Season Announcement

Big spenders + bigger voices fill Lyric Stage's 2025-26 Dallas season

Rocky Horror Picture Show with Tim Curry

Are you ready to do the Time Warp?

Courtesy photo

For its 2025-26 season, Lyric Stage is pairing a sweet transvestite with Civil War-era sisters, a dance hall hostess with harmonizing ghosts, and a whole bunch of divas with their much-deserved spotlight.

Now in its 32nd season, the nonprofit Lyric Stage is dedicated to the development and preservation of musicals, having produced more than 125 productions, which include 21 world-premiere musicals and two Off-Broadway shows.

Under the helm of newish artistic directors Tricia Guenther and Scott Guenther, four of its current shows will take place in its Lyric Studio Space near the Trinity River, with one at Moody Performance Hall in the Dallas Arts District.

First up (and just in time for Halloween) is The Rocky Horror Show — note the missing "Picture." This is the stage version on which the cult classic movie was later based, but don't worry, audiences are still encouraged to shout at the performers and throw toilet paper and other props.

Sweethearts Brad and Janet, stuck with a flat tire during a storm, discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. As their innocence is lost, Brad and Janet meet a houseful of wild characters, including a rocking biker and a creepy butler. Through elaborate dances and rock songs, Frank-N-Furter unveils his latest creation: a muscular man named “Rocky.” It runs October 10-26, 2025 at Lyric Stage Studio and is not family-friendly.

For the holiday season, Forever Plaid - Plaid Tidings brings Francis, Jinx, Smudge, and Sparky back to Earth on the orders of Rosemary Clooney to put a little harmony into a discordant world.

Stewart Ross' musical is sprinkled with Christmas offerings and audience favorites, like the riotous three-minute-and-eleven-second version of The Ed Sullivan Show, this time, featuring the Rockettes, the Chipmunks, and The Vienna Boys Choir. It runs December 5-21, 2025, at Lyric Stage Studio.

For one night only, the Dallas Divas return just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Showcasing some of the most talented voices in Dallas, singing songs ranging from Broadway to pop, the performance is a Lyric Stage tradition. It is February 11, 2026, at Moody Performance Hall.

Inspired by Federico Fellini’s Night of Cabiria, Sweet Charity explores the turbulent love life of Charity Hope Valentine, a hopelessly romantic but comically unfortunate dance hall hostess in New York City.

With a tuneful, groovy, mid-1960s score by Cy Coleman, sparkling lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and a hilarious book by Neil Simon, Sweet Charity captures all the energy, humor, and heartbreak of Life in the Big City for an unfortunate but irrepressible optimist. The production is the original 1966 Broadway (not the movie version) with such hit songs as “Big Spender,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” “I’m a Brass Band,” and “Baby, Dream Your Dream.” It runs April 17-May 3, 2026, at Lyric Stage Studio.

Closing out the season is Louisa May Alcott's timeless Little Women, with a book by Allan Knee, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, and music by Jason Howland.

The musical follows the adventures of sisters Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy March. Jo is trying to sell her stories for publication, but the publishers are not interested in a woman's creativity. Her friend, Professor Bhaer, tells her that she has to do better and write more from herself. Begrudgingly taking this advice, Jo weaves the story of herself and her sisters and their experience growing up in Civil War America. It runs July 17-August 2, 2026, at Lyric Stage Studio.

Season tickets, which range from $40-$60, are available beginning July 1. Lyric Stage is located at 1170 Quaker St. in Dallas.

All Eyes on Them

Dallas alt hip-hop group wins prestigious Tiny Desk Contest by NPR

Cure for Paranoia/Facebook

As winners of the Tiny Desk Contest, Cure for Paranoia will record their own Tiny Desk concert and go on tour.

Few live recording studios or musical web series have the cultural sway of NPR's Tiny Desk, and a Dallas band is poised to make an impactful debut: Cure For Paranoia, an alternative hip-hop project by rapper Cameron McCloud and producers Tomahawk Jonez and Jay Analo, has won the high-stakes annual Tiny Desk Contest for 2026.

They'll record their official Tiny Desk show "soon," the announcement by NPR says.

Winning the concert also means Cure for Paranoia is going on tour. The only Texas stop will be at Emo's Austin on June 24.

Tiny Desk is known for platforming both niche and majorly successful artists — NPR posted a new Foo Fighters set on YouTube on May 13 — for stripped-down sets that are literally played behind former All Things Considered director Bob Boilen's old desk. (Fun fact for Texans: Tiny Desk was created because folk artist Laura Gibson was disappointed with the sound at her South by Southwest show in Austin in 2008, and she wanted a redo.)

Most artists who appear on Tiny Desk more than 15 years later are already well-known, at least in their specific circles. But the Tiny Desk Contest, which launched in 2015, helps a growing group of newer, unsigned artists get their foot in the door. Contestants record one video of them performing a single song behind a desk, and a jury of radio staff and musicians chooses their favorite.

In their audition video, Cure for Paranoia gathered 11 musicians around a truly tiny desk and in front of downtown Dallas' iconic gigantic eyeball sculpture. They played the song "No Brainer," a frenetic track that starts with clever boasts and becomes a criticism of racism in the United States.

McCloud, a pre-school teacher, is known independently of Cure for Paranoia for rapping to his social media following about politics and current events. Some of those lyrics made it into "No Brainer." He says he started the group because he found that music was more helpful than medication for coping with bipolar depression and paranoid schizophrenia.

Alex Marrero, host of the Austin-based KUTX show Horizontes, was one of the judges this year. He was impressed with the visuals in Cure for Paranoia's audition.

“When this popped up, I immediately felt something different," he wrote in a blurb for the announcement. "It just jumped out. The visuals were super cool and creative, BUT I could still totally envision them bringing the heat behind the Desk.”

Madison McFerrin, jazz vocalist and daughter of the famous singer Bobby McFerrin, was one of the musical judges.

"Cure For Paranoia’s energy is infectious, fresh and distinctly theirs — exactly what you want in a Contest winner!" she wrote.

McCloud's post on Instagram announcing the group's win has only been up for three hours at the time of this article's publication, and it already has more than 8,000 likes. The YouTube audition has garnered 74,000 views.

music music video npr radio live music concerts