Weekend Event Planner

These are the 13 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

This weekend in and around Dallas will be comedy and theater heavy, with four national comedians coming to town and four local theater companies putting on new productions. Other choices include a symphony concert, a concert by a music legend, a film festival aimed at kids, and the final days of a notable art exhibition and a big light display.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. If you want more options, check out the calendar for an even longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, January 15

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents "Luisi Conducts Bruckner’s Ninth"
The latest Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert will feature just one piece, Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, the Austrian composer's epic, final symphonic masterpiece that was unfinished at the time of his death in 1896. Conducted by Fabio Luisi, the concert will be performed on both Thursday and Friday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Improv Addison presents Tony Rock
Being the brother of an established entertainer, Tony Rock was able to successfully elude the shadows of his older sibling and step into his own limelight. Rock has proven himself as one of the most talented, well-respected entertainers in the business. After years of experience, Rock has proven himself as a skillful comedian and actor. He'll perform six times through Sunday at Improv Addison.

Rover Dramawerks presents The Lady Demands Satisfaction
When a young maiden who has never touched a sword learns she must defend her inheritance in a duel, she calls upon her domineering aunt - the finest blade anywhere - to help save her house and lands. As she meekly learns to fence, she struggles with a milksop suitor, a servant girl posing as a Prussian fencing master, a Prussian fencing master who thinks he is there to marry her, and a stodgy lawyer who expects her to be killed at any moment. Like all classic farces, everyone gets the ending they deserve in unexpected ways … but will they be satisfied? The production runs through February 1 at Cox Playhouse in Plano.

Friday, January 16

Punch Line Irving presents Leslie Jones
Leslie Jones is a three-time Emmy Award nominee as well as a Writer's Guild Award and NAACP Award nominee for her work on Saturday Night Live. She has also been honored as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. She has appeared on the HBO Max series Our Flag Means Death, in Coming 2 America, and co-hosts the podcast The Fckry with comedian Lenny Marcus. She'll perform four times through Saturday at Punch Line Irving.

Echo Theatre presents Echo Sings: Silhouettes
In the new musical Silhouettes, two women meet in a Chicago clinic and face decisions about abortion, motherhood, and personal autonomy. Matters of choice echo through decades in the 75-minute musical for two, plus a chorus. This free workshop production will have performances on Friday and Saturday at Bath House Cultural Center.

Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas presents How the Other Half Loves
There are three couples in How the Other Half Loves, the men all working for the same firm. One of the younger men is having an affair with the wife of the oldest, and when each returns home suspiciously late one night or early one morning, they invent a story about having to spend some time smoothing domestic matters in the home of the third couple. The production runs through January 31 at Irving Arts Center.

Shakespeare Dallas presents Macbeth
Shakespeare Dallas will present a classical staging of Macbeth, also referred to superstitiously as "The Scottish Play." The tragedy involves three witches telling a Scottish general that he will be King of Scotland. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth slays the king and becomes the new king, resulting in civil war and deep unrest. The production runs through February 1 at Theatre Three.

Mavis Staples in concert
It would probably be easier to say who singer Mavis Staples hasn't worked with than who she has over her nearly 70-year career in the music business. First gaining notice as part of the gospel/R&B group The Staples Sisters, Mavis embarked on a solo venture in 1969, eventually working with everyone from Aretha Franklin to Bob Dylan to Gorillaz. She'll perform at Longhorn Ballroom in support of her 2025 album, Sad and Beautiful World.

Rory Scovel: Know Your Enemy Tour
Actor, comedian, and writer Rory Scovel is fresh off his 2024 HBO Max comedy special, Rory Scovel: Religion, Sex, and a Few Things in Between. He was recently seen starring alongside Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell in the Amazon romantic comedy, You're Cordially Invited. He'll perform at Texas Theatre as part of his Know Your Enemy Tour.

Saturday, January 17

42nd Annual KidFilm Family Festival
The 42nd Annual KidFilm Family Festival, presented by USA Film Festival, will feature screenings of nine new animated and live-action feature films, as well as three showcases featuring 22 animated and live-action short films. The highlight of the festival will be a preview screening of The Pout-Pout Fish, based on the best-selling children's book by Deborah Diesen. Diesen will be on hand for the screening, which will be followed by a book signing of the new book, The Pout-Pout Fish Movie Storybook, which will be distributed for free to kids while supplies last. The festival takes place at Angelika Film Center in Dallas on Saturday and Sunday.

Matt McCusker: The Healing Frequency Tour
Matt McCusker is a comedian, writer, and co-host of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. After spending much of his young life engaging in mostly non-violent criminal activity, McCusker has dedicated the rest of his days toward the pursuit of peace and harmony. He has also written two books, most notably his novel Overlook: A Story About Drugs, Disappointment, and the American Dream. He'll perform at Majestic Theatre.

Sunday, January 18

Dallas Museum of Art presents "Return to Infinity: Yayoi Kusama" closing day
Sunday will be the final day to view Yayoi Kusama’s All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins at the Dallas Museum of Art. An iteration of the artist’s iconic “Infinity Mirrored Rooms,” the installation incorporates one of the artist’s quintessential symbols, the pumpkin. The boundary-pushing experiential work draws on several of Kusama’s characteristic themes, including infinity, the sublime, and obsessive repetition, allowing the viewer to literally become a part of the art.

Tianyu Lights Festival closing day
Sunday will also be the last day to see Tianyu Lights Festival, an immersive light show that features two themed displays straight from the imagination of 7-year-old boy Koda. Starlit Farm captures the peaceful beauty of summer nights in the countryside, while Magic Ocean dives deep into an illuminated undersea world of reefs and dreamlike creatures. Each evening, live cultural performances add to the magic, featuring the mask-changing art of Face Changing (Bianlian), acrobatics, and the graceful Peacock Dance. The event takes place in the the festival grounds of Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie.

Photo by Mike Morgan Photography

Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas presents How the Other Half Loves, January 16-31, at Irving Arts Center.

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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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