Weekend Event Planner

These are the 10 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

This weekend around Dallas is arts heavy, with five separate theater productions — mostly from local companies — along with an art scavenger hunt, the closing of two art exhibitions, and the start of a month-long chamber music festival. On the larger scale is the return of a pro basketball league and a rising country music star.

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, July 7

Eisemann Center for Performing Arts presents The Secret Comedy of Women
The Secret Comedy of Women celebrates the joys of the journey from girlhood to womanhood. An immersive theatrical experience that rejoices in the challenges of being a woman — from boys to bras and pantyhose to menopause — this two-woman show explores the universal female experience through a rollicking spectacle of sweetly sharp comedy, songs, dances, stories, and spontaneous moments of discovery that all women share. The production will run through July 31 at Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts in Richardson.

Theatre Three presents Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(UPDATE: Performances will now start on July 9.)
It's been quite the odyssey for Theatre Three trying to get their latest production to the public. Originally scheduled to start on June 9, it has been delayed due to demands by the city over recent renovations to the theater. They're hopeful they'll finally get to show Edward Albee’s escalating, perversely erotic dance of booze, anger, and resentment in which an older couple draws a younger couple into their bitter and frustrated marital love-hate ambivalence. The show, which is now pay-what-you-can for all tickets, will have eight performances through July 17.

Friday, July 8

Big3 3-on-3 Basketball League
It got lost in the shuffle of the Fourth of July weekend, but the Big3 Basketball League has returned to the area, setting up camp at Comerica Center in Frisco for the next month. Created in part by rapper/actor Ice Cube, the Big3 is a league that features fast-paced and interactive games, bringing fans an up-close and personal look at NBA Hall of Fame players; former Dallas Mavericks; Nancy Lieberman coaching her own son, T.J. Cline, and more. There will be games on both Friday and Sunday, and then more games every weekend through August 7.

Parker McCollum in concert
Country singer and Texas native Parker McCollum has been a fixture on the local festival scene since releasing his debut album in 2015, but in 2021 he skipped over all the smaller venues in the area and went straight to Dos Equis Pavilion, where he'll return on Friday. His 2021 album, Gold Chain Cowboy, made the top 10 on the Billboard Country charts, and with a couple of top 10 hits, the future seems bright for the Texas native.

Richardson Theatre Centre presents Plaza Suite
Plaza Suite is an evening of three one-acts set in the Plaza Hotel. In Visitor from Mamaroneck, a middle-aged married couple tries to rekindle their dying spark. In Visitor from Hollywood, a film producer invites his childhood sweetheart to a hotel for sex. In Visitor from Forest Hills, a bride has locked herself in the bathroom on her wedding day, with her parents desperate to get her out. The production will run through July 24 at Richardson Theatre Centre.

Dallas Theater Center presents The Odyssey
Inspired by the historical pageantry movement of the early 1900s — known for blending mass spectacle with community engagement — this final work in deBessonet and Almond’s grand trilogy reimagines the Greek epic with Public Works’ signature blend of professional actors, community members, and special guests. The man-eating Cyclops, a sorceress that turns sailors to beasts, and the deadly sweet song of the Sirens explode onto the stage with spectacular numbers in this joyful, larger-than-life musical about finding your way home — no matter where fate may lead you. There will be four performances through Sunday at Wyly Theatre; for anyone who can't get into the free shows, the production will be recorded and streamed for free at a later date.

Saturday, July 9

AURORA presents Art Quest
Art Quest is a month-long public art discovery program designed to connect diverse communities with regional artists in unexpected ways. It will feature a game element in which a different piece of art commissioned by AURORA will be placed at a new secret outdoor location on a weekly basis, with the clues for finding the hidden artwork revealed each Saturday. Anyone interested in participating in Art Quest should follow @dallasAURORA and #AuroraArtQuest on Instagram, subscribe to AURORA’s newsletter, and check the AURORA Instagram feed every Saturday morning for clues to find the artwork at the given location. There will be different events every Saturday through August 6.

Cara Mía Theatre presents Teatro en Fuga Festival
Cara Mía Theatre's Teatro en Fuga Festival comes to an end with Tomás Ayala-Torres’s new translation of Yanga by Mexican playwright Jaime Chabaud. This new play is inspired by the real-life story of Gaspar Yanga, who led a slave revolt and eventually negotiated an independent territory with the Spanish crown less than 100 years after the arrival of Hernán Cortés in Mexico. Yanga is presented in partnership with the Latino Arts Project and the African-American Museum’s visual arts exhibition, "Yanga: Journeys to Freedom." The performance will be at Latino Cultural Center.

Sunday, July 10

Dallas Museum of Art exhibition closings
The Dallas Museum of Art will close two exhibitions on Sunday. "Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia" features works from the Museum’s collection that chart the significant innovations in painting, sculpture, and performance that shaped artistic production in the Americas and East Asia in the mid-20th century. Bosco Sodi: "La fuerza del Destino" features approximately 30 large-scale spherical and rectangular sculptures by Sodi installed in the Museum’s Sculpture Garden. Created from clay sourced at his studio in Oaxaca, the sculptures are dried in the sun and fired in a traditional brick kiln, resulting in surfaces that bear the beautiful scars of their process, each uniquely influenced by their encounter with the elements.

Fine Arts Chamber Players presents Basically Beethoven Festival
Since 1981, the Basically Beethoven Festival has featured free chamber music concerts during the month of July, a traditionally slow time for arts events in Dallas. The festival features professional musicians from local ensembles performing a diverse range of music. Each program begins with a Rising Star Recital spotlighting local, gifted young musicians, followed by the Feature Performance showcasing professional musicians from across Dallas-Fort Worth. Weekly performances will take place at Moody Performance Hall through July 31.

Parker McCollum will play at Dos Equis Pavilion on July 8.

Parker McCollum/Facebook

Parker McCollum will play at Dos Equis Pavilion on July 8.

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig searches for elusive new bond in audacious film Queer

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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