Weekend Event Planner

These are the 11 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Fan Expo Dallas will take place at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, June 17-19.

Photo courtesy of Fan Expo Dallas

This weekend in and around Dallas will start with a focus on local theater, with two companies opening new productions, move on to a big convention with a ton of celebrities, and wind up with a lot of comedy, as four big name comedians and one notable host will perform. There's also a Pride celebration, a symphonic tribute to a popular singer, and a fun dance production.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, June 16

Kitchen Dog Theater presents New Works Festival
After a week's delay due to COVID precautions, Kitchen Dog Theater will unveil High Five as the centerpiece production of their New Works Festival. The world premiere production, running through June 26, is a hilarious and heartfelt evening of five short plays that each shine a spotlight on one of the five senses: taste, touch, vision, hearing, and smell. Also starting this weekend is the Staged Reading Series, which will be "mixtape" of festivals past, featuring staged readings of the hottest new plays around. There will be two readings on Saturday, followed by another on June 22 and two more on June 25. All productions are at Trinity River Arts Center.

Shakespeare Dallas presents A Midsummer Night's Dream
As part of their annual Shakespeare in the Park series, Shakespeare Dallas presents A Midsummer Night's Dream. Four Athenians run through the forest pursuing each other while Puck, a mischievous fairy, helps his master play a trick on the fairy queen. A story of order and disorder, reality and appearance, and love and marriage. The production, playing at Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre through July 23, will play in repertory with The Tempest, opening on June 22.

Friday, June 17

Fan Expo Dallas
Fan Expo Dallas will present three days of events, family-friendly attractions, and celebrities at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, where fans can experience the ultimate playground for comics, sci-fi, horror, anime, and gaming. Celebrity guests scheduled to appear include Nathan Fillion; Brendan Fraser; Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd from Lord of the Rings; Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, and other stars of Dexter; Brent Spiner and Levar Burton from Star Trek: The Next Generation; and more. The event goes on through Sunday.

Dallas Arts District presents Pride Block Party
Dallas Arts District, collaborating with the Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, and Crow Museum of Asian Art of the University of Texas at Dallas, will present the fifth annual Dallas Arts District Pride Block Party in celebration of national LGBTQ+ Pride Month. The inclusive event will feature pride-themed tours, performances, film screenings, drag artists, fashion shows, gourmet food-fare, a community mural, family-friendly activities, and more.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Paul Simon Songbook
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra will present a symphonic tribute to Paul Simon’s work in Simon and Garfunkel as well as the classic solo albums Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints. Audiences can sing along to favorites such as “Mrs. Robinson,” “Cecilia,” “The Sounds of Silence,” “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and more. The concert, conducted by Jeff Tyzik, will have three performances through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Bandan Koro African Drum and Dance Ensemble presents Griots: Celebrating a Compilation of Dallas’ Cultural Storytellers of the African Diaspora
The Bandan Koro African Drum and Dance Ensemble will pay homage to an array of Dallas’ key artistic and cultural storytellers such as Erykah Badu, Vicki Meek, Michelle Gibson, Baba Hassan, the late Afiah Bey, Bandon Koro’s own Tony Browne and Nana Kweku, and more. Through sensory immersion in traditional West African drum, dance, cultural ceremonies, and a spectrum of inventive artistic expressions, they will honor, highlight and navigate the pathways of cultural lineage to keep the history of the African Diaspora in the Dallas-Fort Worth area everlasting. The production, part of AT&T Performing Arts Center's Elevator Project, will be at Annette Strauss Square.

Saturday, June 18

Hyena's presents Bobcat Goldthwait
Bobcat Goldthwait is no stranger to entertainment and is one of the most recognizable comedians in show business today. His stand up features hilarious riffs on politics, divorce, going broke, and his career as a writer and director of film. His show is a wild ride of fun finding the funny no matter what the situation. He'll perform twice on Saturday at Hyena's Comedy Club in Dallas.

Marlon Wayans: Microphone Fiend Tour
Comedian Marlon Wayans is also an actor, producer, writer, and director who's been entertaining fans for decades, including In Living Color, The Wayans Bros., Scary Movie, and more. His first-ever comedy special, Woke-ish, premiered on Netflix in 2018, and he can also be seen in the 2019 Netflix movie, Sextuplets. He'll perform for one night only at Majestic Theatre.

Fred Armisen: Comedy For Musicians But Everyone is Welcome with Def Rain
Comedian Fred Armisen is his own kind of performer, bringing a unique quirkiness to his time on Saturday Night Live, the beloved sketch show Portlandia, and elsewhere. His show, Comedy For Musicians But Everyone is Welcome, finds him utilizing his two strongest skills (he was the bandleader/drummer for Late Night with Seth Meyers for a while). He'll be joined at The Factory in Deep Ellum by fellow musician Def Rain.

Sunday, June 19

Patton Oswalt: "Who's Ready to Laugh?"
Patton Oswalt is a comedian whose size belies his impact on the entertainment world. He's had award-winning comedy specials, many memorable film roles, and guest appearances on TV shows like Parks and Recreation. He recently created M.O.D.O.K., the new Marvel stop-motion animated adult comedy series and released the Netflix special, I Love Everything, in 2020. Four months after delaying the date due to injury, he'll perform a night of stand-up comedy at Majestic Theatre.

Nick Cannon presents Wild ‘N Out Live Tour
Nick Cannon's Wild ‘N Out Live Tour brings Cannon’s MTV series to the road, mixing up comedy, variety, and game show elements all in one for fans of the improv/competition show. Cannon and the Wild ‘N Out cast members will also invite members of the audience to join them for Wild 'N Out’s most popular games. The event takes place at Dos Equis Pavilion.

Fred Armisen will perform at The Factory in Deep Ellum on June 18.

Fred Armisen in Fred Armisen: Standup For Drummers on Netflix

Photo by David Moir

Fred Armisen will perform at The Factory in Deep Ellum on June 18.

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Movie Review

New film I Want Your Sex somehow makes kinky activity boring

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut - Three Bewildered People in the Night - in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest - his first film in 12 years - he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention - and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.