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The State Theater Company's production of Dinner With Friends brings into crystalline focus the many facets of friendship and love that playwright Donald Margulies has exposed in his Pulitzer-winning script, and does so with crisp timing, finely blended humor, and moments of genuine theatrical honesty.

If any 20th-century American play deserves to be called "classic," it is Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie but the State Theater Company's puzzling production seems to ignore what is most obvious in the play, only rarely connecting with the story.

An unusual convergence of dramas dealing with women and disabilities prompts a conversation among four actors about what playwrights are trying to say through characters who are disabled, and how actors approach playing a disability.

In The Dinosaur Within, playwright John Walch links people of vastly different worlds, each of whom has suffered some traumatic loss, to show us the necessity of letting go, and the State Theater Company production communicates that message with compassion, humor, and grace.

In the State Theater Company's new staging of The Tempest, director Scott Kanoff offers a carefully considered, vividly imagined, and vividly theatrical exploration of Shakespeare's text, sounding its themes of family, aging, freedom, justice, and mercy.

Austin won't be the same without cultural legends Steve Barton, John Martin, and Robbie Jacks.

State and Main star William H. Macy talks about his iconic position as America's indie darling, the state of indie filmmaking today, and what on earth Gus Van Sant was thinking.

The State Theater Company's production of Nunsense is long on laughs if short on story, according to Chronicle writer Skipper Chong Warson.

Carter W. Lewis' play Women Who Steal is a hilarious, tightly constructed joy ride, complete with squealing tires, tequila-chugging, and Meat Loaf : yes: Meat Loaf! : blaring from the car radio, and the State Theater Company production is what good theatre is all about.

Robert Faires reports his recent binge of arts festivals programming.

Still time left to get some free theatre, laurels for historian Oscar Brockett and director Don Toner, and a new baby for the first couple of Salvage Vanguard Theater

Another Austin theatre company suffers a mid-performance disaster and responds to it with resourcefulness and pluck, and the Austin Community College Drama Department marks Shakespeare's 437th birth with an all-star "Billy Bash."

The Year in Austin Culture

The Austin Museum of Art has a new chief curator.

The 2004-2005 Austin Critics Table Awards

Two theatre companies may have to cancel shows if they don't raise funds by a certain date; ACoT gets down to business; and Hogg Auditorium is headed for a makeover.

Nominations for the 2000-01 B. Iden Payne Awards for theatre excellence

Trying to find ways to make art while sustaining a family is no easy road.

The loss of the architects for the new Blanton Museum of Art; a home for the Rude Mechanicals.

The Blanton Museum of Art gets an architect (for the second time), and the Paramount and State theatres move a step closer to partnership.

A busy summer for Austin artists.

The State Theater Company brings its artistry to bear on that most conventional show of the season, 'A Christmas Carol,' and delivers a perfectly packaged production

Long Center supporters do a funding turnaround by asking the city for $25 million in bond money, another bunch of Lone Stars are being honored by the Texas Cultural Trust Council with Texas Medal of the Arts Awards, and John Walch wins an award from the American Theatre Critics Association.

Scott Kanoff launches his tenure as the State Theater Company's new producing artistic director with Eric Coble's Virtual Devotion, and while the performances and design work are laudatory, they're brought to bear on a lackluster script that looks poor in comparison to the least that, say, MAD TV has to offer.

Austin playwrights are drawing attention around the nation, and one theatre company is getting hit by the Macbeth curse smack in the face.