Denton’s performing arts companies are ready for the fall, announcing concerts and shows for the upcoming 2010-11 season.

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Tyler Donahue, shown in a Music Theatre of Denton staging of Cabaret, will direct next year’s The Fantastiks for the community theater group.

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Denton Community Theatre opens its season Sept. 17 with Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

The comedy is a classic, with Wilde’s sharp pen putting two Victorian gentlemen in the hot seat for their secret lives. The comedy is directed by returning director Michael Bolen and features some of the local stage’s best performers, including Kenny Fudge in the title role and actresses Karen Gossett and Jeannene Abney fleshing out the lead roles.

The show runs through Sept. 26.

The company celebrates Halloween with Rupert Holmes’ adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Director Bradley Speck takes on the staging of Dickens’ final work — considered to be a true mystery, as Dickens died before he finished it. The production includes a community reading of the book, led by the Denton Dickens Fellowship.

Performances are Oct 29- Nov. 7.

The company starts off 2011 with the family drama <ITAL> Proof, David Auburns’ look at the daughter of a mathematician. The woman is a math genius who struggles with mental illness, as well as a strained relationship with her father.

Performances are Jan. 21-30.

In the spring, Denton Community Theatre will stage Snoopy! The Musical. Lyricists Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady and writer Warren Lockhart give the Peanuts character life on stage. The spunky beagle is known for his love of pizza, fighting the Red Baron and being best buds with a bird named Woodstock.

The show runs April 15-21.

Summer means comedy for the company, and June brings Daughters of the Lone Star State to Denton. Del Shores’ play is a biting look at an all-white women’s social club in West Texas. The club is astonished to find that the rest of the world doesn’t celebrate its bigoted views.

The show runs June 10-19.

The season ends with a favorite musical comedy, Bye Bye Birdie, a Charles Strouse piece about a 1950s rock star who is joining the Army. But not before he visits a small town for “One Last Kiss,” which he’ll give one lucky girl on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The show runs Aug. 5-21. 

Denton Community Theatre showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, with 2 p.m. matinees on Sunday. Ticket prices, though subject to change, are $17 for adults, $15 for ages 62 and older and $10 for students. For musicals, ticket prices are $18 for adults, $16 for ages 62 and older and $10 for students.

Performances are at the Campus Theatre, 214 W. Hickory St.

For season subscriptions, call 940-382-1915.

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Music Theatre of Denton opens its 26th season Oct. 7 with Funny Girl, a dramatization of the life of comedienne Fanny Brice. From her upbringing in a working-class New York neighborhood to her success in Ziegfeld Follies, the audience watches this gutsy dame make her mark.

Director Clay White returns to take the musical’s reins.

The show runs through Oct. 17.

The company takes on the longest running musical on Broadway, The Fantastiks, a storybook play about two neighbor dads who want their children to marry so much that they feign a rivalry. With a sweet score and tender, cartoon-like characters, the musical goes beyond the surface of friendship and romance.

The show runs March 4-13. Tyler Donahue directs.

Then comes The Drowsy Chaperone, which tips a top hat to the American musicals of the Jazz Age. The musical opened on Broadway in 2006, and scored a batch of Tony Awards. A narrator is Man in Chair, who puts on a record of an original cast recording of his favorite show. The action comes to life, and the audience takes a ride with a showgirl who plans to give it all up to marry an oil tycoon.

The musical runs May 6-15. Bill Kirkley directs.

The company’s showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, with 2 p.m. matinees on Sundays. Ticket prices, though subject to change, are $20 for adults, $18 for ages 62 and older and $10 for students. For musicals, ticket prices are $18 for adults, $16 for ages 62 and older and $10 for students.

Performances are at the Campus Theatre, 214 W. Hickory St.

For season tickets, call 940-382-1915.

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The Denton Bach Society’s 2010-11 season opens Nov. 7 with a concert of late 17th century music, with selections by Buxtehude, Biber and Schmelzer. The concert will be at 7:30 p.m. at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, 2301 N. Bonnie Brae St.

Dates for the rest of the season aren’t fixed, but February will feature the Denton Bach Players, the core instrumental ensemble of the society.

In April, the Bach Players and the Bach Choir will present a concert of choral and instrumental music by J.S. Bach.

The society will perform a concert of lighter music, with solos included, for its traditional Mother’s Day concert.

Performance times, dates and program information will be updated online at www.dentonbach.com.

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The Lewisville Lake Symphony, which has a longstanding partnership with the University of North Texas College of Music, opens its season Nov. 12.

Rising violinist Jason Issokson will play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in a program that also includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2.

The concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. at Lakeland Baptist Church, 397 S. Interstate 35E in Lewisville.

In February, the symphony moves from Lakeland Baptist Church to Lewisville’s new Center for the Creative Arts, 150 N. Charles St.

The Feb. 18 concert in the symphony’s new home will feature the grand prize winners of the Vernell Gregg Young Artists’ Competition.

The final concert of the season will show off the full capabilities of the new performance hall. It will include Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” danced by the LakeCities Ballet and Alan Hovhaness’ “Mountains and Rivers Without End” accompanied by multimedia inspired by the Korean silk scroll of the same name in Seoul’s National Museum of Korea. The program ends with Kurt Weill’s suite from <ITAL> The Threepenny Opera. This concert will be 7:30 p.m. April 29 and 2:30 p.m. May 1.

For more information, visit www.lewisvillesymphony.org.

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The four-concert International Chamber Series, presented in cooperation with UNT, features pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov, playing Chopin, Scriabin and Liszt on Oct. 8. Mexico’s famed jazz pianist Roberto Verastegui will play compositions by Leonard Bernstein, John Coltrane and others on Dec. 2.

In “À la Russe!”, a trio of two Russians and an American — Anastasia Markina, Svetlana Garitselova and Emily Cole — plays Brahms, Shostakovich and Piazzolla, respectively, on Jan. 28.

In the last concert, scheduled for March 25, “Songs of Celebration” soprano Amber Wellborn sings a selection from opera, spirituals and theater, accompanied by pianist Nataliya Sukhina.

Full details of the season, including pricing and profiles of the artists are available at www.lewisvillesymphony.org.

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.