Weekend Event Planner

These are the 15 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

It is a huge weekend around Dallas, headlined by the return of The Boss after seven years. By sheer volume, though, local theater will give him a run for your money, with no fewer than eight separate productions starting their runs. There will also be a special concert with a jazz legend, a new opera production, a well-known comedian, highly entertaining basketball, a ballet production, and a concert from indie rock veterans.

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, February 9

Image courtesy of Erhard Rom

The Dallas Opera presents Das Rheingold at Winspear Opera House, February 10-18.

Dallas Theater Center presents Native Gardens
In the contemporary comedy Native Gardens, cultures and gardens clash, turning well-intentioned neighbors into feuding enemies. Pablo, a rising attorney, and doctoral candidate Tania, his very pregnant wife, have just purchased a home next to Frank and Virginia, a well-established D.C. couple with a prize-worthy English garden. But an impending barbecue for Pablo’s colleagues and a delicate disagreement over a long-standing fence line soon spiral into an all-out border dispute, exposing both couples’ notions of race, taste, class, and privilege. The production runs through February 26 at Kalita Humphreys Theater.

Plague Mask Players presents Romeo & Juliet
This version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet features a widower and widow who fall in love in spite of their adult children’s feud. The production by Plague Mask Players will focus on love and loss, grief and joy, and the lengths one will go to hang onto that love in the midst of the storms of life. The production runs through February 18 at Bath House Cultural Center.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Terence Blanchard featuring E-Collective and Turtle Island String Quartet
Trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard has been a consistent artistic force for making powerful musical statements concerning pivotal moments in American culture – past and present. With his current quintet The E-Collective, Blanchard has now released three acclaimed albums on Blue Note Records. Prior to the concert at the Meyerson Symphony Center, Blanchard will participate in a free conversation about his career and share his insights on equity, diversity, and inclusion with moderator Laura Harris.

Bishop Arts Theatre Center presents The 1619 Project: One-Act Festival
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia with a cargo of 20-30 enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. Bishop Arts Theatre Center has commissioned nine playwrights to pen a one-act play, no longer than 20 minutes, based on Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project. This one-act festival will weave together stories that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America. The production runs through February 26 at Bishop Arts Theater Center.

Friday, February 10

Dallas Children's Theater presents Endlings
Dallas Children's Theater will present the final production of Cry Havoc Theater Company, Endlings. In its eight-year history in Dallas, the teen theater company has been celebrated for putting young artists in the lead as creators and actors of bold art that disrupts expectations and shakes up old, entrenched conversations. Endlings is a thought-provoking play that tackles climate change, social justice, grief, the pandemic, art, and much more with frank, youthful honesty. The production runs through February 19 at Rosewood Center for Family Arts.

The Dallas Opera presents Das Rheingold
From the primordial depths of the Rhine to the glittering turrets of Valhalla - the world of the Teutonic gods is in chaos. The evil Alberich steals the magic gold from errant water sprites and forges it into a ring that gives the wearer unfathomable power. Now, everyone wants it - but anyone who gets it is cursed. Betrayal, cheating, illicit love, and murder…it’s all here in this first opera of Wagner’s iconic Ring Cycle. The production, sung in German with English supertitles, will have four performances through February 18 at Winspear Opera House.

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band in concert
Rock legend Bruce Springsteen will put on his first concert in Dallas in seven years when he and The E Street Band play at American Airlines Center. 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Springsteen's debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., and this is Springsteen's first opportunity to play songs live from 2020's Letter to You, his first album with The E Street Band since 2014's High Hopes.

Repertory Company Theatre presents Ghost the Musical
Ghost the Musical is the new, revised version of the Broadway musical currently on tour across the world. Adapted from the hit film by its screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin, Ghost the Musical follows Sam and Molly, a young couple whose connection takes a shocking turn after Sam's untimely death. Trapped between two worlds, Sam refuses to leave Molly when he learns she is in grave danger. Desperate to communicate with her, he turns to a storefront psychic, Oda Mae Brown, who helps him protect Molly and avenge his death. The production runs through February 19 at Repertory Company Theatre in Richardson.

Theatre Arlington presents Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Gypsy is the ultimate tale of an ambitious stage mother fighting for her daughters’ success – while secretly yearning for her own. Set all across America in the 1920s and '30s, when vaudeville was dying and burlesque was born, Arthur Laurents’ landmark show explores the world of two-bit show business with brass, humor, heart, and sophistication. The production runs through March 5 at Theatre Arlington.

Soul Rep Theatre Company presents Sexy Laundry
Armed with a copy of Sex for Dummies, Alice and Henry check themselves into a trendy spa hotel with a mission: to jump-start their 25-year marriage. Can they embrace all the wild suggestions Alice keeps pulling from her handy-dandy marriage-saving manual? Alice and Henry share their erotic fantasies, exchange recriminations, and take turns confessing the details of their mid-life crises as the play flips from comedic to serious and back again. The production runs through February 18 at Margo Jones Theatre.

Ochre House Theater presents JC Amate
Ochre House Theater will present the new and surreal comedy, JC Amate, about a lonely man who bends time and space with his beautiful origami animals. Audiences can step into his private world of mayhem and curiosity. Can he control what he creates? The production runs through February 25 at Ochre House Theater.

Hyena's presents Pauly Shore
Pauly Shore tasted stardom in the 1990s thanks to his MTV show Totally Pauly, as well as starring roles in films like Jury Duty, In the Army Now, Bio-Dome, Encino Man, Son In Law, and A Goofy Movie. Apart from actively touring the country with his stand-up comedy, Pauly is working on a documentary of his life that spans the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. He'll perform twice on Friday at Hyena's in Dallas.

Saturday, February 11

Harlem Globetrotters World Tour
The Harlem Globetrotters 2023 World Tour will feature favorite Globetrotter stars showcasing their amazing basketball skill, outrageous athleticism, and a non-stop LOL good time. The Globetrotters will go head-to-head against the Washington Generals, who will stop at nothing to try and defeat the world’s winningest team. The event will be at American Airlines Center.

Ballet North Texas presents Love Notes
Ballet North Texas presents Love Notes, a program that celebrates the innovative female voices of the art world and their perspective of what love is. Raw and visceral, compassionate and charmed, this performance will draw out the deepest meaning of what love is. There will be performances on Saturday and Sunday at Moody Performance Hall.

Sunday, February 12

Death Cab for Cutie in concert
Seems weird to think about it, but the rock band Death Cab for Cutie are now longtime veterans, having put out music for 25 years. Originally a side project for lead singer Ben Gibbard, the band has turned out to be the biggest part of his professional life, with 11 albums and counting, most recently 2022's Asphalt Meadows. They will play at The Factory in Deep Ellum.

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Game preview

Dallas World Cup opener will feature 'best team never to win the trophy'

Dutch Orange Bus

The Dutch Orange Bus will serve free burgers to fans at Hat Creek Burger Company.

RIVERSIDE, Mo. (AP) — The road leading into the practice facility that the Netherlands is using for its World Cup base camp was supposed to be welcoming, what with “welkom” signs in Dutch making one of the world's top teams feel right at home. Even the street name Teal Rising Way has been temporarily changed to “Oranje Rising Way” for the next six weeks in honor of the team's orange colors.

But perhaps someone should have reconsidered the white signs denoting important World Cup milestones for the Netherlands. Every one of them is a reminder that the country still has never won the tournament.

“How far can we go? Yeah, hopefully all the way,” said defender Virgil van Dijk, who will be appearing in his second World Cup, and who will once again captain the Dutch team.

The Netherlands begins group play against Japan at 3 pm Sunday, June 14 in Dallas. It will be the first of nine FIFA World Cup matches played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington - dubbed "Dallas stadium" for the tournament - and the first one in front of DFW crowds.

A world-famous bright orange double-decker bus that serves as a symbol of Dutch soccer fandom follows the team and will make an appearance at a Dallas-area restaurant to help hype them up.

“We know how difficult it will be,” the Liverpool player acknowledged after a recent training session held under an unrelenting Midwestern sun, which pushed the heat index toward triple digits in Missouri, as it has in Dallas. "But our full focus will be on Japan, first and foremost. That will get all our attention. We won't look too far ahead. But we all have big dreams, and we'll give all we have.”

Three World Cup finals
The Dutch have long held the unwelcome moniker of best nation never to have won the World Cup trophy. In fact, they are the only nation to have reached three finals without a triumph.

In 1974, the Netherlands had returned to the World Cup after a nearly four-decade drought, and the dazzling play of Johan Cruyff had led it all the way to the final. There, the Dutch faced host West Germany and its star player, Franz Beckenbauer. The Netherlands scored quickly on a penalty kick, but West Germany answered with two goals before halftime, and the Dutch were unable to find the back of the net in the second half before a crowd of more than 78,000 at the Olympiastadion in Munich.

It was disappointing, to be sure, but ask any Dutch fan and they will say 1978 stung even more.

Once more facing the host nation in the final, Argentina led 1-0 at halftime before Dick Nanninga managed an equalizer in the 82nd minute. The game remained tied into extra time, when Mario Kempes scored his second goal of the game for host Argentines, and Daniel Bertoni added another for good measure before a boisterous crowd at River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires.

The Dutch reached their third final in 2010, when it faced Spain for the title in Johannesburg, South Africa. That match also was decided in extra time after the teams had played to a stalemate, with Andrés Iniesta scoring in the 116th minute.

Reason to believe
The Netherlands reached the semifinals in 2014 before inexplicably failing to qualify in 2018. But it was back for 2022 in Qatar with van Dijk leading the way. The Dutch rolled through group play while conceding a single goal, then dominated the U.S. in the round of 16 before losing to eventual champion Argentina on penalty kicks in the quarterfinals.

But take away penalty shootouts and the Dutch are unbeaten in their last 12 matches at the World Cup. The only nation with a longer such streak is Brazil, which went 13 consecutive matches behind the brilliant play of Pele between 1958 and 1966.

“I think we have a great group of players, especially human beings. We are getting along so well with each other,” van Dijk said. "But obviously it's all about the results. It's all about performing. All the players that are here, especially over the years — it's players that have played at the highest level, experiencing amazing things in their careers. Winning trophies. Playing for the biggest clubs.

“They're coming together here and trying to make their country proud. It's the biggest thing you can do.”

While the Dutch are favored to get out of their group, the path to the knockout rounds won't be easy. The trio of Japan, Sweden and Tunisia represent a tricky series of matches, and coach Ronald Koeman's team has struggled with injuries; defender Jurrien Timber has already left because of a groin injury and goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen is nursing a recent hip injury.

It's unclear whether Verbruggen will play in Dallas Sunday against Japan.

“We know Japan is strong. We've analyzed the team and the players,” Koeman said. “We spoke about their system, normally where they play out of, and the physical state of their players. It's difficult. But we believe in ourselves. We respect Japan, but we are Holland, and they will respect us. I think it will be an interesting match, and a difficult one.”

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