It’s a basic cycle of life here: Dozens of young North Texas theater artists leave for LA or New York every year. But Cedric Neal is a member of the Dallas Theater Center’s acting company, and his last two years here have been little short of meteoric.

Unsilent Night is a “participatory sound sculpture” — people walk through downtown playing recording tracks of bells and chimes. Consider it a hi-tech form of holiday caroling. Gary Brown brought the 19-year-old New York event to Dallas last year and he’s making it an annual tradition.

‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ is like ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000 Takes on the Ziegfeld Follies.’ A young man cheers himself up by playing a cast album from 1928. And he offers quips and commentary on all the showbiz silliness. But unlike MST3K, ‘Chaperone’ actually offers a defense of brainless escapism, and Theatre 3’s scaled-down version actually suits the musical’s happy-idiot delights.

Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White and Berenice Abbott created groundbreaking bodies of work: Evans for his depictions of Southern poverty, Bourke-White for her towering images of industrialization, Abbott for her New York street scenes. We talk to Jessica May, co-curator of the Amon Carter exhibition ‘American Modern,’ about these three artists, how each crossed paths and influenced the others, about the dot-matrix and the urge for narrative.

The National Performance Network helped launch early tours of such boundary-breaking artists as the Blue Man Group and Urban Bush Women. The 25-year-old network is meeting in Dallas this weekend – its first-ever national conference in Texas, which includes two public shows at the Majestic Theatre featuring performance artists and dance troupes.

SMU’s Meadows Prize is only two years old but it’s made a name for itself for its requirements and the unconventional artists chosen as winners. Jerome Weeks talks to Jose Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, about the prize and the winners, a choreographer-designer and a hip-hop playwright.

The National Performance Network has been an important support system for emerging, unconventional artists for 25 years — helping such groups as Urban Bush Women and the Blue Man Group when they were just starting to tour. The NPN is holding its 25th annual meeting in Dallas next week with shows at the Majestic Theatre and the Latino Cultural Center. We talk with NPN CEO MK Wegmann.

Slant 45 is a project of the Super Bowl Host Committee and arts-education specialists Big Thought — it’s gotten more than 35,000 North Texas kids picking up trash and planting trees for the Big Game. But it’s more than just making everything look nice for Jerry. There are volunteering lessons involved. And, yes, children’s artwork.

The Undermain Theatre’s production of David Rabe’s ‘The Dog Problem’ is one of the sharpest shows the Deep Ellum company has offered — funnier than ‘Port Twilight,’ more mob-connected than ‘The Black Monk.’ Forget the holiday shopping for a day and buy yourself a real present.

Margaret Fuller was an American feminist pioneer. She was a literary ally of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau — she edited the literary journal of the Transcendentalist movement. Doesn’t sound like the subject for a fanciful new comedy? No? But happily, that’s what Kitchen Dog delivers.