“The first causality of war is always the truth.” That’s the epigraph that launches one of this week’s new releases, Five Days of War, but it could just as easily be the quote that frames the action of John Madden’s The Debt. The truth, and its relation to history, is what is at stake in this movie, which wraps together all the ingredients of a smart, exciting espionage thriller – spies, shootouts, romance, Nazis – even though the sum total never feels more than its promising parts.

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FrontRow: You’ll be playing Miranda in DTC’s September performance of The Tempest. This will be a reprising of your first professional role. How has your work with the company and time at DTC changed your perception of Miranda?

Abbey Siegworth: I’ve always been in awe of Miranda.  She truly is a lovely character, one somehow untainted by the corruptions of society and yet incredibly worldly, grounded, and enlightened.  The combination of my time working at DTC while a student at SMU, and this past year as a company member, has been amazing.  To be challenged by, and continue to grow alongside the likes of this crew has been a very humbling and awe-inspiring experience.  I think that is something that is influencing Miranda this time around.  The first time I played Miranda, I was fresh out of undergrad (22 years old) and the world really was a “brave new” one.  I’m realizing that this is an experience one can have multiple times in ones life: to be amazed.

FR: Your boyfriend John is also an actor. What is the biggest struggle and the biggest benefit of being in a relationship where both partners are full time actors?

AS: The biggest struggles are inconsistency of income and time apart form each other.  The biggest benefit far outweighs these struggles.  To have such a deep passion for something, and to find someone else that has that same addiction, drive, curiosity — I can’t imagine a life without it.  I really admire couples with one half the actor and the other half accountant or doctor, or something. there’s an exceptional amount of empathy and understanding required from the supportive partner when it comes to things like our odd/long hours and eccentric friends!

FR: I read when you first came to Dallas you felt it lacked the feeling of community you had back home in Chicago. How has that feeling grown or changed over the years?

AS: Wow, honestly?  I think I was being a big baby.  When you move anywhere new, you have to find your way. Finding mine just took a while.  I reverse my prior opinion.  I have become completely charmed by Dallas at this point.  The people, the sense of ease and grace, the steadfast generosity from the likes of Mr. Charles Wyly, may he rest in peace.  I’ve never known nor can imagine an arts community like this one.

FR: What is the one thing you would refuse to sacrifice for a starring role in a Broadway show or a major motion film?

AS: Truth is: I’ve missed a best friend’s wedding, I missed my grandmother’s funeral, I’m still without children because this question is so hard to answer.  The only thing I can think of is this: I am not willing to lose my sense of self.  I will never be that person who grabs an hors d’oeuvre off a plate at a fancy party without looking the server in the eye and saying “hi” or “thank you”.  I can’t.  Should the stars align in my direction professionally, I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by a wealth of family and friends who keep me grounded.

FR: I’ve heard you’re a hippie chick at heart. What is your favorite and least favorite part about doing theater hair and make-up?

AS: Ha!  That’s so funny!  Yes.  I prefer to keep things simple that way.  But it is part of my job to do my own hair and makeup, and I’ve gotten better over the years.  My learning curve with makeup has been much better than with hair. I pray for wigs.

Here are some photos from rehearsal:

Photos by Maddie Grussendorf

Can anyone guess which cast member of Style Network’s Big Rich Texas is sportin’ the cap and gown in this pic?

You guys probably guessed the ending to DaVinci Code too. It is Bonnie. And here’s an old bonus pic of our fave PhD Whitney.

Nobody would ever accuse local prog band Vaults of Zin of taking the easy way out. Though that pass-less-traveled philosophy is common with acts that have the patience to write and perform technical progressive metal music, some of the band’s other endeavors border on overachieving. With its members having had such various enriching experiences as studying composition (keyboardist and composer Stephen Lucas; composer, bassist, and occasional vocalist Shane Hutchinson; and composer, writer, and guitarist Greg Dixon have all attended The UNT College Of Music) or making Denton a valuable destination for extreme experimental music (multimedia artist, noise musician, and drummer, House of Tinnitus‘ Rob Buttrum), this is an extremely cultured and well-rounded group.

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Keep up with all the latest Most Eligible Dallas recaps here.

Bravo bestowed the title “When Pigs Fly” on the third episode of the grand masterpiece that is Most Eligible Dallas. I have taken the liberty to rechristen it “Tired, Old Things” because it’s full of tired, old things. As we chronicle the happenings of the most eligible people in Dallas—surely, all the world—let’s do so by cataloging all the old leftovers we got served.

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Keep up with all the latest Big Rich Texasrecaps here.

Episode 6 of Big Rich Texas begins on the golf course where Bonnie is at the wheel. Leslie is riding shotgun when she sees AJ the golf pro and asks Bonnie to pull over behind a tree so they can stalk him. At first I thought she felt the need to hide because she had a school girl crush and was embarrassed. But then I remembered how the women sexually harassed him in ..read more

You can’t spend too much time banging around the local art world without bumping into Nicole Horn. Co-curator of the Magnolia Gallery with her husband, artist Scott Horn, Nicole Horn has been involved in a host of local art organizations, most notably Art Conspiracy, La Reunion TX, bigBANG!, and more.

In her spare time, Horn is an interior designer, and that aspect of her deep pool of talents is going to step into the spotlight tomorrow, Wednesday, August 31, as Horn appears on NBC to help Dwell with Dignity makeover an apartment for a Dallas family in need. Be sure to catch it. Here are all the details:

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Over on the Dangerous Minds website, there is some news about a future project for the Trinity River. Next year, the artists Brian Howe and Freya Bardell will install a “River Liver,” a project concept originally created in 2005 for the Los Angeles River that seeks “to raise awareness of awareness of the many ecological and cultural conditions that line its concrete banks.” Since then, the “River Liver” has become an annual project in Los Angeles, way of addressing the environmental health of that city’s forgotten waterway through art.

Here’s Freya Bardell on a Dallas iteration planned for 2012:

As I keep mentioning our work is site specific . . . Coming up in Dallas, there will be something totally different. We’re anxious to delve into the site history and see what emerges. Maybe we could create more of an atoll or invite people to inhabit one of the islands. We have to get there first and see.

This is a very positive development for the Trinity and, frankly, something I’ve been thinking about for sometime. While the Trinity River Project flounders in decades of political and financial muck, we often forget about an aspect of the project that even the planned amenities – if they ever come to fruition – won’t solve in and of themselves: how do we create life in the Trinity flood plain? One solution may lay in rethinking the plain not as merely a park, per se, but also as a setting for a series of installations that can call attention to the Trinity and energize and organize life in and around it. This project represents a positive step in that direction, and it will be interesting to see how Howe and Bardell tackle the massive scale and the no man’s land nature of the untamed Trinity.

Photo: Howe and Bardell’s “Migration of the Marine Tumbleweed” in Santa Monica bay. (via Dangerous Minds).

The Dallas Observer Music Awards ceremony will take place in the fall as opposed to summer this year, which only means that the people who take the awards seriously are posting their pleas for artistic justice a little later this time around. Other than that, not much has changed. I mostly take notice of this event when someone is wrongly categorized or when a project with which I’m involved is nominated. But I do understand that the award means something to ..read more

What man makes the degree of separation between Broadway and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air slim down by about a thousand? The same man who won a Tony in 2000 for Best Actor in a Musical: Brian Stokes Mitchell. TITAS is bringing his musical talents to Dallas at the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Winspear Opera House September 1st and we’ve got a pair of tickets to giveaway. To get your hands on them all you have to do is fill out the question in the form below: After a seven year absence Mitchell returned to Broadway performing in what production? We’ll pick a winner at 3pm.

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