Weird science, that is. In Port Twilight, playwright Len Jenkin creates a surreal city in which different visions of the future are being sought out and decoded: genetic, messianic and cinematic. The Undermain Theater's splendid world premiere is a dark, comic carnival where scientists dance, an alien speaks, a rabbi despairs and a shlocky filmmaker worries about getting the future right. Jerome Weeks reviews.

It slices, it dices, it wants to have its splatter-film fun and mock it at the same time. But Slasher — written by former Dallasite Allison Moore and produced this year at the Humana Festival — ultimately muddles things. Given a full-scale, full-speed-ahead area premiere by Kitchen Dog Theater, Slasher never cuts to the heart: the horror film — thrill-ride psychodrama or sexist ragefest?

Inspired by cellist Yo-Yo Ma's popular Silk Road recordings, Fort Worth Symphony music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya has begun a series of concerts and CDs, Caminos del Inka — "Trails of the Incas." They showcase three centuries of orchestral music from the Pacific Coast South American countries once part of the Incan Empire. The FWSO brings the project back for concerts in Bass Hall this week — after talking to us on Think.

Emmy Award-winning actor-director Charles Dutton has led a remarkable life. He's a twice-convicted felon who still managed to graduate from the Yale School of Drama. But on Saturday in Fort Worth, when he presented his one-man autobiographical show, From Jail to Yale – Serving Time on Stage, it wasn't his life story that was spellbinding. Jerome Weeks reviews.

Ever since archaeologists found the remains of the Rose Theater in 1989 — where Christopher Marlowe's dramas were once enacted — there's been an explosion of research into the Elizabethan playhouses. Scholars still haven't answered many puzzles — they're not even certain how many sides the Globe had. But they've found some of the first concrete clues to what the theaters were like, what stage life was like. London archaeologist Julian Bowsher gave a lecture Thursday at the Dallas Museum of Art — and spoke to Think.

We have seen the future and it looks like DEVO: The Undermain Theater opens its new season next week with Len Jenkin's surreal, sci-fi noir, Port Twilight. So we spoke to artistic director Katherine Owens about the future in Port Twilight and the Undermain's own Campaign for the Future.

Big noisy fun but that's all: DTC artistic director Kevin Moriarty opens the company's new home with A Midsummer Night's Dream that pumps up the volume and the dancefloor energy. It's got balloons, graffiti art and squirt guns. Forget about anything heartfelt, though.

This is your last opportunity to reserve tickets for Free Night of Theater 2009. This year, 25 Dallas-area theaters are participating in the program.

In the Saturday Spotlight, we're paying a visit to the doctor on Halloween.

Innovative architect Rem Koolhaas met with the media last week — and then sat down with us to answer questions about the Wyly Theatre, Dallas architecture ("very bland"), the courage of Dallas donors and the horizontal vs. the vertical in the Arts District.