Tiger Sleeps Tonight

Audience needs an open mind and strong stomach for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

Based on a true story from the front of the Iraq war — the headline read “US Solider Kills Rare Bengal Tiger” — Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo follows the intertwining stories of two American soldiers, an Iraqi translator and a Bengal tiger. Rajiv Joseph’s challenging script reflects on the ghosts of the war, with brutal demonstrations of greed and pulse-pounding conflict.

Jeffrey Schmidt directs and designs Theatre Three’s production, paying close attention to the play’s theme of refraction and miscommunication. His Guernica-inspired set, with angular animal shapes in dismal colors, underlines the script’s interest in the gray area between life and death, right and wrong. And he directs the actors at a crackling, relentless pace.

Blake Hackler’s layered performance is rich and moving, and his Musa becomes a great source of empathy in a stark play.

In 2010, Robin Williams made his Broadway debut as the tiger, which gave Cliff Stephens big shoes to fill in. Stephens is not the only cast member with a daunting role, but all members deliver gripping performances.

When the play opens, Stephens is in his cage at the Baghdad Zoo, being watched by two American soldiers (Akron Watson and Parker Fitzgerald), who are thirsty for more action after accompanying the raid of the Hussein family home.

The performances here bring the show’s depth to the forefront. Fitzgerald and Watson cast a harsh light on the culture of wartime Marines. Fitzgerald unravels into a state of suicidal PTSD with a moving realism; he is the naïve boy who turns savage with a gun in hand. After threatening the Iraqi translator, Musa (Blake Hackler), he crumbles at the hallucination of the tiger he killed.

At the center of the story’s exploration of those gray areas is Hackler’s Musa, struggling to understand aggressive American colloquialisms like “bitch” and attempting to discover the path he wishes to follow. Hackler’s layered performance is rich and moving, and his Musa becomes a great source of empathy in a stark play.

When placed between the Gershwin musical revue Crazy for You and Idols of the King, an Elvis tribute show that opens February 28, Bengal Tiger’s claws protrude violently. This is a show for people with open minds and strong stomachs, but it is worth every second.

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Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo runs through February 9 at Theatre Three.

Parker Fitzgerald in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.

Photo by Jeffrey Schmidt

Parker Fitzgerald in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.

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Mural News

Netflix House will debut in Dallas with murals from acclaimed artist

Netflix House

Jeremy Biggers at Netflix House

A long-awaited immersive venue is opening in Dallas, and it will debut with local art on its walls: Netflix House, a year-round exhibit revolving around Netflix shows and movies, will open at Galleria Dallas on December 11, with two murals from award-winning Dallas multi-medium artist Jeremy Biggers.

Netflix House is an immersive dive complete with merchandise store, film house, arcade, and restaurant-bar. When it opens, Dallas will be the second location in the U.S., following Philadelphia, where it debuted in November 2025, also with murals from a local artist.

A graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Biggers is a renowned artist whose murals can be found spashed on walls across Dallas. Many, such as the Selena portrait on the wall outside Top Ten Records at 306 S. Bishop Ave., have become local landmarks.

He's a logical choice, having worked with a number of corporations including Nike, Adidas, the Dallas Mavericks, and IBM, for whom he created the "THINK" mural in their Dallas corporate office. His works have also been exhibited nationally, including a 2024 solo exhibition "be safe out there bro" at Band of Vices, a gallery in Los Angeles.

"Being chosen to be the artist to paint this mural, it would have been a disservice to myself, as well as the art scene in the city, not to try to infuse myself into it," he says.

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Biggers did two murals featuring his interpretation of Netflix figures including the Squid Game Young-hee doll, characters from KPop Demon Hunters and megahit series Stranger Things, plus Pandy and DJ Catnip, the best friends in the interactive series Gabby’s Dollhouse.

Both murals are intensely colored works that incorporate Biggers' signature motif: a grid of polka dots spread across the image.

One is on the exterior of Netflix House, at the parking entrance, a colorful collage of characters, measuring 38 feet x 50 feet — the tallest mural Biggers has tackled. He painted it with aerosol; it took him two months to complete.
The other is on the interior, on the mall side entrance of Netflix House, measuring 57 feet x 12 feet — a study in moody blacks and blues, with accents of neon-red that give it a 3D effect.

“I'm trying to tell the story of Netflix, and the story of where Netflix has been historically, where Netflix is headed in the future, and then also infusing my own narrative and my own language visually into that story,” he says.

“They could have opened this anywhere, so for Dallas to be one of the very first locations — that’s a testament to us as a market, as consumers of arts and consumers in general," he says.

Jeremy Biggers at Netflix HouseNetflix House

galleries openings