In the Saturday spotlight, we’re getting to know some local artists. During the annual Cedars Open Studios tour, you can tour the artist studios in this Dallas neighborhood. The event culminates with the Corinth Park Party, featuring live music, a group art exhibition and the "art as fashion/fashion as art extravaganza." Click here for the event's Web site. And if you plan on going, here's a map of participating studios.

You can also hear This Week in Texas Music History on Friday on KXT and Saturday on KERA radio. But subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss an episode. And our thanks to KUT public radio in Austin for helping us bring this segment to you.

And if you’re a music lover, be sure to check out Track by Track, the bi-weekly podcast from Paul Slavens, host of KERA radio’s 90.1 at Night.

• Click the player to listen to the podcast:

• Expanded online version:

Ernesto “Ernie” Caceres was born in Rockport, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1911. As a young man, he performed in San Antonio and throughout South Texas with his brother, Emilio Caceres, and his cousin, Johnny Gomez. The trio’s popularity earned the group an appearance on the Benny Goodman radio show in 1937. Soon, Ernie Caceres began playing the saxophone with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Woody Herman. Following a stint in the U.S. Army during World War II, Caceres went on to play with Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars. Drawing from a broad range of musical influences, including Mexican-American, African-American and Anglo-American, Ernesto Caceres joined the many other talented artists from the Lone Star State who helped shape jazz music during the 20th century.

Next time on This Week in Texas Music History, we’ll celebrate a Texan who was born the son of a former slave but went on to become one of the most popular and influential songwriters in American history.

Two area museums celebrated important milestones this week. The Museum of Nature & Science on Wednesday broke ground on a new building at Victory Park. The new $80 million Fort Worth Museum of Science and History opens today. KERA’s Stephen Becker toured the new space.

• Listen to the KERA radio report:

• Online version:

A sculpture called The Happy Family stands in the courtyard of the museum’s school. The piece features three cheerful blue figures, each balancing on one leg.

It’s an image that could serve as a metaphor for the whole institution.

With its dual science and history missions, the museum is by its very nature a balancing act.

Charlie Walter is responsible for finding the right interplay among the museum’s many purposes. He’s the executive vice president in charge of programming

WALTER:  “Some people love science, some people love history. Some people have small kids and want to go and have a hands-on experience. Other people want a more adult, aesthetic experience. So we think the building really strikes that balance. It was a balancing act, but the sweet spot is when you have different components that will appeal to different guests who walk through our door."

Skeletons of dinosaurs that lived in North Texas roam the DinoLabs downstairs. Another room details the Barnett Shale, the natural gas reserve that lies a mile beneath the museum’s floor.

Head upstairs, and you’ll find the Cattle Raisers Museum and the Fort Worth History Gallery. The latter space traces the city’s history through the development of the street car.

WALTER: “That’s what makes it so powerful. It’s a Fort Worth story, it’s Fort Worth-centric, it’s interpreting science and history right in your backyard. So any kiddo or adult can connect with it and then explore more right in your community. You can go down to Glen Rose and see the tracks right there in the river that these dinosaurs made. You see the energy production all around us.”

But that’s not to say the museum has limited itself to Fort Worth, or even Texas.

One of the highlights is CSI: The Experience, based on the hit TV show. It’s an interactive production created by the museum that travels the country.

Visitors observe one of three crime scenes involving a dead body. Through forensic science, good old fashioned detective work and the help of a few video-taped experts, you’ll gather clues to solve the case.

One of those experts teaches you to analyze blood spatter patterns.

EXPERT: “If an object has blood on it or is bleeding and is walking through a scene, drips will come off periodically, and when you look at the scene, what you’ll see is a trail. That indicates movement through that scene.”

Cool, yet kinda gross.

But just wait until you study your victim on the autopsy table.

EXPERT: “When cleaning and prepping the body, my assistant found more maggots."

Learning can be a dirty business.

Still, learning is the common thread that holds the museum together.

Sam Dean is a scientist based at one of Americas’ leading science museums, the  Exploratorium in San Francisco. He designed some of the children’s exhibits now on display in Fort Worth and says that the museum’s dedication to education is what sets it apart from other science museums.

SAM DEAN: “Learning comes to the forefront. And so the design of your building and exhibits all flow from that being the number one thing that’s important – learning and exploration, discovery, joy and whimsy. Those things are not easy to find in a lot of places.”

Beginning today, you can hunt for them in Fort Worth.

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The new Legorreta + Legorreta-designed Fort Museum of Science and History is open — a major upgrade in the Cultural District. It features a new planetarium, dinosaur exhibitions and mini-museums devoted to cattle, Fort Worth history, energy (basically, the oil and gas industry) and even the science of CSI. We talk with vice president of development Carl Hamm about balancing education with entertainment in this episode of Think. Think airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m. on KERA (Channel 13).

• Click here to listen to the KERA radio report about the museum.
• Click here to read about the museum's innovative planetarium.

Kent Williams as Mr. Argento with Tomas, his pet monkey

• Lawson Taitte's review for the Dallas Morning News

• Alexandra Bonifield's review for Critical Rant & Rave

• KERA radio review:

• Expanded online review:

The Undermain Theater is presenting the world premiere of Len Jenkin’s dark comedy, Port Twilight. The play follows several storylines as they trail through the city – and all involve what might be called messages and 'alien contact.' Our narrator-guides to the city of Port Twilight are two out-of-work cabaret performers. They work day jobs at an outfit called OPME (Off-Planet Message Exchange), where they monitor interstellar radio noise for messages from other planets. A rogue biochemist angrily quits his job but soon gets hired by a cheesy filmmaker to work on his latest sci-fi script. It’s about travelling to another planet. And a despairing old rabbi, played by Bruce DuBose, wanders the city streets, peddling amulets and trying to call down the Messiah.

Ian Sinclair and Bruce DuBose, l to r

DUBOSE: “The desperate citizens of Port Twilight no longer believe in the holy names. They’ll starve me to death. No matter. After tonight, all will be changed and the End of Days will be upon us.”

Give a dozen designers the task of creating sets for all this, and the majority would try to replicate some aspect of the city, Port Twilight. They’d be foolish. They’d have to compete with playwright Len Jenkin’s fantastical language, the way his dialogue conjures a shadowy cityscape out of noir movies like Nightmare Alley. But then, his Port Twilight is also deeply surreal like something out of a Fellini film, with wax museums, an organ grinder and an old park –

DACK AND DONNA (the play's narrators): — “beyond the park, Raven Laboratories.
“And the limestone caves where gypsies live. Beyond the caves, the Dark Forest.”
“ Leopards.”
“Wolves.”
[Howling and music fade]

So – what John Arnone did for the Undermain production was skip the whole mythic city and delve straight into Jenkin’s sources of inspiration. Jenkin’s play is a sci-fi noir spinning out various futures: technological, religious and extraterrestrial. It mixes ancient Hebrew predictions with space maidens and genetic experiments. As a result, for the scenery, Arnone has wrapped the Undermain’s entire basement with a long canvas backdrop. He’s had it painted with big, bold images from movie posters, tattoo parlors, Mexican wrestlers' masks and Japanese comics (kudos to painters Linda Noland and Terry Hays). Even some of the scientific instruments used on stage are assemblages of Buddha heads, doll parts and vinyl hosing. The whole production has a neon, trash-culture aesthetic that suits both the play's noir and sci-fi elements, both the future and the decaying past. Think: extremely low-rent Bladerunner.

I’ve gone on about the production design like this partly because not many small stage companies have a Tony Award-winning designer like Arnone. And partly because so much of Port Twilight works on the level of texture, atmosphere and mood. It’s a mood of apocalyptic dread shot through with a vaudeville-baroque delight in theatricality and humor. At one point, we see a line of lab-coated scientists observing the orange flash of an explosion. The next time we see them, they’re a chorus line dancing stone-faced to the music of the “Science Dance.”

[music]

Jessica Cavanagh, Ariana Cook, Josh Blann and Christian Taylor, l to r

Directed by Katherine Owens, the Undermain’s production — everything from DuBose's music to Jeffrey Frank's video design — is a marvelous, funky, pop-culture collage. The cast is strong, including DuBose in two roles (rabbi and filmmaker), Kent Williams in a variety of comic cameos and Christian Taylor as a spookily opaque Messiah. Josh Blann has an electric presence as the spiked-hair biochemist, and Jonathan Brooks and Shannon Kearns-Simmons do a nice job, playing our showbizzy, tour-guide couple who can seem cheerful, sinister and clueless by turns.

The staging's only weaknesses are an occasional lack of poignance, of a human dimension that would let us feel something more for several of these characters, make them more than quick, comic types. A romance, for instance, between Blann's biochemist and a hired-academic screenwriter (Ariana Cook) seems to pop up out of nowhere. For his part, Jenkin has also researched and loaded in so many futuristic scenarios that the best Owens can do sometimes is just have characters stand there and swap ideas about mind-altering nanobots.

A nanobot is a microscopic machine. The theory is that thousands could eventually be injected directly into our brains and they’d shape our senses, our ideas. Language itself is a kind of mind-altering nanobot, and thanks to the Undermain, thanks to Len Jenkin’s language, Port Twilight makes for a haunting, mind-altering experience.

Stephanie "Tefi" Hindall is a Dallas-based jewelry designer who runs her own design studio, Tefi Designs. Not only does Stephanie create some really unusual and creative jewelry and accessories, she is also the founder of EtsyDallas.com, a cooperative craft collective of artists and designers living and working in Dallas. These folks sell their merchandise on the Etsy Web site, as well as at local and regional craft fairs and events, one of which is taking place on Saturday at Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas. The 2nd Annual Jingle Bash will feature 50-plus Dallas Etsy artists exhibiting and selling fabulous creations, perfectly timed for the upcoming gift giving holiday season, or for your own personal pleasure.

In an e-mail exchange, we took a peek inside Stephanie's creative and inventive mind as a part of this week's Art&Seek Q&A:

Art&Seek: You are quite the crafty gal. When did you know that you had a knack for creating such wonderful jewelry and accessories?

Stephanie Hindall: It’s a pretty unremarkable story, really: Girl graduates with English degree and no job prospects, girl meets beads, girl starts making necklaces. It was a creative outlet for me at the time (1998) and just blossomed from there into a full-fledged business.

A&S: What sorts of materials inspire your designs?

S.H.: I use top quality beads and findings of all kinds: gemstones, Czech glass, pearls, sterling silver. I also make my own needle felted beads using 100 percent naturally-, ethically-raised wool. For my fabric items (brooches, hair clips) I use designer and vintage fabric.

A&S: I don't particularly like the term "craft." However, when I hear it phrased as "handmade," I want to break open my piggy-bank and shop 'til I drop. What is your take on the world of crafts now, versus, say, 20-years ago?

S.H.: Honestly, I didn’t think there was a world of crafts 20 years ago. That would have been 1989, when I was 14 and starting high school. Back then, “crafts” to me meant lanyards and plastic pony bead stretchy bracelets – you know, the things reserved for summer camp and vacation Bible school. The artists of Etsy Dallas, who I am proud to be associated with, are professional, talented artists who take the term “crafts” to a completely new level – one that is emulated by successful retailers like Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and Fossil.

A&E: When you are creating something, do you have the story in your head as to how you’ll describe it? Or is it the other way around?

S.H.: For the most part I make a piece, photograph it, then name it right there on the spot as I add it to my online shop. I draw from my insanely useless knowledge of pop culture as well as all the schooling I got in the English department at UT Austin. You can’t go wrong referencing Heathers or quoting e.e. cummings. People in the art/craft world often take themselves way too seriously. I like to mix it up with a bit of humor and self-depracation from time to time. I’m not curing cancer or rocketing to the moon. I’m just a girl making pretty things that I hope people will like (and buy!).

A&S: You work full-time as a grant writer for a local non-profit serving homeless children, and you are an adviser for La Reunion, a member of the North Oak Cliff Conservation District, a board member of the Oak Cliff Artisans, a wife, a mother and the founder of Etsy Dallas. When do you find time to sleep, much less create these works of art?

S.H.: This word you use: “sleep.” Yeah, I’m not sure what that means.

A&S: Share with me some of the history of Etsy Dallas and what you hope to accomplish (or continue accomplishing). Also, what sorts of artisans can be found among the Etsy Dallas crew?

S.H.: I founded Etsy Dallas back in September 2007 as a response to the lack of inclusive craft groups in Dallas and the need for a leader to step forward and start a cohesive and active craft collective. So I rolled up my sleeves and took the lead. Today, Etsy Dallas is made up of a group of local artists and designers who have been juried into the group for both the quality of their work and their level of commitment to the team.

A&S: Of all the goodies you have for sale, which is your favorite and why?

S.H.: Boy, that’s like asking a mother to pick her favorite child. The newest pieces I am working on are my fabric brooches, which sold very well at this past weekend’s Cliff Fest. But my staple is my original design Peapod pendant necklace, which is a customer favorite.

A&S: I actually shot some video footage of your jewelry at Cliff Fest this past weekend and was really kicking myself for not acquiring some of the treasures I saw. So, I’m very excited to attend Jingle Bash this coming Saturday. Tell me about the event and what visitors can expect.

S.H.: This is the second year we’re putting on the Jingle Bash and have been planning it since April. It’s going to be amazing – a sort of collective community party that happens to have incredibly talented artists selling their handmade wares. Aside from a variety of locally crafted clothing, jewelry, body care, art and more, the Bash will also have two full bars, great home-cooked food, pool and shuffleboard, DJ tunes and live music. And if you’re one of the first 50 shoppers, count yourself lucky because you’ll be handed a free collectible canvas Goody Bag chock full of handmade items.

The Art&Seek Q&A is a weekly discussion with a person involved in the arts in North Texas. Check back next Thursday for another installment.

• Click the audio player to listen to the KERA radio report:

• Online version:

More than 20 donations of a million dollars or more have been made to build the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Victory Park.

But with an estimated cost of $185 million, even million-dollar donations don’t take a huge chunk out of the bill.

Enter Ross Perot Jr.

At Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony for the new building, he recalled a conversation he had with the museum’s chief fundraiser, Forrest Hoglund. Hoglund suggested that Perot and his sisters take their mother, Margot, a former teacher, to see the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

PEROT: “And I think before mom even went into the building, just the school buses alone lined up with the school kids to go in that day, she was convinced this was something she wanted to do. And if you want to know how things work in our family, probably like yours, if your mother is on board, pretty much the rest of us are gonna follow.”

The trip ultimately netted a $50 million donation and the naming rights to the museum in honor of their parents, H. Ross and Margot Perot.

The museum isn’t scheduled to open until 2013. Fundraising continues, and they’re still about $60 million away from their goal.

But on Wednesday, several dozen kids saw demonstrations on gravity, wind power, light and other concepts they may learn about one day on field trips to the museum.

And Perot saw a vision of the future.

“We know that millions of children will go through the building every year … and I hope that with their dreams and aspirations, they will stay in Dallas, they will build their business in Dallas, and continue to build this fabulous economy that we call home.”

Congratulations to Masako Fujinami of Dallas, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest! A few weeks back, we asked our regular submitters to the contest to go out and shoot their best photo of the Arts District, and Masako took us up on the assignment. The above picture is part of an excellent series of photos she took of the Wyly Theatre and the Winspear Opera House; some more of them are below.  Masako follows last week's winner, Neff Conner.

If you would like to participate in the Flickr Photo of the Week contest, all you need to do is upload your photo to to our Flickr group page. It's fine to submit a photo you took previous to the current week, but we are hoping that the contest will inspire you to go out and shoot something fantastic this week to share with Art&Seek users. If the picture you take involves another facet of the arts, even better. The contest week will run from Monday to Sunday, and the Art&Seek staff will pick a winner on Monday afternoon. We'll notify the winner through FlickrMail (so be sure to check those inboxes) and ask you to fill out a short survey to tell us a little more about yourself and the photo you took. We'll post the winners' photo on Wednesday.

Now, here's more from Masako:

Masako Fujinami

Title of photo: Dee & Charles Wyly Theater by REX | OMA

Equipment Used: Nikon d200

Tell us more about your photo:

The Wyly Theatre appears monolithic when compared with the Winspear Opera House across the street at the new AT&T Performing Arts Center. Four hundred and sixty-six aluminum tubes drape down the sides of the building like a giant metal curtain. The surface appears to ripple due to the aluminum tubes varying in diameter from three inches to 10 inches. However, I just love how the building's skin changes colors to reflect the surrounding environment and time of day.

I also appreciate the very thoughtful design – the true uniqueness of the Wyly is the structure and flexibility. It is the building’s basic functions which have led to this design. The walls retract, the stage moves and the tiers of seats can be hoisted away. Truly designed to be one of the world’s most innovative theater facilities, here in Dallas, Texas. I am so proud to see that.

Heeeere's Auteurism! Chris Hury plays a desperate filmmaker and Martha Harms is his would-be starlet

• David Novinski's review for Renegade Bus
  

• Review by Mark Lowry for Theater Jones

• Review by Lawson Taitte for Dallas Morning News

• Review by Alexandra Bonifield for Critical Rant & Rave

In Allison Moore's stage thriller, Slasher, when we first meet a low-budget moviemaker named Marc Hunter, he's in a Hooters-style joint in Round Rock. He's trading film-school insights about horror films with Jody, a worshipful movie geek who wants to be his assistant (Drew Wall).

What is truly scary, Hunter tells Jody, about director Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is not Leatherface, the masked, mass-murdering maniac who inspired a hundred Michael Meyers and Jason Voorhees knockoffs. No, it's the family — the carnival of freaks who inhabit the old farmhouse with Leatherface. Chainsaw is a takedown of the locked-together, backwoods, American nuclear family and its inherent horrors.

Many theatergoers may think Hunter is blowing cineaste hot air here, trying to inflate a classic bit of gory, grade-Z movie fun with a lot of trendy academic pretension. But Hunter is actually offering a long-established analysis of Chainsaw — and one that neatly sets up the  family conflicts that will come soon enough in Slasher. Playwright Allison Moore clearly knows her stuff, particularly the details and mythology surrounding Hooper and Chainsaw. Round Rock, for instance, is just a smidgen north of where Hooper shot his film — in an empty farmhouse off I-35 in Pflugerville (set-decorated by the late Robert Burns, whom I knew in Austin).

But here's the problem: Marc Hunter actually is being mocked in Slasher. As ably played by Chris Hury in the Kitchen Dog Theater production, he's another Hollywood creep, a smarmy, lecherous moviemaker, desperate to save his dying career by helming his own splatterific entry, Bloodbath. Indeed, some of the better comic moments onstage in Slasher come when  Hunter's sorry, self-loving self gets zinged.

Hunter's remarks on Chainsaw — and how we're meant to view them — begs the larger question: What does Moore herself think of Chainsaw — and of the horror genre in general? You can't tell from Slasher. The play is clever, and a smart take on the topic ("The Horror Film Nexus: Excitement or Exploitation?") would be more than welcome. But for all of its attempts to delight in the happy carnage of the horror film — while also spoofing it and critiquing it seriously — Slasher is a muddle, a bloodbath of unresolved contradictions.

One way to understand the play is as a battle between second- and third-wave feminism, a tug-of-war over women's roles and self-determination in pop culture.  At the Hooter-ish joint, Marc hits on a young waitress, Sheena (Martha Harms), and convinces her that she'd be perfect for his film as the "last girl," the one who conventionally survives the maniac's onslaught. For her part, Sheena sees Bloodbath as her ticket out of her deadend job and out of her constricting family situation. She's supporting both a younger sister (Rebekah Kennedy) and their wheelchair-bound, painkiller-addicted mom. (Where the cannibal family in Chainsaw is all-male, the one in Slasher is all-female.)

For her part, though, Mom hates everything about Bloodbath. And she will do anything, including murder, to stop it.

Correct! That Hand Is Holding a Beer. Now Guess  What's in My Other Hand.  Harms, Wall, Kennedy, Hury and Leah Spillman, l to r, with Hassler avec machete

That's because Mom views the contemporary horror film with horror. Sheena sees slasher films as cheap thrills and sees herself as a bright, resourceful, free agent, choosing to scream and show some skin in order to get ahead (Harms is perfectly believable in this). But for her mother, Saw and Hostel and their gore-porn ilk are pure, patriarchal rape-by-entertainment; they're debasing exercises in sadism and sexism. Mom — played with unrelenting ferocity by Lisa Hassler — merges two types: the terrifying, repressive mother-figure from horror movies (see Carrie, Friday the 13th and even Psycho) and the cliched, old-school feminist, the humorless, sexless hag from, oh, a thousand cartoons, TV sitcoms and conservative talk-show portrayals.

All right, so Mom is an over-the-top caricature. Slasher is an over-the-top play –  staged with riproaring enthusiasm by Kitchen Dog director Tina Parker and her designers (Clare Floyd DeVries, Suzanna Lavender and Christina Vela). But unlike the caricature of Hunter, the director-lecher, the caricature of Mom is not particularly amusing. To add to her unpleasantness, Mom sees herself as a repeated victim (hence, the wheelchair). Wonderful. She's a raging whiner.

Nevertheless — like Hunter — some of what Mom says about Hollywood is quite true: the way the CSI and Law & Order franchises, for example, always seem to have a sexy prostitute-topless dancer-supermodel for a murder victim.

So how are we to take her analysis of the horror film? Shrill Puritanism or rigorous attack on masculine rage and profiteering? Interestingly, at one point, Mom turns to her traditional political enemy — anti-abortion Christian radicals — for help in shutting down the Bloodbath movie set. In other words, when playwright Moore needs to, she can ingeniously mix together unexpected ideological slants. But beyond ramping up the narrative tension with a violent, on-camera showdown of her trio — mother, daughter and director — Moore never really settles anything in their argument. She opts instead for the kind of wink-wink, contrived plot twists on which horror films often rely for their cliffhangers and denouements.

In all of this, of course, I sound very much like Hunter in that first scene, intellectualizing an experience that should be bypassing my brain and jolting me with laughs and frights. Yet this underscores what may be Slasher's greatest weakness: It's not that funny. Or rather, it's not funny enough, not clever enough for me to set aside  how these conflicting takes on the genre don't resolve. It's telling that some of the better laughs come when Jody must step in to play Bloodbath's own Leatherface, wearing a ghoulish mask, flashing a knife, threatening the torn and trapped Sheena — all the while exclaiming,  "Oh, I, ah, gee, I'm — sorry."

It's telling because Jody is deflationary. His little, nebbishy yelps are a surprise. He seems to have stumbled on this  movie set from some other, funnier play.

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A native of Peru, Fort Worth Symphony music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya has found a way to preserve and showcase the orchestral music of his country — and the other Latin American countries that were once part of the Incan Empire. He has started a series of concerts and recordings called Caminos del Inka — "Trails of the Incans." It features three centuries of music — from dance numbers written down by an 18th century Spanish cleric to Enrique Iturrigia's homage to Igor Stravinsky and contemporary Peruvian composers. The first CD was released earlier this year, titled Inti, the name of the sun in Quechua, the language of the Incans.

Harth-Bedoya has brought his multi-media presentation to other cities, including Chicago. But he returns to Bass Hall this weekend with the FWSO and a concert version.