Guest blogger Danielle Marie Georgiou is the artistic director and choreographer of DGDG: Danielle Georgiou Dance Group. She also serves as the Assistant Director of the UT Arlington’s Dance Ensemble. And she’s a member of Muscle Nation.

The fall theater season has begun! Today and Saturday at the Wyly Theatre, Academy Award nominee Chazz Palminteri brings his original piece, A Bronx Tale, to Dallas for the first time.

Written and performed by Palminteri, this one-man show premiered in Los Angeles in 1990, then moved to New York for a critically and commercially successful off-Broadway run. The stage production was subsequently adapted into an acclaimed movie and was Robert De Niro’s directorial debut. After the film’s worldwide success, Palminteri brought the show back to New York for a Broadway run.

A Bronx Tale might be one of the original reality shows, with the names changed to protect the innocent (cue the theme song from Law and Order). Palminteri wrote it in 1989 about a killing he witnessed in the Bronx when he was 9. It tells the story of Calogero Anello, a young boy from a working class family who gets wrapped up in the life of the Mafia and is charmed by Sonny, the local mob boss. As Anello grows up in the mob, he struggles with the choice of staying true to his real family’s roots or submitting to the appeal of the life of organized crime.

Palminteri is bringing his breakout show to Dallas in honor of the film adaptation’s 20th anniversary. A 2007 New York Times review of the show says that “Palminteri … exudes a moment-to-moment engagement that suggests that this revival is not a lazy ego trip but a rejuvenating act of faith in the complementary powers of acting and storytelling.”