AT&T Performing Arts Center Sets #HearHere 2016 Season

The AT&T Performing Arts Center announces the 2016 season of #hearhere (formerly known as #thinkspeak) - a summer speaker series with dynamic discussions from leaders in radio, TV, journalism, art and filmmaking. Featuring lecturers whose work has become a cultural phenomenon (if not an obsession), #hearhere removes the barrier between audiences and some of the most interesting minds of our time. Summer has never been so cool.

This second season will present a diverse lineup featuring award-winning author, journalist, radio and TV personality Stephen Dubner interviewed by actress, comedian and radio host Faith Salie; creator and executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning series THE SIMPSONS, Matt Groening; one of America's best contemporary writers, cartoonist and illustrator Lynda Barry; filmmaker, artist and writer, Miranda July; and legendary narrative and documentary German filmmaker, Werner Herzog.

"'Genius' is a word that's thrown around a lot, but can - without question - be used to describe everyone in this lineup," said Doug Curtis, the Center's president and CEO. "These six icons will provide rare insight into their creative processes, right here in the Dallas Arts District, all in one summer. #hearhere is the perfect example of the Center providing programs that educate, entertain and inspire."

The 2016 season begins in May with Stephen Dubner and Faith Salie -"Get Your Freak On." The season continues in June with Matt Groening & Lynda Barry - "Love, Hate and Comics: The Friendship that Would Not Die" and in July with Miranda July's - "LOST CHILD." In August, an evening with the renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog will culminate the 2016 season.

Four-show subscription packages are on sale now and range from $237 to $97 and may be purchased online at www.attpac.org/hearhere, by telephone at 214-880-0202 or in person at the AT&T Performing Arts Center Information Center at 2353 Flora Street (Monday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Tuesday thru Saturday 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.; Sunday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.).

Seating in the Center Circle Orchestra section is available exclusively to Center Circle members at any level. Call Membership Services at 214-978-2888 for information.

Subscribers to the four-show series receive discounted ticket price, right to renew their same seats for future seasons and a discounted parking option.

Note: Photos and logos for media use are available at: www.attpac.org/media.

Please use the provided photo credits when publishing photos.

#hearhere - 2016 SEASON

STEPHEN DUBNER with Faith Salie - "Get Your Freak On"

Winspear Opera House

Wednesday, May 4 - 7:30 p.m.

Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, and radio and TV personality. He is best-known as co-author of the books Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Think Like a Freak and When To Rob A Bank. They have sold more than 7 million copies in more than 40 countries. Dubner is also the host of the Freakonomics Radio podcast, which gets 5 million downloads a month.

Freakonomics, published in 2005, was an instant international best-seller and cultural phenomenon. Hailed by critics and readers alike, it still appears regularly on The New York Times bestseller list. SuperFreakonomics followed in 2009, to similar acclaim, and in 2010 a documentary film version of Freakonomics was chosen as the closing film of the Tribeca Film Festival. The third book in the Freak trilogy, Think Like a Freak, was published in 2014 and immediately took up a long residency near the top of international best-seller lists. Their latest is When To Rob a Bank, which was released in May 2015. Dubner also maintains the popular Freakonomics blog, which has been called "the most readable economics blog in the universe" (which isn't saying much). He has appeared widely on television, including as a regular contributor to ABC News and as host of the Emmy-nominated NFL Network program "Football Freakonomics."

Dubner is also the author of several other books, including Turbulent Souls/Choosing My Religion (1998), Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper (2003), and the children's book The Boy With Two Belly Buttons (2007). His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Crime Writing, and others. Turbulent Souls is currently being developed as a film. The eighth and last child of an upstate New York newspaperman, Dubner has been writing since he was a child. (His first published work appeared in Highlights magazine.) As an undergraduate at Appalachian State University, he started a rock band that was signed to Arista Records, which landed him in New York City. He ultimately quit playing music to earn an M.F.A. in writing at Columbia University, where he also taught in the English Department. He became an editor and writer at New York magazine and The New York Times before quitting to write books. He is happy he did so.

He lives in New York with his wife, the documentary photographer Ellen Binder, and their two children.

Faith Salie is an Emmy-winning contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning and a panelist on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. As a commentator on politics and current events, Faith has appeared on CNN, HLN, Fox News, The Ricki Lake Show, Anderson, and OWN.

Faith was the host of Bravo's The Approval Matrix and the Discovery series Treehugger TV. She gave flirting lessons on the CW's Plain Jane, and she's entered the no-spin zone on The O'Reilly Factor. She was also a panelist on the BBC America series, Would You Rather...? with Graham Norton.

Faith appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show as an ethics expert for O, the Oprah Magazine. She's written for Oprah.com, Slate.com, and CNN.com and The Huffington Post. She's currently working on her first book, entitled Approval Junkie.

Faith was the host of the national public radio show Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie. During its 300 episode run, she conducted over 1,000 interviews with the likes of President Carter, Lorne Michaels, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Slash, Elizabeth Edwards, Oliver Sacks, Tom Brokaw, and a family of champion elk callers. Faith graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard. She received her Master's degree in Modern Literature at Oxford University, where her Rhodes classmates went on to become governors and mayors while she landed on a Star Trek collectible trading card worth hundreds of cents.

MATT GROENING & LYNDA BARRY -

"Love, Hate and Comics: The Friendship that Would Not Die"

Winspear Opera House

Wednesday, June 29 - 7:30 p.m.

Matt Groening, creator and executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning series THE SIMPSONS, made television history by bringing animation back to primetime and creating an immortal nuclear family. THE SIMPSONS is now the longest-running scripted series in television history and was voted "Best Show of the 20th Century" by Time Magazine.

Groening also served as Producer and writer during the four-year creation process of the hit feature film The Simpsons Movie, released in July 2007. In May 2009, a series of Simpsons U.S. postage stamps personally designed by Groening were released nationwide. Currently, the television series is celebrating its 25th Anniversary and is in production on the 26th season, where Groening continues to serve as Executive Producer.

Originally brought to life in 1987 for short animated interstitials on "The Tracey Ullman Show," THE SIMPSONS was Groening's introduction into the animation world. He was previously best known for his "Life In Hell" cartoon strip, which was syndicated in more than 250 weekly newspapers for more than thirty years, and the books, calendars and merchandise based on Groening's irreverent portrayal of love, work, school, life and relationships.

Groening's other Emmy Award-winning creation, FUTURAMA, launched in March 1999 and ran for seven seasons. This included four direct-to-DVD full-length original feature releases: "Bender's Big Score," "The Beast With A Billion Backs," "Bender's Game" and "Into the Wild Green Yonder." FUTURAMA enjoyed great success with new episodes on Cartoon Network and then on Comedy Central and continues in widespread syndication.

In 1993, Groening formed Bongo Comics Group, for which he serves as publisher of more than 400 domestic and internationally licensed comic books, trade paperbacks and trade books, in both print and digital form, along with a host of yearly Life in Hell, Simpsons and Futurama calendars. To-date there are more than 15 million of Groening's publications, based on THE SIMPSONS, FUTURAMA and LIFE IN HELL.

The multitude of awards bestowed on Groening's creations includes Emmys, Annies, the prestigious Peabody Award and the Rueben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, the highest honor presented by the National Cartoonists Society.

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. The New York Times has described Barry as "among this coun­try's greatest conjoiners of words and images, known for plumbing all kinds of touchy subjects in cartoons, comic strips and novels, both graphic and illustrated." She earned a degree from Evergreen State College during its early experimental period (1974- 78), studying with painter and writing teacher, Marilyn Frasca. Frasca's questions about the nature of images and the role they play in day-to-day living have guided Barry's work ever since.

In 1979 while pursuing a career as a painter, Barry began drawing a weekly comic strip incorporating stories considered to be incompatible with comics at the time. Stories, as Barry puts it, "that had a lot of trouble in them." Widely credited with expanding the literary, thematic and emotional range of American comics, Barry's seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek, ran in alternative newspapers across North America for thirty years.

Barry has authored 21 books, worked as a commentator for NPR, and had a regular monthly feature in Esquire, Mother Jones Magazine, Mademoiselle, and Salon. She created an album-length spoken word collection of stories called The Lynda Barry Experience and was a frequent guest on The Late Show with David Letterman.

She adapted her first novel, The Good Times are Killing Me, into a long-running off-Broadway play, since published by Samuel French and performed throughout North America. Her book One! Hundred! Demons! was chosen as the Freshman all-read title at Stanford University. Her novel Cruddy was called "a work of terrible beauty" by the New York Times, and has been translated into French, Italian, German, Catalan and Hebrew.

Lynda Barry's "Writing the Unthinkable" workshop-especially designed for non-writers-was the subject of a New York Times Magazine article and is the basis for her award-winning book What It Is. Barry is currently Assistant Professor in Interdis­ciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and runs the Image Lab at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. At UWM she has also led writing workshops for the public, and hosted a 'Seeing-Eye'-themed series of popular public talks with guests Ryan Knighton, blind writer and writing teacher; Ivan Brunetti and Chris Ware, legendary contemporary cartoonists; Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons; and Dan Chaon, acclaimed novelist and short story writer.

Barry has received numerous awards and honors for her work, among them two William Eisner awards, the American Library Association's Alex Award, the Wisconsin Library Association's RR Donnelly Award, the Washington State Governor's Award, and the Holtz Center for Science & Technology Outreach Fellowship.

MIRANDA JULY'S - "LOST CHILD"

Winspear Opera House

Friday, July 8 - 7:30 p.m.

Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Her videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d'Or. Miranda July wrote, directed and starred in The Future (2011).

Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper's, and The New Yorker; her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner, 2007),

won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty countries. Her latest book is It Chooses You (McSweeney's 2011). Her novel The First Bad Man was published in January 2015 by Scribner and became an immediate New York Times Bestseller.

In 2000 July created the seminal participatory website, Learning to Love You More, with artist Harrell Fletcher and a companion book was published in 2007 (Prestel); the work is now in the collection of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She designed Eleven Heavy Things, an interactive sculpture garden, for the 2009 Venice Biennale; it was also presented in Union Square in New York (2010) and by MOCA in Los Angeles (2011). Her email-based artwork, We Think Alone (commissioned by Magasin 3, Stockholm), launched in July 2013 with nearly 100 thousand subscribers. Raised in Berkeley, California, she currently lives in Los Angeles.

AN EVENING WITH WERNER HERZOG

Winspear Opera House

Wednesday, August 31 - 7:30 p.m.

A legendary German filmmaker, Werner Herzog has made over 50 films, both narrative and documentary. Often traveling to exotic locations, Herzog has made a name for himself through his guerilla-style of filmmaking and his often abstract and controversial films. He will forever be associated with the eccentric and volatile actor Klaus Kinski, with whom he has made many films.

In 2014, Herzog directed the feature film Queen of the Desert, which he also wrote. This is the exciting telling of the story of Gertrude Bell, who became known as the "female Lawrence of Arabia" of her time. The film was produced by Herzog, Benaroya Pictures and Sierra/Affinity, and stars Nicole Kidman, James Franco and Robert Pattinson. It will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015.

Herzog's impressive body of work includes such films as Grizzly Man, which won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics prizes for Best Documentary Film, and the Director's Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. He also received a 1999 Emmy nomination for the highly-praised documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Herzog's Arctic documentary, Encounters at the End of the World, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary in 2007.

Rescue Dawn, Herzog's feature film adaptation of the documentary, premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews. He also directed the film The Bad Lieutenant, which starred Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendez. Herzog has also acted in films like Jack Reacher, which stars Tom Cruise, Julien Donkey-Boy, Incident at Loch Ness and numerous documentaries. His voice is iconic and has been featured both in films (The Wind Rises) and in television (The Simpsons).

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