Company Stages Big Move
Kathleen Culebro, who, along with four other Texas Christian University students founded Amphibian Stage Productions in 2000, can be so low-key and understated that it’s sometimes hard to believe that she is an artist in the world of theater, where egos and big-talkers often dominate. “My longtime shyness has been Amphibian’s biggest [...]
Jac Of All Trades
FREUD’S LAST SESSION centers on legendary psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud, who invites a young, little-known professor, C.S. Lewis, to his home in London. Lewis, expecting to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book, soon realizes Freud has a much more significant agenda. On the day England enters World War II, Freud [...]
Playing at Politics
The political rhetoric in the 2008 election was enough to make many Americans roll their eyes or perhaps even take to the blogosphere. In the ever-lengthening election cycle, candidates have made hyperbolic observations about small town America and offered us new words like “refudiate.” For James Venhaus, this was fodder for a new play. In [...]
The Big Show
A new big top production from the internationally-renowned Cirque du Soleil is flying high in downtown Dallas through late October. KOOZA is the first Cirque du Soleil Big Top production to arrive downtown since 2007. KOOZA tells the story of The Innocent, a melancholy loner in search of his place in the world. Since its world [...]
As the Story Unfolds
As magically compelling as the Tony Award-winning play War Horse is to watch, it’s also a fascinating study in narrative evolution. But for acclaimed children’s writer Michael Morpurgo, the man who first set the story down in 1982, that’s just as it should be. “[Stories] are like autumn leaves,” remarks the soft-spoken London native. “Once [...]
A Woman of Substance
Echo Theatre showcases a season of works highlighting prolific dramatist of the English Restoration, Aphra Behn. She may be the opposite of a one-hit wonder – she was someone whose career outshone any one particular work. [...]
The Laugh’s On Them
Improvisational comedy, the funny folks on TV with the super-quick quips doing games that evoke Charades and 20 Questions. Right? Few realize those games are gussied up versions of acting exercises, much less suspect them tied to something as grand as the impulse of life itself [...]
Spec’ing Out a Theater
Dallas City Performance Hall is a 750 seat multi-disciplinary theater that has the ability to become whatever it needs to be on any given night. It can be a symphony hall for a large orchestra or for a chamber group. It can be a wide open stage for dance troupes or an intimate space for [...]
Shakespeare Shakedown
For a playwright from the 16th century, William Shakespeare has a pretty good track record. Theater companies around the world have performed the 37 plays officially attributed to him for more than 400 years, and enthusiasm and appetite for his plays has yet to falter. Nevertheless, the Bard’s relevance to contemporary culture is a question [...]
Review: Jersey Boys
Lexus Broadway Series @ AT&T Performing Arts Center June 12–July 15, 2012 There seem to be an increasing number of musicals, thematically driven by pop and rock concept, like Rain (The Beatles Experience) Moving Out, Rock of Ages, Mamma Mia! …often (but not always) focusing on the portfolio of one particular group. Financially such ventures [...]
