Painter Erik Parker had an unconventional introduction to the world of art. When the San Antonio-native ran into some legal trouble in high school, the judge offered him an option: get his GED and receive half probation, enroll in a community college and have his probation wiped out. Parker jumped on the opportunity, and while at community college in San Antonio, he began taking art classes. That twist of fate eventually led him to the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with psychedelic surrealist pop artist Peter Saul, and graduate studies at SUNY Purchase. When he hit the New York art scene in the early-1990s, he was a quick sensation, creating street-inspired work that pieced together the ecology of the New York scene by combining images and text on canvas.

Perhaps it all came too easy. In the mid-2000s, Parker decided to step away from the art world and focus on developing a new approach to his painting. The fruits of these labors are now on view in the latest FOCUS show at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. We spoke to Parker about his paintings, his early life, and his unmistakable use of color.

Image: Erik Parker, Think Twice (2007) (detail), Acrylic and enamel on canvas, 52×42 inches.

Music in video by Pornophonik PK via archive.org

Interview with Erik Parker from Peter Simek on Vimeo.

Regina Taylor has managed to split her career between the stage and the screen. Born in Dallas, Texas and graduating from Southern Methodist University, over the years she has had a success as a film and television actress, appearing in notable films, such as Lean on Me, and TV series like I’ll Fly Away, for which she won a Golden Globe. She has also written numerous works for the stage, and has enjoyed a long term relationship with Chicago’s famed Goodman Theatre. ..read more

The AT&T Performing Arts Center board of directors has elected a new chairman, D. Roger Nanney, a vice chairman at Deloitte LLP, who has served on the Performing Arts Center’s board since 2002. We sat down with Nanney to talk about his transition into this new role, and the center’s transition from a project under construction to an operating venue for the performing arts. You can read the first part of that conversation here. This is part two.

Front Row: How would ..read more

The AT&T Performing Arts Center board of directors has elected a new chairman, D. Roger Nanney, a vice chairman at Deloitte LLP, who has served on the Performing Arts Center’s board since 2002. We sat down with Nanney to talk about his transition into this new role, and the center’s transition from a project under construction to an operating venue for the performing arts. This is the first part of that conversation. Part two will run on FrontRow tomorrow.

FrontRow: How did ..read more

This Friday, Soprano Ailyn Pérez will take her first bow on the Dallas Opera’s stage in the role of Zerlina opposite baritone Paulo Szot in Don Giovanni but it is by no means an introduction to the company. Her husband, tenor Stephen Costello, is making his fifth appearance on the Dallas stage next week as Lord Percy in Anna Bolena. Costello also appeared as Greenhorn in last season’s Moby-Dick debut opposite legendary tenor Ben Heppner. We spoke with Costello and ..read more

The following report comes courtesy of D Magazine intern Taylor Walker, with photos by People Newspapers’ Christina Barany:

“Don’t go into this profession wanting to be a big star.” That seems to be the message Glenn Close wanted the students of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts to take away from her 30-plus years of experience in the industry.

The five-time Oscar-nominated actress and producer Bonnie Curtis (Minority Report, A.I. Artificial Intelligence) took a break from raising funds for their ..read more

One of the most well-crafted, well-acted, and terrifying movies to come out this year is David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, about a Australian crime family in decline. FrontRow spoke to Michôd about the origin of his movie and the make-up of two of the film’s most memorable characters, the suspiciously intimate mother Janine (Jacki Weaver) and older brother Pope, realized in a Oscar-worthy performance by Ben Mendelsohn.

FrontRow: Where did your story for Animal Kingdom come from?

David Michôd: I grew up in ..read more

Tonight the wonderful documentary about the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, A Surprise in Texas, will air on KERA. It is the film’s third trip though the area this year, having played at the Dallas International Film Festival this past spring, as well as enjoying a run at the Angelika a few months later. The film is well worth catching, if you have been foolish enough to miss it so far. During the Dallas IFF, I had a chance to speak with the documentary’s director, Peter Rosen. You can watch the interview below.

Earlier today, local music site We Shot JR announced it would discontinue posting in October, after almost five years of turning people onto new bands, turning them away from others, and generally being the honest look in the mirror every music community needs. That’s what I will remember most. Not the criticism of other bands/people, but the championing, passionately, of bands/people they liked.

Sometimes they were jerks, yes. Sometimes they picked on bands I like. Sometimes they picked on me. Almost ..read more

The documentary film Restrepo, which follows a platoon of American soldiers on the front lines of the war in Afghanistan in 2007, opens today at the Angelika Film Center. A few weeks ago we sat down with war photographer Tim Hetherington and Sgt. Maj. LaMonta Caldwell, who features in the film, to talk about making the first hand account of life on the front.

Nash Edgerton’s first feature film, The Square, is by no means the director’s first foray into the movie business. Edgerton has been working as a stuntman since the early 1990s, and has also had numerous acting roles as well as a few short films under his belt. It isn’t surprising, then, that The Square shows remarkable maturity for a first time filmmaker. The movie is a non-stop, nail-biting thriller with a cast of everyday characters who breath a great deal ..read more

In a few hours, the world will hear Jake Heggie’s opera Moby Dick for the first time. In the weeks leading up to the debut, Heggie felt confident that his work had come together, was polished and complete. With Moby Dick there were no horror stories of last minute revisions and added music. We spoke with Heggie about putting the finishing touches on his opera and seeing the entirety of the work take shape.

If you cracked open Andy Bothwell’s head, you would likely be overwhelmed with the volume of content spilling out: clippings from People magazine, Bill Murray’s scotch glass, a dozen pulp novels, a handbook on bloodletting.  In my interview with Andy, who performs under the name Astronautalis, I accused him of being an insatiable information junkie.  “Inspiration junkie,” he politely corrects me, “I’m constantly inspired by little facts and tidbits.  It’s a game of collect and store it.  You research fighter ..read more

Elaine D. and Charles A. Sammons Park, the plaza at the heart of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, was imagined as a populist urban oasis, a space that would become a destination — teeming with life day and night. Now, six months after the opening, there’s one simple problem: where are the people? Tucked away in a corner of downtown adjacent to the central business district’s ring of highways, Sammons Park is nearly always empty except when audiences are making ..read more

When it comes to an artist couple, it is almost as fascinating to watch the relationship between the two unfold through their work as it is to focus on them as individual artists. Often with romantic pairs, ideas cross-pollinate. One affects the other’s style and form, and in some cases, two minds seem to merge into a single artistic force. Think Jean Claude and Cristo, Gilbert and George, Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.

While Letitia Huckaby, who ..read more

It wasn’t the first time documentary filmmaker Peter Rosen was assigned to film the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, but when he arrived in Fort Worth in the summer of 2009 and saw that blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii was competing, he knew a special story was about to unfold. Rosen’s subsequent film, A Surprise in Texas, tells the story of last year’s Van Cliburn competition, creating out of the “Piano Olympics” an emotional journey that fuses vivid characters and ..read more

Arlington-native and New York University film school alum Will Canon returned to his hometown in the heat of August 2009 to shoot his new action thriller Brotherhood. You couldn’t really pick a better location for the steamy thrill-ride – the movie is hot and sweaty from its opening shot and its intensity never lets up. I sat down with Canon and Brotherhood’s leading actor Trevor Morgan to talk about shooting locally and what makes Brotherhood such a hit with audiences, ..read more

The dropping of the AFI prefix to the Dallas International Film Festival wasn’t the only major change heading into the 2010 edition. James Faust, formerly the festival’s director of programming, was promoted to artistic director, meaning he is largely responsible for shaping the focus and scope of the festival’s content. I sat down with Faust in advance of tonight’s opening gala to talk about his vision for the future of the Dallas International Film Festival: post AFI life, its national ..read more

Walking into the little room with walls made of old wooden fence pieces on a raised platform that is the centerpiece of Joshua Goode’s new installation “What the Thunder Said” at Guerilla Arts, you can’t overcome a feeling of claustrophobia. You are taken out of the inside of the gallery and placed in a new interior space, one that forces you to get uncomfortably close to the plaster and gold foil human form, the size of a young girl, that ..read more

For theater lovers, a festival offers an opportunity to indulge.  But there’s an advantage for artists too: festivals provide adventuresome audiences primed for testing new ideas.  One new idea debuting at this year’s Out of the Loop Fringe Festival comes from Dallas actor Donald Fowler.  Tonight, Fowler debuts his latest play, Creep, with a staged reading. The piece is loosely based on the story of Jack the Ripper, only Fowler’s play is set to music. I sat down with Fowler ..read more

The problem with the American Theater, says Mike Daisey, the dynamic and acclaimed performer who brings two of his solo shows to this weekend’s Out of the Loop Fringe Festival at the Water Tower Theater, is that it invests in the buildings that house performances and not the people who do things inside the buildings.

Daisey comes to Dallas this weekend with a scathing critique of American culture at large and its theater culture in particular. It is a culture, he ..read more

Southern Methodist University visiting drama instructor Mace Perlman carries around a bag of masks – hand-crafted leather faces made for him by a famous Italian master while he was studying with the renowned Commedia dell’arte company, Giorgio Strehler’s Piccolo Teatro di Milano. As a young man, Perlman’s fascination with Shakespeare led him to Europe where he studied with Strehler and the master mime Marcel Marceau in Paris. The experience fueled Perlman’s lifelong fascination with Commedia dell’arte and Renaissance drama ..read more

For a review of Taylor Mac’s The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, which opened last week at the Undermain Theatre, visit here.

FrontRow: This is a farewell tour for The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac. Why are you retiring the show?

Taylor Mac: I’ve been doing it for four years, and I just decided that I’ve done it over 200 times, and I still really like it. It’s always changing so it’s up to date, but I just felt like – it gets really lonely performing solo work, so I’m kind of breaking away from the solo thing. My last show had 36 people. I just had such a good time that I thought, “Well this is obviously what you want at this time in your life.” I’ve done maybe six or seven solo shows and it’s just like time – I feel like I’ve really explored all – not all that I can with the solo genre – but certainly enough for right now. So I’ll take a little break from it. But I love doing [The Be(a)st]. I had actually not done it for six months because I was working on this five-hour play in the city, and then I just did it at Yale for the first time – this show – for three shows, and I had such a great time that I forgot how much fun I had. But I’m still going to retire it because — it’s just time.

FR: Do you find that your mind tends to work in terms of solo shows, that when you sit down to write, the ideas tend towards becoming solo shows?

TM: What I tend to do is this thing that I learned from Dorothy Allison which is to write down the one thing about myself that I don’t want anyone else to know about me, and then I go “that’s what it’s about.” And whether or not I mask that in metaphor or do it literally depends on what I am writing down or what I’ve done recently in the past or how the piece starts to kind of work out – what I’m exactly trying to communicate. It really depends on the piece. I didn’t set out to make the 36 cast member, five hour play [The Lily’s Revenge]. I thought it would be 90 minutes and it would have maybe eight people. And when I started to explore the topic, I discovered that it needed to be epic, and that’s because the topic declared it. But this particular piece is really about trying to show the range that a single human being. So that’s why it is lonely.

FR: The Be(a)st is a show that sometimes feels like stand-up comedy – more routine than theater. Is that an important distinction for you, whether a work is theater, or comedy, or something else?

TM: I think everything’s a play. I think if you walk down the street from A to B, that’s a play because you’re always communicating with everything you do. There’s always a central character, you always want something, and you always try to get it or you don’t. So everything’s a play. So it’s really just whether or not you want to call it a play or not. My work is the premise of a theater artist working in the genre of pastiche. So if I just went to a stand up club and I performed this work I don’t know if I’d get booed off the stage, but you know people would think, “What?” because it is not just stand up. It is stand up, it is cabaret, it is musical theater, it is theater of the ridiculous, it’s mask work, it’s Commedia dell’arte, it’s performance art – it’s all of those things all squished together. So the appropriate place for it, even though I have performed it in clubs and libraries and museum, but the appropriate place is a theater because a theater is a place where anything can happen – it is not so narrow, so that’s why I prefer to do them in theater.

FR: There is a particular relationship between a theater audience and the performer that your work is constantly playing with.

TM: I recently saw a play on Broadway, and I thought wow if this audience wasn’t here this play would be exactly the same – not a single thing would be different. There might be a little shorter pause for the laughter, but [the actors] knew their beats and they hit them. And people like that kind of theater, and I don’t know why. I’m not interested in that kind of theater. I feel that television and film do that really well – they do it better than theater. So I prefer the theater that relies on the audience. It doesn’t have to be in a literally way, in like ‘hey how are you doing out there,’ and all of that thing. But it really depends on what the audience is doing and what this evening is, and what is happening in this moment. And audiences love it. When you acknowledge the present moment they love it, they’re craving for it. They don’t want to be taken away from their seats. They may say that’s what they want, but that is what they’ve been trained to say – that they want to be taken away and to go on a journey and all that stuff. But I’m like no! We’re having a shared experience, because otherwise you could just stay home and watch it on TV, and that will take them away from their home, and that’s what that’s for. But you don’t go and hang out with other people in a room to forget them.

I was recently in a [university] class [about Greek theater]. The students, their acting is very realistic and they are all going to be movie stars and they are all beautiful and they are going to have lovely careers because they’ve gone to a fancy school and they’ve got talent and they do all that stuff. But they were doing the Greeks and it was like, okay, you’ve reduced this Greek play. They are doing this high-stakes – big huge theatrical high-stakes; it used to be performed for like 10,000 people with big, huge platform shoes and big arms and huge masks and all this stuff – and they are turning it into a TV drama of the week. And you’re like “What are you doing?” You just want to scream. And they are having the hardest time doing it. And the reason it is hard is because they are being asked to be honest. F**k honesty. The truth in this circumstance is that it is larger than life – that’s the truth.

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman tries to hide in his films. His familiar style – the stoic, unobtrusive camera that patiently watches life – conveys the effect that you are in the room with the characters, the fly on the wall. His eye becomes your eye, and with him you become voyeur. Yet this voyeurism is never malicious, never manipulative – a quality that continues to distinguish Wiseman’s work from the proliferation of commonplace non-fiction image making, from reality TV to YouTube.

The nature of the documentary film has changed in the past decade, if only because it now exists in a context where nearly all of life can be easily documented. Despite that, Wiseman’s work and his process remain unchanged. He still shoots his movies on film, and for forty-two years and in thirty-eight films, Wiseman has made his subject the institution, from mental wards and police departments to zoos and public housing.

“I had the idea of doing institutions when doing Titcut Follies,” Wiseman said in a recent telephone interview, referencing his first film, which documents life in a ward for the criminal insane in Massachusetts Correctional Institution. “The institution provides the framework. The institution becomes the story.”

Wiseman’s focus on institutional life, rather than personal life, is what makes his films both unflinchingly authentic and somewhat inaccessible. Institutions unfold slowly and only reveal their character through subtle, often-missed cues. The same could be said about Wiseman’s documentaries. He said capturing real human drama inside institutions is relatively easy – “there’s always rich material in ordinary life” – but the challenge comes from assembling the many individual moments into a coherent whole – a film.

“In all the films I make, I put them together to suggest more abstract themes.” Wiseman said. “The selection of sequences suggests more abstract ideas.”

But in his latest film, La Danse – Le ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, Wiseman has latched onto a subject that changes the usual relationship an audience has with a Frederick Wiseman documentary. In La Danse, Wiseman still spends plenty of time capturing the normalcy of life in the Paris Opera Ballet – administrative meetings, rehearsal banter, pubic galas and events – but these segments are shown alongside long dance sequences, performances by the troupe and individual dancers practicing.

“Filming dance is tricky,” Wiseman said. “Almost all shots in this movie you see the full body and the full performer. I’ve seen too many dance films where there are lots of close ups. This is an attempt to transform dance into something else. I want to present it as it is.”

Wiseman said he deliberately did not want intrude on the dance performances because he wished them to be seen in his film as they would be scene if you were in the theater with Wiseman watching the performance.

Because dance is an art itself, the dance sequences in La Dance contain a much deeper and immediate expression of human feeling than usually present in Wiseman’s documentaries. But this doesn’t discredit Wiseman’s films, rather it draws to the foreground the unique way film is able to teach us much about art and the way it interacts with our understanding of the day-to-day.

“Dance is already an abstraction from experience,” Wiseman said. “The issue in editing is how to cut the abstractions with the literal sequences and have the whole thing together create a dramatic form.”