When I was five, my family got a television, and it was like a meteorite had landed on the farm. That’s when I knew I wanted to be in show business, but I had to keep it a secret because you couldn’t tell people that. My school had this talent
While other high school students spend their afternoons running track or singing in the choir, Diana Fox and Josh Zuniga are perfecting their cha-cha and two-step. Actually, the Missouri City duo is doing those other things too, but much of their extracurricular time is spent defending their title as Teen
I’ve danced all my life, and I really thought that I would eventually open a ballet school. It’s a wonderful discipline and a wonderful release. I started dancing when I was three because I loved the pink tutu and the ballet shoes. I got myself involved—it wasn’t anything that my
The greatest Tuna of all.
I started dancing when I was five, after [Houston dance teacher] Emmamae Horn visited my school and asked my parents if I could enroll in her dance class. It must have run in the family, though, because my parents were great dancers too. When I was about nine, I remember
I enrolled at the University of Texas in 1950 during a post-war period that produced many talented individuals. Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones, Liz Smith, Robert Benton, Pat Hingle, Word Baker, Kathryn Grant (later Mrs. Bing Crosby), and I all graduated with degrees in drama. We did lots of dance concerts
Culturally centered.
One day when I was in the seventh grade at Christ the King School in Dallas, the Ursuline nun who taught our class dragged in a phonograph with 78 rpm records from the convent. She put on an album of Puccini love duets sung by Licia Albanese and James Milton.
Houston has every reason to be proud of the Alley Theatre: After fifty years in the business, it has national clout and a Tony award. Still, not everyone is pleased with its direction.
Every Christmas, from the time I was three until I was ten, my family would drive in a stream of cars to Kilgore, where, during the Depression and a very big oil boom, oil wells had been drilled downtown. Hundreds of derricks on street corners and next to office buildings
“I play a lot of boys,” reports Susan Graham, a svelte but buxom mezzo-soprano. Schooled for opera’s mischievous “trouser” roles by climbing trees and toilet-papering houses while she grew up in Midland, the 36-year-old earned a master’s degree in music at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and went on to
Not long after he moved to Texas to enroll in the Houston Ballet Academy, Trey McIntyre discovered he wasn’t good enough to dance the classics. But that didn’t stop the six-foot-six Kansas native from towering above his peers. Recognizing his talent as a designer of dance pieces, the company’s artistic
Mexico’s Ballet Folklórico steps lively (Dallas, Galveston, and San Antonio). Plus: the richness of Catalonian art (San Antonio); the brew-haha that is Oktoberfest (Fredericksburg); the keys to jazz piano (Austin, Houston, and San Antonio); and singing the praises of Gabriel García Márquez (Houston). Edited by Quita McMath, Erin Gromen, and
It’s good to be King.
From the Paris Bastille to a duet with Pavarotti to a PBS documentary: Amarillo’s resident opera star, Mary Jane Johnson, has had a career full of high notes, and she has savored every one of them.
summary: From Nanci Griffith to Butch Hancock, the stars will shine at this year’s Kerrville Folk Festival—the kickoff of a year-long twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration. Plus: Dead presidents in Austin, Spanish masterpieces in Dallas, a haunting opera in Houston, and tee time in Fort Worth. Edited by Quita McMath, Erin Gromen, and
Bullets over Broadway at the Granbury Opera House.
Give her regards to Broadway.
Universally appealing.
After fourteen years, 2,500 performances, and innumerable one-liners, the theatrical careers of Joe Sears and Jaston Williams are going swimmingly.
After fifteen years, Tommy Tune and Larry L. King are at it again: The sequel to the most famous musical about our state opens on Broadway.
After years of being alternately judged a great playwright and a great disappointment, Edward Albee has found his footing in Houston, where he teaches, socializes, and gets star treatment.
With his bust-a-gut jokes and cornpone tales, backwoods humorist Bob Murphey delivers a time gone by.
Anne Bass married one of the richest men in America. With his money and her ambition she became an important cultural force in Fort Worth and New York. Life was perfect. Then her husband left her.
The small-town orchestra has it all: performers who love the music passionately, audiences who lend their wholehearted support, and even occasional moments when all the instruments are playing the right note.
Backstage at the Houston Ballet is a world of pastel shadows, brilliant spangles, and anxious waiting.
Why knock yourself out for two grueling weeks at a piano competition in Fort Worth? For $12,000—and a string of concert bookings money can’t buy.
Don’t look now, but the rather odd gentleman with the suspicious accent and outlandish military getup may not be exactly what he seems.
Our photographer runs away to the circus.
“Buy now, play later,” says the Dallas Theater Center.
PEYTON PLACE COMES TO DALLAS Bill Peyton’s antiques, ranging from the most elaborate Louis XIV or Napoleonic pieces to funky wine presses, Coca-Cola mirrors, church pulpits, and pump organs, come from all over Europe in 40-foot containers, or from estates in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. For 15 years he has
After an aggressive ad campaign, attendance was up at the Houston Ballet; the performances were also up... and down.
Neither fish nor fowl, filmed theater is a whole new art form.
The path to haute culture in Texas is regularly trodden by opera buffs in four cities. Although no La Scalia or Bayreuth, the opera companies of Texas are offering some unique and innovative productions.
Austin does it again, an exciting new pas de deux for balletomanes: ballet and beer.
Getting the most from the Met for less.
A single-minded Houston director puts on new plays.
Dionysus in 69 brings nude, bloody experimental theater to Houston.
“The theater center will mark the spot where Dallas once stood.”
