In case you missed the other change here in the Arts District this week, the Dallas Theater Center has promoted current literary associate and acting company member Lee Trull to a new position: director of new play development. I talked with him about why a continued focus on new work is important for our biggest regional theater, right over here on FrontRow.
Meanwhile, the Dallas Museum of Art celebrates National Poetry Month by inviting two—the Irish Paul Muldoon and American Nikky Finney—to come and read to us. A fact that will definitely improve your life somehow: when I was in high school, the poet laureate of Texas was a guy named Cleatus Rattan, which is a pretty awesome name. However, his poetry was not so awesome. He wrote an ode to his Microsoft screensaver. Anyway, yes, bad poetry can be off-putting. But even Don Draper reads Frank O’Hara, which is how you know there’s something redeemable out there. Muldoon’s won a Pulitzer Prize, and Finney a National Book Award. The two couldn’t be more different in tone and style, but they’re both unveiling contributions to the DMA’s Visual Verse, poems inspired by paintings in the museum’s collection.
And since April is Jazz Appreciation Month (we’re just overdosing on culture right now), there’s a couple of musical activities happening tonight that might appeal. First, the Sammons Jazz series offers a double set featuring Booker T. Washington’s jazz combo band and lab singers on early and Jorge Ginorio’s Latin Jazz Group to finish things off. In Fort Worth, Scat Jazz Lounge hosts Ellis Marsalis, a celebrated jazz pianist whose last name you might also recognize thanks to his talented sons, Wynton, Branford, Jason, and Delfeayo. (As a family, they’ve won the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award.) Marsalis’ performance benefits the University of Texas at Arlington’s Adonis Rose Endowed Scholarship, which supports current and new students in UTA’s jazz program.
For more to do tonight, go here.
