Hot Tickets: Sept. 2019

Panther Island Oktoberfest

395 Purcey St., Fort Worth, oktoberfestfw.com

Oktoberfest starts early with dachshund races, German food, biergarten settings, live music and dancing, and supreme silliness like a stein-hoisting competition. Sept. 26-28

Trinity River Kite Festival

146 W. Commerce St., Dallas, trinityrivercorridor.com

Families are welcome to bring their own kites, but the real draw here is the professionals who will demonstrate state-of-the-art giant show kites and flying skills along the beautiful Trinity. Enjoy bounce houses and food trucks, too. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sept. 14

Amon Carter Museum of American Art

3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth, 817-738-1933, cartermuseum.org

After months of remodeling work inside and out, the Carter reopens Sept. 14 (Sept. 3 for members) with a celebration and a slate of new exhibits.

• Party on the Porch The annual free festival has gallery tours, art-making activities, food trucks and live music outside on the patio with DJ Ronnie Heart, Abraham Alexander and The Band of Heathens. Sept. 14

• Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950 See the first decade of work by one of the greatest American photographers and filmmakers; this self-taught artist grew to become one of the most consequential photojournalists at Life magazine and a pioneering advocate for social justice for African-Americans. Sept. 14-Dec. 29

• Seeing in Detail: Scott and Stuart Gentling’s Birds of Texas The late Fort Worth brothers are best known for their monumental series of 40 detailed watercolors of Texas birds; this exhibit, the first of two, will present 23 of them. Sept. 14-Dec. 1

Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum

300 N. Houston St., 214-741-7500, dhhrm.org

Dallas’ Holocaust museum is opening in a new location, with greatly enlarged exhibition space and an expanded name and mission. It’s the first museum of its kind to combine honoring the memory of the Holocaust with a strong focus on human rights around the world today. Opens Sept. 18

Nasher Sculpture Center

2001 Flora St., Dallas, 214-242-5100, nashersculpturecenter.org

Elmgreen & Dragset: Sculptures This is the first major American show devoted to the Scandinavian art duo known for installations such as Prada Marfa and a giant upright swimming pool shaped like Van Gogh’s ear that stood in Rockefeller Plaza for a few months. The Nasher takes a look at their sculptural output. Sept. 14-Jan. 5

Dallas Museum of Art

1717 N. Harwood St., 214-922-1200, dma.org

Extended Dior: From Paris to the World In a surprise move, the DMA extended for two months its blockbuster Dior exhibit. The highlight of the show, which covers the history of the great design house from Christian Dior’s founding vision through today, is the museum’s barrel-vault space, in which you’re funneled along a kind of catwalk, up and back, surrounded by tiered rows of the best-dressed mannequins you’ve ever seen. Through Oct. 27 

Dallas Museum of Art Arts & Letters Live

1717 N. Harwood St., 214-922-1818, dma.org/all

The DMA events take place mostly in the museum’s Horchow Auditorium, except (where indicated) for authors who draw larger crowds. Tickets include a copy of the book. This season, they’re offering packages with two tickets and only one book, which makes things more attractive for couples.

• Sept. 5 Salman Rushdie His new book, Quichotte, is a modern Don Quixote set in the U.S. Moody Performance Hall, 2520 Flora St.

• Sept. 17 Tracy Chevalier The author of Girl With a Pearl Earring discusses A Single Thread, her new work of historical fiction.

• Sept. 20 Jim Mattis Call Sign Chaos is the memoir from the former U.S. secretary of defense. Dallas Baptist University’s Pilgrim Chapel, 3000 Mountain Creek Parkway.

• Sept. 21 Ben Folds The musician talks about his new memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs.

• Sept. 23 Margaret Atwood KERA’s Krys Boyd interviews the author about Testaments, a new sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (no book signing after this one; many seating sections already sold out). McFarlin Auditorium at SMU, 6405 Boaz Lane.

October Ann Patchett Oct. 6 at First United Methodist Church (across the street from the DMA) and JohnGrisham Oct. 24 at the Eisemann Center in Richardson.

Hay Forum Dallas

The Wild Detectives, 314 W. 8th St., Dallas, thewilddetectives.com

A literary festival that began in Hay-on-Wye, the famous book town in Wales, now has global reach — including into Oak Cliff. The OC bookshop hosts two days of literary panels with authors and journalists who are pushing boundaries, including Dallas News immigration writer Dianne Solis and New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson talking with Dallas literary star Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Beautiful Country Burn Again). 1-11 p.m. Sept. 7-8

HearHere

Winspear Opera House, 2301 Flora St., Dallas, 214-880-0202, attpac.org

The AT&T Performing Arts Center speaker series celebrates 10 years with a strong lineup. Michelle Obama The former first lady, whose Becoming was the bestselling American book of 2018 and is still going strong, opens this year’s season, which also includes Neil deGrasse Tyson, Spike Lee and more. 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26

Amphibian Stage Productions: National Theatre Live

Broadcasts from the National Theatre in London presented at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth,
3200 Darnell St. For tickets: 817-923-3012, amphibianstage.com

• The Lehman Trilogy Three actors play the original Lehman brothers — who arrived in the U.S. in the 1840s and eventually founded Lehman Brothers — as well as many others in a story that takes us up to the firm’s collapse, which helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis. Sept. 11 and 14

• One Man, Two Guvnors An unemployed musician takes two jobs and, for various hilarious reasons, must keep each of his bosses from learning about the other. James Corden stars. Oct. 2 and 5

Casa Mañana

3101 W. Lancaster Ave., Fort Worth, 817-332-2272, casamanana.org

The Buddy Holly Story The story of Lubbock native Buddy Holly and his reign over the golden age of rock ’n’ roll is told through hit songs like “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” It ends with a reenactment of the last show he played, in 1959, with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. Sept. 7-15

Broadway at the Bass

Bass Performance Hall, 4th and Calhoun streets, Fort Worth, 817-212-4280, basshall.com

Phantom of the Opera What’s still billed as Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber classic is actually a few years old and has played Bass Hall before. It’s so adored that we’re getting two weeks of it. Sept. 24-Oct. 5

Circle Theatre

230 W. 4th St., Fort Worth, 817-877-3040, circletheatre.com

What We Were This world-premiere play by Blake Hackler, a co-production with Second Thought Theatre, takes us to East Texas for a story about three sisters who share an ugly secret. This show has adult language and subject matter. Sept. 26-Oct. 19

Jubilee Theatre

506 Main St., Fort Worth, 817-338-4411, jubileetheatre.org

Single Black Female In Lisa B. Thompson’s two-woman comedy, 30-something African-American women look for love and great clothes in an unseeing world that works overtime to stereotype them. Sept. 27-Oct. 27

The Grand Berry Theater

2712 Weisenberger St., Fort Worth, grandberrytheater.com

The new little theater in The Foundry District gets underway with a mix of repertory, current art house and local-film screenings.

• The Farewell In this sweet family comedy starring Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians), a Chinese-American woman returns to China to visit her family and their dying matriarch. Sept. 13-19

• Grand opening Stop by to see the new theater, watch shorts by local filmmakers and enter to win free tickets. 5-10 p.m. Sept. 14

• Island of the Hungry Ghosts On the U.N.’s International Day of Peace, a screening of documentarian Gabrielle Brady’s 2018 look at asylum seekers housed by the Australian government in a detention center on Christmas Island. Sept. 21

Magnolia at the Modern

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., 817-738-9215, themodern.org/films

• Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins Documentarian Janice Engel tells the story of the woman — a Fort Worth Star-Telegram employee for most of the 1990s — who famously wrote: “I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.” Sept. 6-8

• Aquarela This wordless film is an immersive ode to water and ice, with gorgeous high-def images from around the world: glaciers calving, rainstorms raging, giant waves breaking in slo-mo. Filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky sets all that to loud music by Apocalyptica, a Finnish symphonic metal band. Sept. 13-15

• The Farewell (See The Grand Berry listing.) Sept. 20-22

• Official Secrets Keira Knightley portrays British intelligence whistleblower Katharine Gun in the true story of a spy who leaked a key NSA memo to the press before the Iraq War. Sept. 27-29

Cliburn at the Kimbell

Kimbell Art Museum, Piano Pavilion, 3333 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth, 817-212-4280, cliburn.org

Olga Kern This pair of concerts is not until October, but both can be expected to sell out this intimate venue, so consider them now. Fort Worth still adores its 2001 Cliburn gold medal winner, and she hasn’t appeared on this series in five years. Oct. 10-11

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra

Bass Performance Hall, 4th and Calhoun streets, Fort Worth, 817-665-6000, fwsymphony.org

• Carnival of the Animals The three-concert 2019-2020 children’s series kicks off with the sounds of animals in classical music. Examples: Rossini’s galloping William Tell Overture, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee and a fancy version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Sept. 7

• Cliburn Gold Plays Rach 3 These concerts are an especially Fort Worthian celebration of musical talent. 2017 Cliburn gold winner Yekwon Sunwoo plays a fiery competition favorite, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and the orchestra debuts a new piece by Till Meyn, a TCU composition professor. To create Remix, an homage to Miguel Harth-Bedoya in his final season as music director, Meyn remixed some of his own tunes under the influence of South American dance rhythms. Listen for the main theme, which transforms the name “Miguel H-B” into notes that you’ll hear several times. Sept. 13-15

Texas Ballet Theater

Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St., Dallas, texasballettheater.org

The Sleeping Beauty TBT opens its season in Dallas, Sept. 6-8, with a revival of Ben Stevenson’s sumptuous take on one of Tchaikovsky’s three great classic ballets. Can’t make it this month? The production moves Oct. 18-20 to Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth.