As museums today compete for social media attention, Dallas Contemporary currently finds itself pulling ahead of the pack thanks in no small part to Paola Pivi’s Ma’am (on view through August 21).
In Dallas, a generation of young playwrights is beginning to flex dramatic muscle in pursuit of social change, pushing their work past the impulse to create art for art’s sake.
“People ask me all the time why I don’t just make a painting or a digital print,” says screen print artist Jeffrey Dell, “And the answer is simply, that’s not what I do.”
“Let me tell you a little story about August Wilson,” says Tre Garrett, Artistic Director of Fort Worth’s Jubilee Theatre, with a smile on his face I can hear through the phone.
Dallas struggles with its identity. If the three big cities of Texas were familial stereotypes, Dallas would be the middle child, stuck between its classy older sibling, Houston, and the cool, do-no-wrong youngest sibling, Austin.
The Pico-Union barrio in Los Angeles may seem a far cry from Sophocles’ Ancient Greece, but in Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus el Rey, the classic tragedy plays out on the streets.
