Things have calmed down a bit from last month, so if you're heading out of town on vacation, you needn't feel quite so guilty about missing all the theatrics Dallas and Fort Worth have to offer. But if you're still here, put these shows on your calendar and experience something new and exciting.
Here are the 10 shows to see in order by start date:
Sex Ed
Cry Havoc Theater Company, July 3-14
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, conversations about sexual impropriety are front and center in our collective consciousness. Yet we seem to have collective amnesia when it comes to our own teenage years and the lack of honest, accurate information we received about our bodies. Cry Havoc Theater Company's devised work discusses the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees ... and how "the talk" has become so politically divisive in our culture.
Festival of Independent Theatres
July 12-August 3
Founded in 1998 in an effort to aid local theater companies without a permanent performance space, this festival presents eight one-act shows, paired in two-show blocks and performed in rotating repertory. There will also be two brand new cabaret performances by two divas of the Dallas music scene, Jodi Crawford Wright and Kathryn Taylor Rose.
Gutenberg! The Musical!
Amphibian Stage Productions, July 12-August 18
Anthony King and Scott Brown's two-man musical spoof follows a pair of aspiring playwrights who perform a backers' audition for their new project: a big, splashy musical about printing press inventor Johann Gutenberg. With an unending supply of enthusiasm, Bud and Doug sing all the songs and play all the parts in their historical epic, with the hope that one of the producers in attendance will give them a Broadway contract — fulfilling their ill-advised dreams.
Hello, Dolly!
Dallas Summer Musicals, July 17-28
The bold and enchanting Dolly Gallagher Levi is a widow, matchmaker, and professional meddler. When she decides the next match she needs to make is for herself, she weaves a web of romantic complications for her newest client, the cantankerous "half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder, his two clerks, a pretty hat maker, and her assistant. Fort Worth native and Tony winner Betty Buckley comes home to star in this national tour.
Crossing the Line
Kitchen Dog Theater and Cry Havoc Theater Company, July 18-August 4
Based on interviews conducted in Dallas, via Skype, and at the border, this original documentary-style performance focuses on the immigration debate and the situation at the border.
Godspell
WaterTower Theatre, July 18-28
Stephen Schwartz’s beloved musical is inspired by parables taken from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The fun, modern take on classic stories is mixed with a vibrant score of pop, folk, and gospel music.
A Bronx Tale
Broadway at the Bass, July 23-28
Broadway's hit crowd-pleaser based on the one-man-show by Chazz Palminteri takes you to the stoops of the Bronx in the 1960s, where a young man is caught between the father he loves and the mob boss he'd love to be.
Lungs
Stage West, July 25-August 18
The world is getting hotter, there's unrest overseas — actually, the seas themselves aren't very calm either — and in an IKEA, a man suggests to his partner that they should have a child. What if it grows up to solve the world's problems? What if it becomes a mass murderer? What about its carbon footprint? They leave with nothing they went in for in Duncan Macmillan's play, but come out with a full set of self-assembly dilemmas that they spend a life cycle trying to construct.
John Leguizamo: Latin History For Morons
AT&T Performing Arts Center, July 26
Inspired by the near total absence of Latinos from John Leguizamo's son's American history books, this one-man show take audiences on an outrageously funny, frenzied search to find a Latin hero for a school history project. From a mad recap of the Aztec empire to stories of unknown Latin patriots of the Revolutionary War and beyond, Leguizamo breaks down the 3,000 years between the Mayans and Pitbull into 110 irreverent and uncensored minutes above and beyond his unique style.
Sistas the Musical
Jubilee Theatre, July 26-August 25
After a matriarch's death, the women in the family clean Grandma's attic and find love and old memories packed away, underscored by hit tunes that trace the history of black women from the trials of the 1930s through the Girl Groups of the '60s to the empowerment of the '90s.
Cry Havoc Theatre Company has devised a show called Sex Ed.
Cliburn Junior 2023 winner Seokyoung Hong (center) with second-place Yifan Wu (left), and third-place Jan Schulmeister. Photo by Ralph Lauer 
Clayton Stephenson competed in the 2015 Cliburn Junior Competition and returned for the 2022 Cliburn International Competition, where he was a finalist. Photo courtesy of The Cliburn 
Italian pianist and Cliburn alum Alessandro Deljavan will serve on the jury. Photo courtesy of Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth