Weekend Event Planner

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

The end of the holiday season can be a bummer, but event organizers in and around Dallas have come to the rescue with a good number of things to do for the first weekend of 2025. They include three theater productions, a college football bowl game, a concert featuring the music of Star Wars, a cirque event, a Chinese dance production, monster trucks, the final days of holiday events, and the closing of an art exhibition.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, January 2

North Texas Performing Arts presents Chicago
North Texas Performing Arts presents Chicago as their annual Alumni show, performed by alums from NTPA youth theatre who have graduated and are now pursuing college or careers. In roaring '20s Chicago, chorine Roxie Hart murders a faithless lover and convinces her hapless husband, Amos, to take the rap ... until he finds out he's been duped and turns on Roxie. Convicted and sent to death row, Roxie and another "Merry Murderess," Velma Kelly, vie for the spotlight and the headlines, ultimately joining forces in search of the "American Dream:" fame, fortune, and acquittal. There will be four performances through Saturday at Willow Bend Center of the Arts in Plano.

WaterTower Theatre presents The Play That Goes Wrong
The Play That Goes Wrong is an Olivier Award-winning comedy that is a hilarious hybrid of Monty Python and Sherlock Holmes. Welcome to opening night of The Murder at Haversham Manor, where things are quickly going from bad to utterly disastrous, including an unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can’t play dead, and actors who trip over everything (including their lines). The production runs through January 19 at Addison Conference and Theatre Centre.

Friday, January 3

ServPro First Responder Bowl: North Texas vs. Texas State
It'll be an all-Texas affair when the North Texas Mean Green and the Texas State Bobcats face off in the ServPro First Responder Bowl. The way the bowl games worked out this year, this will actually be one of the last non-playoff college football games fans can enjoy this season. The game will take place at Gerald J. Ford Stadium on the SMU campus.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents "The Music of Star Wars"
Conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez will lead the Dallas Symphony Orchestra through the epic music of Star Wars. It will be an intergalactic experience featuring John Williams’ iconic scores, including “Revenge of the Sith,” the heroic “Star Wars Main Title,” and the intense “Duel of the Fates.” There will be performances on Friday and Saturday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Cirque Italia Water Circus
Cirque Italia will present their new production, a story about Rafael, a farm boy swept away by a tornado who lands in the heart of the city's chaos. On the comedic escapade, Rafael the Clown seamlessly transitions from farm life to the dazzling lights of the city, weaving humor into both worlds. As he navigates the city, he encounters many personalities, reflecting the diverse facets of urban life. Attractions include a trampoline wall, the Rolla Bolla, a rope act, juggling, and more. The production runs through Monday in a big tent outside of Town East Mall in Mesquite.

Shen Yun
Shen Yun's unique artistic vision expands theatrical experience into a multi-dimensional, deeply moving journey. Featuring one of the world’s most ancient and richest dance systems - classical Chinese dance - along with dynamic animated backdrops and all-original orchestral works, Shen Yun opens a portal to a civilization of enchanting beauty and enlightening wisdom. There will be four performances through Sunday at Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson.

Saturday, January 4

Monster Truck Wars
Monster Truck Wars is a high-energy monster truck show featuring a real-life robot battle and giant, 10,000-pound monster trucks, including the T-Rex, Shark Attack, Sheriff, and the legendary Outlaw. The event also includes a kid’s power wheel races, a chance to take a ride in a real monster truck, and more. There will be two performances on Saturday at Fair Park Coliseum.

Sammons Center for the Arts presents Bolt: A 24-Hour Musical Game
Bolt is a musical event where Dallas-based theatre artists will come together to craft a new and fully realized musical in just 24 hours. On the evening of Friday, January 3, the Bolt team will draw 9-10 songs submitted by the community for writers Parker Davis Gray and Nicole Neely, who will have from Friday evening until 7 am the next morning to create a script that ties these songs into a show. That show will be rehearsed by the cast and crew up until the performance at Sammons Center for the Arts at 7 pm. The result will be a fast-paced, unpredictable, and unforgettable show.

Sunday, January 5

Last call for holiday events
Sunday will the final day to see most of the holiday-themed events in and around Dallas, including Holiday at the Arboretum at Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, ICE! featuring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, The Trains at NorthPark at NorthPark Center, Snowday at Galleria Dallas, Coca-Cola's Classic Christmas at Choctaw Stadium in Arlington, and The Light Park in both Frisco and Arlington.

Dallas Museum of Art presents "From Munch to Kirchner: The Heins Collection of Modern and Expressionist Art" closing day
Sunday will also be the last chance to see "From Munch to Kirchner: The Heins Collection of Modern and Expressionist Art" at the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition highlights the legacy of Marie "Elinor" Heins through the recent gift of 30 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from her heirs. The Heins collection is divided evenly between late 19th and early 20th century art movements: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and German Expressionism, Heins’ favorite. Highlights include works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Signac, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edvard Munch.

Photo by Evan Michael Woods

WaterTower Theatre presents The Play That Goes Wrong through January 19 at Addison Conference and Theatre Centre.

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Movie Review

Podcaster lets creepy noises get under her skin in Undertone

Photo courtsy of A24

Nina Kiri in Undertone.

While the horror genre is still capable of producing some innovative filmmaking, most of the output tends to fall back on jump scares and other tropes to deliver their terror. So when a film like the new Undertone tries something different, it should be applauded for the effort, even if it’s not as successful in its execution.

Evy (Nina Kiri) is a podcaster who co-hosts a show called Undertone, which focuses on paranormal videos and sounds they find on the internet. Her co-host, Justin (Adam DiMarco), lives in London, so - for kind of contrived reasons - in order to make the time difference between them work, Evy records at around 3 am her time. Evy - who lives at home with her bedridden, dying mother - is the skeptic of the two, consistently debunking clips that Justin presents to her.

Her doubts are tested when Justin brings in a series of 10 audio clips that purport to be about a boyfriend recording his girlfriend as she talks in her sleep. The audio begins in a lighthearted manner and quickly turns creepy and then sinister as unexplained things start happening. Evy senses that what she’s hearing is bleeding into her own world, especially when inexplicable actions take place in her mother’s bedroom.

Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Ian Tuason, the film is effective early on when it introduces the story concept. Making great use of sound design, Tuason essentially puts the audience inside Evy’s head, where every little sound is heightened. Setting the podcast sessions in the middle of the night ups the anxiety level for both her and the audience.

However, as the film goes along it gets a little tedious watching Evy listen to the audio, even as Tuason attempts to keep the film dynamic by moving the camera around her. The premise of the story - progressively going through 10 clips - and Tuason’s framing of shots that focus as much on the background as they do on Evy seem to promise more interesting results than actually transpire.

What ultimately holds the film down more than anything is its lack of different viewpoints. The only other person who’s actually seen is Evy’s mother, who is unable to speak. Evy speaks to Justin, another friend, and a doctor over the course of the story, and while each broadens our understanding of Evy somewhat, none of them make her a truly three-dimensional person. Getting a little more information about her history might have helped the story work better.

Kiri does her level best to vary her acting in the various podcast scenes, and even when they start to get repetitive, she remains compelling and watchable. It’s difficult to judge the other actors based on audio alone, but knowing that DiMarco also starred in season 2 of The White Lotus helps to visualize him and his acting style.

Undertone does well in creating a spine-chilling mood, but it needed something beyond that to become a truly great horror movie. Tuason shows some promise as a filmmaker, especially in the way he uses the camera to create tension, but a more complete story will serve him better the next time around.

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Undertone is now playing in theaters,

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