Theater Critic Picks

These are the 10 can't-miss shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for June

Dallas actors Bob Hess and Sally Vahle are coming to you, via the UK, in Dear Donald/Dear Hillary.

Photo by Noah Sargent

Grab your beach blankets, grab your lawn chairs, charge your phone, fire up the TV, or just get ready to sit in an air-conditioned theater space, because summer theater has started to arrive.

And it comes in so many forms this month: live and outdoors, pre-recorded, and even on TikTok. And, of course, there's plenty of Shakespeare.

In order of start date, here are 10 local shows to watch this month:

Hedda Gabler
Undermain Theatre, streaming through June 13
Blake Hackler adapted and directed this version of Ibsen's masterpiece, which tells the story of an extraordinary woman trapped in a conventional life of secrets and lies that fuel her own personal explosion. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased here.

Dear Donald/Dear Hillary (Their Secret Correspondence)
Elaine Liner, streaming through June 27
Dallas playwright (and former theater critic) Liner penned this two-actor play as a reaction to the 2016 election, imagining if the two presidential candidates had been secret pen pals. Local luminaries Bob Hess and Sally Vahle star with direction by Noah Sargent. It was filmed at a Dallas theater as part of the lineup for the UK's Brighton Fringe (but can be viewed from anywhere). Tickets are £12 and can be purchased here.

Hamlet Project
Shakespeare Dallas, June 3-13
This one-person interpretation of Hamlet features two different actors every night, who will show you what's so rotten in Denmark in about 90 minutes using two different scripts written by Migdalia Cruz and Erik Ehn, that the actors won't see until showtime (a la White Rabbit Red Rabbit).

The Music Man
Theatre Three, June 3-July 4
Director Joel Ferrell and music director Vonda K. Bowling have reimagined Meredith Willson's classic musical about a con man who turns one town upside down into a boutique, outdoor, touring production. Kyle Igneczi leads a 10-person cast across three venues: outside the Coppell Senior Center, Union Coffee Shop, and the Texas Discovery Gardens.

Hammer Toe and The Adventures of Ability-Lad and Genius-Lass
Pegasus Theatre, streaming June 4-20
As part of its Fresh Reads program, Pegasus is streaming two new superhero-themed comedies for $10 each. The first, written by Tammy Green and directed by Ben Shroth, follows an incapacitated Thor's cousin Freya as she goes on an epic adventure. The second, written by Eric Palmer and directed by Joey Dietz, is set in Cityopolis, where the police commissioner and mayor have made all crime illegal — and put its two superheroes out of the job. Buy on-demand streaming access to The Adventures of... here, and Hammer Toe here.

23rd Annual New Works Festival
Kitchen Dog Theater, online June 4-26
To celebrate its 30th anniversary season, Kitchen Dog Theater has transformed its NWF Staged Reading Series into the New Works Festival Commission Series – In the Works. This year’s four commissioned BIPOC playwrights include Ruben Carrazana (Dallas), Tara Moses (Seminole Nation, Oklahoma), Erin Malone Tuner (Dallas), and Haygen-Brice Walker (Philadelphia). A full lineup for the festival, which includes the 20th year of PUP Fest, can be found here.

Much Ado About Nothing
The Classics Theatre Project, June 9-27
A rad 1990s nostalgia-filled adaptation of William Shakespeare's comedy is coming to the lawn at Addison Conference and Theatre Center, so bring your sand chairs and picnic blankets. When the AA baseball team the Aragon Soldiers arrives in town, its aces — the dashing Claudio and fast-talking Benedick — take their at-bats with the lovely Hero and fierce Beatrice. Claudio and Hero quickly fall in love, but Benedick and Beatrice (both sworn singles) match only wits. Meanwhile, the dastardly Don John threatens to destroy both couples in this fresh take on William Shakespeare's crowd-pleasing tale of outrageous characters, pranks, mistaken identities, and new love.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare Everywhere, June 14 & 21
Some of DFW theater's finest are assembling to put on this magical tale from the Bard, which includes fairies, love spells, and even some shape-shifting. The first performance is at Klyde Warren Park and the second is at Deep Ellum Art Co.

A Solitary Man: The Music of Neil Diamond
Casa Mañana, June 15-26
Hamilton's Darnell Abraham and American Idol winner Nick Fradiani star in this concert at the Reid Cabaret Theatre, which spans everything from "Sweet Caroline" to "America" while intertwining stories about one of the best-selling musicians of all time.

Turkey and Bones and Eating and We Liked It
Leos Ensemble Theatre, online June 24-onward
Devising with actors in Texas and New Jersey, director Kelli J. Howard has reimagined Gertrude Stein’s 1916 text for the newest social media app: TikTok. Leos Ensemble is the first theater group in the U.S., if not the world, to conceive a theater show specifically for this platform, where the interaction with TikTok content is part of the show itself. You can view it online here, or watch a recorded version on YouTube and Instagram.

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GIFTED AND TALENTED

SMU historian Ariel Ron wins prestigious $800k MacArthur genius grant

Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

SMU historian Ariel Ron will receive $800,000 — no strings attached.

Three Texans have been named 2026 MacArthur Fellows, one of the most prestigious honors in the U.S. for artists, scientists, and scholars. Among them is Dallas historian and author Ariel Ron, who directs the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.

San Antonio's Vincent Valdez and San Marcos-based anthropologist Kate Spradley were also on the 2026 list of 20 recipients of the “genius grants” given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Each fellow will receive $800,000 over five years, with no strings attached.

Individuals do not apply for the honor. The grants are awarded via a confidential, multi-step process managed by the foundation, and many recipients express surprise that they were considered for the fellowship.

“While individuals will have a track record of significant achievement, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award — it is an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential,” wrote MacArthur on its website. “The Fellows Program is proactively working to foster and enable innovative, imaginative, and ground-breaking ideas, thinking, and strategies.”

Ron's research focuses on how Northern agriculture shaped economic growth and federal power in 19th-century America. Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic, his 2020 book, challenges the notion of an industrial North versus an agrarian South.

"My approach is to identify and look carefully at things that everyone knows to be important but are somehow too obvious-seeming to look at closely," Ron says in a video on the MacArthur Foundation's website. "If you scratch the surface a little bit, you discover that there are a lot of interesting things that might change the way we think about bigger questions."

Valdez, who splits his time between San Antonio and Houston, is known for large, hyperrealistic drawings and paintings of Mexican American life. More recently, he has turned his focus to broader sociopolitical issues in works like The Strangest Fruit, a series of paintings confronting the lynching of Latinos.

At Texas State University in San Marcos, forensic anthropologist Spradley founded Operation Identification in 2013 — a program that identifies and repatriates the remains of migrants who died along the Texas-Mexico border. She is also a cofounder of the Forensic Border Coalition, which pushes for policy changes at the local and national levels. Spradley is the school’s first MacArthur Fellow.

A full list of the 2026 MacArthur Fellows can be found online.

arts grants macarthur grants southern methodist university visual arts