Joan Arbery has always wanted to go to Tehran, wishes she had lived in France, and longs for Dublin like a lost kidney. But she’s happy in Dallas, which she never thought she’d love and is glad not to miss. She’s currently finishing up her doctorate from Notre Dame in literature (dissertation on Dublin, London and Paris), and writing a monthly events column for D Magazine.
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A Feast For the Mind
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Events, Ideas on 22 September 2009
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After 22 years, the Dallas Philosophers Forum has moved from restaurant to restaurant, but the contemporary salon still serves up a smorgasbord of deep thoughts with a glass of good conversation.

Star Struck
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 18 September 2009
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Theater Review
Kristin Dausch shines brightest in Lyric Stage’s sparkling performance of Funny Girl

A Stamp on the Soul
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 16 September 2009
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Theater Review
The darkness and joys the soul can transmit are thoughtfully, and sometimes quite threateningly, brought to the fore in Echo Theatre’s production of Mauritius, directed by Terri Ferguson at the Bath House.

Play on Memory
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 14 September 2009
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Theater Review
Dwelling on memory, loss, and redemption, Noah Haidle’s Vigils is a fitting way to mark 9/11 and the coming of autumn. But where Kitchen Dog Theater’s production succeeds in its introspection, the play itself feels tedious in its repetitions.

A Garden Reopens
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Feature 2, Ideas on 28 August 2009
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An arboreal, fecund, sometimes secretive ambit, the conservatory intimately links us to the earth even as it precludes us from experiencing unbridled nature.

De-Coding The South
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 27 August 2009
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There’s a code-breaking in Preston Jones’ Texan play, “The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia,” playing at the Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. But at its heart, Jones’ play is nostalgic for a core code even as it abolishes segregationism in the 1960s.

A Royal Mess
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 6 August 2009
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Theater Review
George Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s dull, trifling script insists on its own messianic purpose to save theater. By so doing, it rapidly draws towards its post-mortem.

Wholly Sophomoric
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 3 August 2009
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Theater Review
With Holy Rollers’ savvy handle of the ancient gods’ affairs in the boudoir and on the altar, and with his clever timing of the gods’ game alongside human history, he could have opted out of the toilet shtick. It’s like watching the smart nerd fart for the sake of befriending the fratboys.

Freudian Wit Hits the Funny Bone
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 29 July 2009
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One-Thirty Productions performs Ellsworth Schave’s Under a Texaco Canopy and Echo Theatre performs Alice Gerstenberg’s Overtones at the Festival of Independent Theaters.

FIT Offerings Fall Flat
By Joan Arbery
Posted in Art, Reviews, Theater on 27 July 2009
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It’s more the plays, than the cast and directing, that keep Audacity Lab’s “Arsenic and Roses” and Wingspan’s “Seagulls” from ever getting off the ground at the Festival of Independent Theaters.