The Frog Prince Halfway through this enchanting performance by the Kathy Burks Theatre of Puppetry Arts, the puppets stop the show. The puppeteers (Douglass Burks, B. Wolf, Sally Fiorello, Patricia Long) act surprised as they remove the black hoods they hide under to manipulate Burks’ intricately painted, handmade rod puppets…
Thursday, March 10 The decline of Atkins and the South Beach Diet has made the world safe for orange juice, grape jelly and pasta–heavy, loaded-with-carbs, need-a-nap-afterward pasta. The new catch phrase is “portion control.” We’ll start that…just as soon as Maggiano’s Little Italy completes its month of dinners/cooking demonstrations called…
The novel Be Cool, written by Elmore Leonard in 1999 while the ink was still wet on the publisher’s advance, existed only because the beloved writer of seedy thrillers and westerns knew it was guaranteed gold–the sequel to the 1991 hit novel Get Shorty that, in 1995, became a hit…
Come this time next year, The Jacket may well occupy the slot in movie discourse that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does now–that of the film that coulda-shoulda-woulda received more Oscar nominations if only it hadn’t come out so early in the year and been forgotten by those with…
Richard Greenberg asks a simple but intriguing question in his play The Violet Hour, now onstage at Dallas Theater Center. Given a peek into the future, would any of us take an existential do-over and alter the decisions we made early in life? Charles Dickens used the same device in…
Leaving Eden SMU’s upper-level drama students glide seamlessly through an evening of six Chekhov stories woven into an abstract, spare narrative on the nature of loneliness and female identity. Director Greg Leaming assembles a strong cast–notably former Walker, Texas Ranger co-star Clarence Gilyard–and takes his sweet time letting us get…
Mission Control Theirs is “the Atari generation.” So begins the press release for the latest show put on by Dallas’ local avant-garde. Mission Control, the third show of Oh6 Art Collective, is by far the best exhibition that this motley group of mostly UTD grads has staged. It helps a…
I must thank my sister for her tip on watching horror movies. Both of us saw some movies when we were too young and have harbored an anxiety about them ever since. Last year I set a goal to overcome my fear of these traumatic flicks. The first challenge was…
Thursday, March 3 Anyone could take the photos that A.B. Wishart does–because he just shoots the world around him, showing details, light, shadow and tiny moments that other people don’t notice. From Dallas highway scenes, shot from a car window, of clouds drawing the eyes up from the ugly skyline,…
Although his upbeat songs and brilliant music career seem the definition of the philosophy “do what you love and success will follow,” Burt Bacharach says that, despite the success he’s achieved through it, writing music is not always fun for him. “Music is what I do, but I am very…
3/4 If the world were a better place, we Irish folk wouldn’t suffer from such stupid stereotypes. Not that other ethnicities don’t suffer from unfair prejudices, but mention the Irish in conversation and you’re not likely to hear a single redeemable response. As far as most Americans are concerned, the…
3/5 The chickweed has sprouted a lovely green in the back yard. The first crabgrass and dandelions are starting to peek out of the soil. Somewhere, under the fetid carpet of unraked leaves and last fall’s acorns, Mother Nature is stirring. Ah, spring. What is it but a time of…
3/3 The great ones need only one name: Cher, Gandhi, Madonna, Britney, Hef. That list also includes MoMa. Officially titled the Museum of Modern Art, New York City’s MoMa is known worldwide by its four-letter nickname, and it recently underwent a meticulous makeover, doubling its capacity while keeping its historically…
3/3 A drag queen in Addison? Who’d a thunk it? WaterTower Theatre is once again trying to get theatergoers out of downtown with its fourth annual Out of the Loop Festival. Considering most theater snobs won’t travel beyond Loop 12 for a show, much less the other side of Belt…
Give Dan Harris, the writer-director of Imaginary Heroes, plenty of credit for boldness and ambition. Not many kids fresh out of Columbia University would have the wherewithal to tackle a complex family-crisis drama with four or five different kinds of trouble running through it and half a dozen crucial minor…
Toward the end of Born Into Brothels, a superb and piercing documentary by directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, a 12-year-old child examines a photograph. It’s beautiful, he says, because it shows us how its subjects live. Yes, they’re very poor, and the shot is hard to look at, because…
Life is short and sweet, savor every minute. So says the message of The Living End, a quartet of charming yet provocative mini-musicals about life and death now on view at Lyric Stage in Irving. No, life stinks, according to the new Risk Theater Initiative show at the Bath House…
The Living End Four musicals in less than two hours. Now that’s entertainment. From a group of composer-lyricists out of a renowned musical theater workshop in New York comes this evening of mini-musicals, two based on famous short stories. Director Cheryl Denson has rounded up a cast of strong singers…
Concentrations 46: Zones of Dissolution Escapism can often provide the most direct path to reality. In his three-room installation, Daniel Roth pops the escape hatch, leading us to a reality that is bifurcated–equal parts fantasy and factuality. Roth works in a variety of media, including drawing, photography, sculpture and architecture,…
In the mid-1980s, Los Angeles’ Getty Museum was on the cusp of acquiring an ancient Greek statue. Using stereo-microscopes, scientists pronounced it the real deal. And without anything more than a cold stare, art experts the world over determined it was a fraud. The controversy over its authenticity, muddied by…
Thursday, February 24 It started innocently enough–watching occasional Great Chefs episodes on PBS. Then the Food Network came along, and we were no longer satisfied with whisks from Target and 30-year-old waffle irons. We wanted the prized KitchenAid mixer, and we wanted all the accessories. Watching Rachel Ray make fresh…
Televisions in bars can be a mixed blessing. A giant-screen TV in a sports bar provides the entertainment (at least until the big game is over). But in smaller lounges and dive bars TVs are a major distraction whether they’re beaming inane MTV programming, reality shows or more sports. As…
