WATERTOWER’S NEXT SEASON: WaterTower Theatre has announced the details of its 2012-13 season. The season opens Sept. 28 with The Mystery of Irma Vep, followed by It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play. Then it’s on to Putting It Together, The Grapes of Wrath, Black Tie and Xanadu. Also announced: ticket prices will stay the same as this year’s. Check out the details on each show in WaterTower’s season brochure.

LONGVIEW TO BROADWAY: A play with strong Texas ties is headed to Broadway via the La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego. Hands on a Hard Body is based on the documentary that follows contestants at a Longview dealership who try to win a truck by keeping their hand touching it longer than anyone else. The book is written by Dallas native Doug Wright, and the show is already getting the attention of The New York Times, who hoofed it out to California to get an early look. “The show strikes a fresh, topical note for American musical theater by training a compassionate eye on the struggles of the lower-middle classes,” Charles Isherwood writes in his review. “Unlikely as its subject is, “Hands on a Hardbody” feels perfectly in sync with our chronically sunken economy and doesn’t cloud its vision by making concessions to the kind of splashy spectacle and cozy sentimentality that most Broadway musicals trade in.”

QUOTABLE: “If it serviced my career, I would do nothing but jokes about airline travel and hotel room-service food. If you told me, ‘You know where the big laughs are today? Airline material,’ trust me, I’d be there in a second. But that’s not the expectation anymore. That’s not where my bread is buttered.”

– Dennis Miller, on the heavy political element of his stand-up act, in an interview with dfw.com. Miller plays Bass Hall on Friday.