've never seen before but won't soon forget.

The art of the album has largely been lost as attention spans dwindle and quantity trumps quality, at least in terms of how we absorb music these days. Dallas tape and vinyl label Pour le Corps is letting their aesthetic flag fly, however. Marjorie Owens and Sean French have an eye for detail and theme within each of their limited-run experimental and psych releases. Remember when you could tell it was an SST album by just looking at the cover? That applies here, too.

The Flaming Lips and Erykah Badu used Yes Go's Oak Cliff space to film their controversial video earlier this year, but the production company has been heeding their eponymous mantra to create music videos, ads and short films way before that minor dustup. Its attendant space, El Sibil, has also been known to throw some killer late-night parties.

Bands come and go, but this Denton noise-rock quartet seemed to embody a period in Denton music that was muscular, primitive and raw. For close to a decade, the group put forth an almost perfect catalog, and the live shows reflected that muscle. Record Hop singer-guitarist Ashley Cromeens went on to co-front hip-hop collective Neeks, though, so all is not lost.

We didn't get an Electric Daisy Carnival this year, but we had a slew of smaller-scale electronic music festivals come through Dallas. Meltdown, held out in Grand Prairie at QuikTrip Park, was sort of the unofficial start of summer, with a nice mix of local and national DJs. They even had noise complaints from the neighbors, because their bass was just too damn loud. That's the spirit.