Venue News

Mark Cuban venue in Dallas' Design District gears up for opening at last

Courtesy rendering

A Dallas performance venue is at last nearing its debut: Called The Echo Lounge & Music Hall, it's the Design District venue from Mark Cuban, located at 1323 N. Stemmons Fwy., and has an opening date and lineup of shows.

The venue was developed in partnership with Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks and is described as a 1,000-capacity club that will feature touring artists and local acts.

"The Echo Lounge & Music Hall is going to be a great new venue for artists to play in Dallas," says Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino in a statement. "There's lots of opportunity to bring more concerts to the city, and we really value having the hometown partnership with Mark Cuban and the Mavericks in creating this space."

"I'm super excited for the opening of the Echo Lounge & Music Hall," Cuban says. "This takes the Design District to the next level in its move towards being an entertainment destination. And, with the tunnel between the American Airlines Center side and Design District side of the highway being finished, it will be an exciting post game place to have fun and see live shows!"

Echo Lounge seems to be a new identity for what was originally to be called HiFi Dallas, which was first announced in January 2020. At that time, HiFi Dallas was a "small- to mid-sized venue with a capacity of 1,000" which is exactly how they are now describing Echo Lounge. Originally, Echo Lounge was going to be the name for a space on the second floor dedicated to VIPs, artist showcases, and DJs — a space that still seems to be in the works, but not with a separate name.

The name change seems to be fairly new. As recently as July 2021, it was still being called HiFi and was anticipated to open on August 29. On August 25, that date got pushed back "due to construction delays," and scheduled shows were moved to other venues such as the Southside Ballroom. The HiFi Dallas website and Facebook page are both gone. There's still a HiFi Twitter, but it links to a Live Nation page for the Echo Lounge. The plot thickens. Well, actually no, the plot thins out.

Live Nation did not respond to repeated inquiries regarding the name change. UPDATE 10-21-2021: A spokesperson confirmed that "the concept is now The Echo Lounge & Music Hall."

Acts slated to perform at Echo Lounge include:

11/1/2021 - KXT 91.7 Presents Mayer Hawthorne with India Shawn
11/3/2021 - Jeremy Zucker with Del Water Gap
11/6/2021 - Madison Beer with Maggie Lindemann and Audriix
11/10/2021 - Sleepy Hallow with Eli Fross
11/12/2021 - 100 gecs with Underscores (SOLD OUT)
11/13/2021 - An Evening With Goose (SOLD OUT)
11/19/2021 - Cory and the Wongnotes featuring Antwaun Stanley
11/28/2021 - CloZee with Of The Trees and Tripp St. (18+)
12/3/2021 - Boombox Cartel with Great Dane, Rossy and Suahn (18+)
12/16/2021 - Pink Sweat$ with Kirby and Bren Joy
12/17/2021 - The Glitch Mob + edIT
12/18/2021 - The Aces with The Beaches and Sawyer
1/9/2022 - Mother Mother (SOLD OUT)
2/18/2022 - Cheat Codes with Party Pupils and Zack Martino (18+)
3/9/2022 – Fletcher
3/11/2022 - Eric Nam
3/23/2022 - Tate McRae (SOLD OUT)
3/25/2022 - Enter Shikari with Wargasm
4/18/2022 - Ashe (SOLD OUT)

music concerts

Movie Review

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson face pre-marriage jitters in The Drama

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in The Drama.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.

Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.

A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.

Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.

Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.

Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.

Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.

The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not given completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.

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The Drama opens in theaters on April 3.

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