Season Announcement

Uptown's Theatre Three expands artistic leadership in local-focused season

Christie Vela and Jeffrey Schmidt.

Photo courtesy of Theatre Three

UPDATE: Theatre Three has added a holiday show, Gold, Frankincense, and Credit Card Debt: A Christmas Holiday December Sketch Comedy Show. This production is co-presented by Bootstraps Comedy Theatre and directed by celebrated local playwright Matt Lyle. It is written collectively by Matt Lyle, Nicole Neely, Jim Kuenzer, Jeff Swearingen, Matt Coleman, and Rachel Farmer, and will be performed December 13-28. Tickets are now on sale.

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Three works penned by Dallasites — two of which are world premieres — are featured in Theatre Three's 2019-20 season, but that's not the only big announcement from the theater-in-the-round in the Quadrangle.

Local director and actor Christie Vela is joining T3 as its associate artistic director, and is already slated to direct the first show of the company's 58th season.

"Christie is a longtime colleague and friend," says T3 artistic director Jeffrey Schmidt, who is entering his third year in the role. "Her work both as a director and actor here in the Metroplex as well as regionally is impressive, to say the least. Many will remember when both Norma Young and Jac Alder were the artistic forces behind Theatre Three. I'm thrilled to see where Theatre Three will head by combining our aesthetics and visions."

Together with Michael Federico, who co-wrote last season's new musical The Manufactured Myth of Eveline Flynn, Vela conceived a new adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which will kick off the new season. Vela will direct (she also directed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from two seasons ago), with Federico writing the well-known Gothic horror tale from the perspective of through the eyes of the count's mysterious mistress, Mina.

It will play concurrently with The Bippy Bobby Boo Show, a haunting parody of 1960s musical variety shows co-produced by Danielle Georgiou Dance Group. A roster of theatrical ghosts living in the basement Theater Too space bring the works of Pirandello, Pinter, Albee, and Beckett into their acts for an evening of glamorous, ghoulish entertainment. This "double scream Halloween" pairing runs October 10-November 3, 2019.

Michael Frayn's classic farce Noises Off brings its door-slamming slapstick to the holiday season (seems the beleaguered experiment that was Solstice has been put to rest after two seasons). Kara-Lynn Vaeni directs the onstage comedy that shows the backstage antics of an amateur traveling theater production as it puts the saying "the show must go on" to the test. It runs November 29-December 29, 2019.

As was hinted last year, Denise Lee's original play Funny, You Don't Act Like a Negro is premiering under Vela's direction. Audience interaction seems like it will be encouraged during this world premiere, while will explore the pre-judgments we make on our neighbors, the biases we inadvertently pass on to our children, and how the simple act of talking to one another is being subverted by social media. It runs February 20-March 15, 2020.

Schmidt assumes the directing reins for The Elephant Man, Bernard Pomerance's biographical drama about medical marvel and social outcast John Merrick. Shunned by Victorian-era society due to his dramatically deformed body, Merrick finds compassion with a caring surgeon and longs to escape his "sideshow freak" status. It runs April 9-May 10, 2020.

Theatre Three has its own Hamilton ... Texas, that is. It's the setting for The Immigrant, Mark Harelik's based-on-a-true-story play about his grandfather, Haskell Harelik, and the changes the Russian-Jewish immigrant experiences over his 30 years in the town. Schmidt once again directs, and it runs June 4-28, 2020.

Noticing the lack of a musical in this lineup? T3 promises there will be one — sort of. A "special fundraising event" musical revue is planned for late January or early February, 2020, and will "scratch your musical itch with an evening jam-packed with Broadway's biggest hits."

Theatre Too will continue to provide a home for Theatre Three's Monday Playwright series, which provides local writers an opportunity to showcase their works-in-progress.

Season tickets (which range from $60-$225) will go on sale on May 14, 2019. Single tickets will be available at a later date. For ticket information, call 214-871-3300 or visit www.theatre3dallas.com.

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All Eyes on Them

Dallas alt hip-hop group wins prestigious Tiny Desk Contest by NPR

Cure for Paranoia/Facebook

As winners of the Tiny Desk Contest, Cure for Paranoia will record their own Tiny Desk concert and go on tour.

Few live recording studios or musical web series have the cultural sway of NPR's Tiny Desk, and a Dallas band is poised to make an impactful debut: Cure For Paranoia, an alternative hip-hop project by rapper Cameron McCloud and producers Tomahawk Jonez and Jay Analo, has won the high-stakes annual Tiny Desk Contest for 2026.

They'll record their official Tiny Desk show "soon," the announcement by NPR says.

Winning the concert also means Cure for Paranoia is going on tour. The only Texas stop will be at Emo's Austin on June 24.

Tiny Desk is known for platforming both niche and majorly successful artists — NPR posted a new Foo Fighters set on YouTube on May 13 — for stripped-down sets that are literally played behind former All Things Considered director Bob Boilen's old desk. (Fun fact for Texans: Tiny Desk was created because folk artist Laura Gibson was disappointed with the sound at her South by Southwest show in Austin in 2008, and she wanted a redo.)

Most artists who appear on Tiny Desk more than 15 years later are already well-known, at least in their specific circles. But the Tiny Desk Contest, which launched in 2015, helps a growing group of newer, unsigned artists get their foot in the door. Contestants record one video of them performing a single song behind a desk, and a jury of radio staff and musicians chooses their favorite.

In their audition video, Cure for Paranoia gathered 11 musicians around a truly tiny desk and in front of downtown Dallas' iconic gigantic eyeball sculpture. They played the song "No Brainer," a frenetic track that starts with clever boasts and becomes a criticism of racism in the United States.

McCloud, a pre-school teacher, is known independently of Cure for Paranoia for rapping to his social media following about politics and current events. Some of those lyrics made it into "No Brainer." He says he started the group because he found that music was more helpful than medication for coping with bipolar depression and paranoid schizophrenia.

Alex Marrero, host of the Austin-based KUTX show Horizontes, was one of the judges this year. He was impressed with the visuals in Cure for Paranoia's audition.

“When this popped up, I immediately felt something different," he wrote in a blurb for the announcement. "It just jumped out. The visuals were super cool and creative, BUT I could still totally envision them bringing the heat behind the Desk.”

Madison McFerrin, jazz vocalist and daughter of the famous singer Bobby McFerrin, was one of the musical judges.

"Cure For Paranoia’s energy is infectious, fresh and distinctly theirs — exactly what you want in a Contest winner!" she wrote.

McCloud's post on Instagram announcing the group's win has only been up for three hours at the time of this article's publication, and it already has more than 8,000 likes. The YouTube audition has garnered 74,000 views.

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