TheaterJones seeks to fill the void in arts coverage left by the diminishing print media, and to expand coverage of the performing arts on the Web. Our goal as journalists and critics is to cover the North Texas performing arts scene—theater, dance, classical music, opera, comedy and related media—as thoroughly and with as much energy, integrity, attitude and enthusiasm as mainstream broadcast and print media cover sports and politics.

We do this through reviews, features, news, essays, video, photography and opinion on a visually stimulating, clean and easily navigable website. In doing so, we provide a platform for arts journalists and critics to practice the craft of writing. Additionally, our site includes searchable event listings and audition notices as a service to the arts community and to the arts-going consumer.

Our inspiration is theater legend Margo Jones (pictured above), who started the regional theater movement in Dallas in the 1940s. Jones also inspired hundreds of professional regional theaters across the country. Read more about her in this Handbook of Texas Online bio, written by Helen Sheehy, author of the biography Margo: The Life and Theatre of Margo Jones. You can also learn more about her from the KERA-produced documentary Sweet Tornado: Margo Jones and the American Theater.

We're always looking for ways to improve our product, so contact us if you have suggestions or thoughts. Contact the editor if you're interested in joining our team.

Our review policy: We review professional and semi-pro performing arts events in North Texas, and while we don't make a habit of reviewing community theater, we will consider amateur, college and other productions on a case-by-case basis.

CONTACT

Publishing Editor and Co-Founder: Mark Lowry | marklowry@theaterjones.com

Operations Manager and Designer: Michael Warner | michaelwarner@theaterjones.com

Submit listings, auditions and news releases: listings@theaterjones.com

Advertising Inquiries: ads@theaterjones.com

Mailing Address:

TheaterJones.com

P.O. Box 225826

Dallas, TX 75222-5826

Phone: 214-926-9914

Fax: 214-324-2103

Physical address: 

1409 S. Lamar St., Suite 609

Dallas, TX 75215 

Contacts for contributors are in the bios below:

Mark was a staff writer and theater critic at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from 1998 to 2008, where he also wrote about dance, opera, dining, music and pop culture. He was a proud drama geek in high school and studied theater in college before turning his focus to journalism at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is on the board of the Press Club of Dallas, and is a member of the American Theater Critics Association. In 2003, he was selected for a fellowship at the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, for which he received a scholarship from the New York Times Foundation.

He co-founded TheaterJones in early 2009, and now serves as editor. He’s the senior stage editor and a writer for Arts+Culture Magazine, a TheaterJones media partner. He has written for the Dallas Observer, Dallas Morning News, FW Weeky, Auditoria and other publications. He is frequent contributor to the Star-Telegram, DFW.com, Dallas Voice and 360 West. He lives in Dallas.

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Gregory is a professional musician and music journalist who has held numerous musical directorships of opera, choral and symphonic organizations. In 2009, he was honored by being chosen as a fellow for the sixth annual NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera.

Other honors include a Pulitzer Prize nomination in composition, a Peabody award for performance, and an ASCAP award for his commitment to American Music. He holds a Master's degree in music from the prestigious music program at Indiana University in Bloomington. He also writes for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Arts+Culture Magazine.

Email: gregoryisaacs@theaterjones.com

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Margaret Putnam has been writing about dance since 1980, with works published by D Magazine, The Dallas Observer, The Dallas Times Herald, The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times, Playbill, Stagebill and Dance Magazine.

Email: margaretputnam@theaterjones.com

An NEA/Annenberg fellow in theatre criticism, Alexandra Bonifield has enjoyed life-long involvement in performance arts as performer, director, producer, arts manager and advocate in both Texas and California. She has lectured in theatre criticism at the University of North Texas and has been honored for her writing at UNT’s Mayborn Non-fiction Writers Conference. She brings perspective, grounded understanding and committed passion to her commentary. A Texas native, she is a graduate of The Hockaday School. Find her stage reviews and interviews online at her blog, criticalrant.com.

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Cheryl holds a BFA and MFA in Dance from Sam Houston State University. Her extensive dance studies at Sam took her beyond choreography and performance into the realms of technical production, research and administration. She danced with Kista Tucker Dance Company and SHSU Dance Company but has also worked behind the scenes as stage manager, concert director, box office manager, lighting and costume designer, costume crew and backstage crew.

Upon graduation in 2008, Cheryl moved to the Metroplex with her husband and immediately started teaching at Collin College. Richland College was added to her list of employers in August 2011. She has taught dance appreciation, jazz, ballet, modern, musical theater dance, and tap.

She took on the new title of "Mommy" in 2009 when her daughter was born. As if being a professor, writer and mommy weren't enough, Cheryl also enjoys cooking and creating new recipes. She looks forward to branching out into other areas of dance and watching her kids grow to be good dancers like their mom—maybe even better.

Email: cherylcallon@theaterjones.com

Katie Dravenstott is a dance teacher and freelance dance writer based in Dallas. Her work has been published in Dance Teacher, Dance Spirit and Dancer magazine. She also manages her own blog and contributes articles on the studio scene to the Dance Council of North Texas quarterly publication, DANCE! North Texas.

Robert Hart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor who has worked as a photojournalist, editor and corporate media executive for the past 30 years. His photographs have been published in every major newspaper in America as well as several national magazines. Robert's team received the 2001 Editor & Publisher award for Best Special Section in a Newspaper Online Service for DallasNews.com's "Toxic Traps." Robert won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for his work on The Dallas Morning News team project "Violence Against Women." He is currently a member of the journalism faculty at Southern Methodist University, where he teaches Digital Photojournalism.

Robert was Associate Editor of DallasNews.com, Managing Director of Arlington.com, a picture editor at The Dallas Morning News a former city editor at The Arlington Morning News and Director of Photography at The Times-Picayune. He holds a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of Texas at Arlington. Robert is married to the beautiful and brilliant Mary Ann Hart and they have two sons, Michael and Jesse, who are both professional dancers in NYC.

Email: Robert@roberthart.com

Martha Heimberg has been writing about theater, the arts and historic preservation for over 30 years for numerous Texas newspapers and magazines, including Dallas Weekly, D Magazine and Texas Monthly. She currently writes a weekly theater column for Turtle Creek News. She has won awards from the Dallas Press Club and the Texas Historic Commission, and is a founding member of the Dallas Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum. She coordinates DART’s Poetry in Motion program, and serves on the WordSpace board. Her degrees in English and comparative literature are from Southern Methodist University. She is associate professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas.

Lindsay Jenkins is a theater kid from way back. She was first introduced to theater at the age of 5 when she delivered a critically acclaimed turn as Little Bo Peep in her Kindergarten play. She has been active in theater ever since performing in everything from small roles to really small roles. She recieved her BA in Theater with a Minor in Business from the University of Texas at Arlington and works in Arts Adminstration.  She has worked in various capacities for Bass Performance Hall, Teatro Pregones (New York, NY), Charles W. Eisemann Center, Dallas Black Dance Theater, Fresh Propaganda and TeCo Theatrical Productions. She is the Executive Director of Little Dynamo Project Management, an event coordination and production company.

Lindsay is also a poet and a writer. In 2009 she traveled to Florida and competed at the National Poetry Slam as a member of the Dallas Slam team.  She is currently a teaching artist (Theater and Creative Writing) and pursuing an MA in Creative Writing.

Michael earned his Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Dallas where he also received training as an actor, appearing in numerous college productions. After graduating from UD, he gained experience working in some of the major theaters in the Dallas/Fort Worth area including Shakespeare Dallas and the Dallas Children's Theater. He lived in New York for two years where he received his Master's degree in Theater from Brooklyn College. Most recently, he moved back to the DFW area and received his Texas teacher's certification in theater.

Email: mikemaiella@theaterjones.com

Amy Martin stayed up late to watch Johnny Carson as a child and has been a comedy addict ever since, living proof that an hour-a-day minimum dose of comedy keeps you sort of sane. She included comedy as part of her beat at the Dallas Observer, where she originated the music coverage. At the Dallas Times Herald she made her mark as a comedy critic and eclectic arts reviewer, and was the first journalist outside of Houston to cover legendary comedian Bill Hicks.

A journalist with a yen for variety, Martin has done environmental journalism at The Dallas Morning News and national magazine Garbage, served as commentator and substitute talk-show host at KERA, and now writes weekly for The Dallas Morning News interfaith blog Texas Faith.

Regarded by many as the "Moonlady," (www.moonlady.com) Martin operates a 3200+ member online news service and website for North Texas called Moonlady News, covering non-mainstream spirituality, holistic, nature and progressive communities. As executive director of Earth Rhythms, Martin presented seasonal events for 20 years, including Winter SolstiCelebration, along with concerts by national spiritual musicians such as Deval Premal and R Carlos Nakai.

John holds a Bachelor’s of Music degree from the Crane School of Music, a Master’s Degree in Performance (Conducting) and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree (Conducting) – both from the University of North Texas, where he was the final student of former Dallas Symphony music director Anshel Brusilow. In addition to conducting, John maintains an active role as an orchestrator and arranger; a recent project was a new orchestration of Paul Kletzki’s Piano Concerto, Op. 22. The work was recorded by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra with Joseph Banowetz, pianist and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2010 (Best Instrumental Performance with Orchestra).

Review: johnnorine@theaterjones.com

Kris first knew he wanted to be involved in theater early in life when his mother took him to Casa Mañana. Kris became involved in theater in high school, eventually appearing in The Importance of Being Earnest, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Annie Get Your Gun and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. In college, Kris won acting awards in Poetz Corner (Edgar Allen Poe), The Rivers and Ravines (Caleb Stratman) and Murder By Natural Causes.

After receiving a Bachelor's in Rhetoric from Hardin-Simmons University, Kris began graduate study in Rhetoric and Performance Studies at the University of North Texas. While at UNT, Kris wrote, directed and appeared in a number of performance art pieces, receiving special recognition for his role in the adaptation of the book Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans, as Diego Rivera in Frida Kahlo in Love, and for his adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s haunting short story, The Lottery. Kris has traveled to conferences and performance festivals around the country as a director, performer and academic, presenting papers and performances on Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Andy Kaufman, in conjunction with his study of the satirical grotesque. He has taught classes in Performance of Literature, Storytelling and Public Speaking and Public Speaking and Critical Thinking at UNT and KD Studio Actors’ Conservatory.

Email: krisnoteboom@theaterjones.com

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Dallas native and professional, tall actor David Novinski earned his B.A. in Drama from the University of Dallas. It was there that he mastered the spelling of "theatre," which marked him from the beginning and sent him on to the University of Pittsburgh to earn his MFA in Acting.

After some regional Shakespeare festivals and summer stock and he returned home to the metroplex with his beautiful wife to start a family, at which they became very proficient. His usual conceited air is really just a combination of hearing loss and indigestion- a by-product of raising four boys.

Presently he makes his living as a designer/artist with novinskistudio, a design firm he founded with his father. When not in a chair, he is usually found standing or lying down. In his spare time, he longs to find out why the excitement of document storage never lives up to the of thrill document retrieval.

He would like to thank the DFW Theater Critics for being so gracious. He would also like to thank all the little people. Considering his height that is pretty much all of you. You may consider yourself thanked.

Email: davidnovinski@theaterjones.com

Cathy O’Neal’s first live theater experience was attending Julius Caesar at Casa Mañana on a school field trip. She later became a board member (and eventually board president) at Theatre Arlington, but it take long to realize that the real fun was not in the boardroom looking at the budget, but backstage with the theater trash. In 1995, she nervously took her place in the tech booth as a spotlight operator for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and has been theater trash ever since.

Cathy has worked her way through almost every theater production job and settled on two favorites, stage managing and props design. She has worked in one or both of those capacities at several area theaters. Cathy has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Arlington, where she has taught Media Writing, Public Relations Case Studies, Public Relations Management and Intro to Speech as an adjunct teacher.

She has been a staff writer for the The Dallas Times Herald and the arts and entertainment editor for the Arlington Star-Telegram, and still works as a freelance writer. Cathy’s day job is communications director for the Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts in Arlington. The only person with a cooler job is her son, Sean, who is on the national writing team of The Onion’s AV Club.

Email: cathyoneal@theaterjones.com

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Perry Stewart was theater critic and entertainment columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for almost four decades, chronicling the early careers of Betty Buckley, Sara Hickman, Brent Spiner, Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett. He also reviewed film for the Star-Telegram during the late 1960s and early '70s and for the Cable Connection Magazine in the 1980s.

He wrote a general entertainment column for Fort Worth Magazine, under the name "Peggy Irvin" and reported on Fort Worth night life for Texas Monthly Magazine. Perry graduated from Texas Christian University with a B.A. in government, intending to be a political writer. In 1966, the Star-Telegram assigned him to cover the governor's race in his native Arkansas. Those articles prompted the newspaper to move him, sans explanation, to the entertainment desk.

Perry keeps a low profile, although the back of his head and silver ponytail are visible in the under-appreciated student/independent film, Limo Driver.

Email: perrystewart@theaterjones.com

Emily Trube started a career in broadcast journalism in 2003, after spending 11 years in the downtown theater scene in New York. She’s currently the morning reporter for CBS Radio’s KRLD Radio in Dallas. Before coming to the Metroplex, she covered Austin’s local and state politics for NewsRadio 590 KLBJ. Shs's appeared on CNN’s Headline News and Court TV. During the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, she provided live reports for KCBS Radio in San Francisco and for BBC Radio. Emily went to New York from her hometown of Tyler, Texas to attend New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, where she graduated with a BFA in theater, after studying directing, acting, dramaturgy, playwriting and design via Tisch’s Playwrights Horizons Studio. Emily’s decision to switch gears from theater to journalism came about because of her experiences following 9/11.

Email: emilytrube@theaterjones.com

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Elaine wrote her first review—of Dallas Theater Center’s Hamlet ESP—for her junior high school paper. Three decades and approximately 3 million words later, the Dallas native is a veteran journalist and editor with awards from the Associated Press, Women in Communications and Dallas Press Club. 

After a decade as a TV and film critic at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and Toledo Blade, Elaine joined the Dallas Observer as theater critic in 2001. She has taught journalism and media criticism at Ohio State, SMU and Collin College. She holds a B.A. in theater from Trinity University and a Master of Liberal Arts from SMU.

She is now focusing her time on the Dallas Observer.

Arts+Culture magazine features articles, interviews and reviews on gallery and museum shows, theater productions, people in the arts, classical music, dance, opera, books dining and fashion. 

It is published  by ArtStars Media, LLC, a Dallas-based company. The community publication prints 10 times a year and is distributed free to the public at more than 200 locations in DFW. All contributors are Texas-based, and A+C is printed in Dallas.

Here is a list of distribution points.