Theater Underground

Uptown Dallas theater banks on local writers with homegrown new season

Theatre Three presents I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change

Calvin Scott Roberts, Allison Bret, Janelle Lutz, and Trey West in the 2016-17 production of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.

Photo by Linda Harrison

Less than two months after teasing it during Theatre Three's season announcement, Theatre Too's full 2017-18 season has also been revealed. And like its above-ground counterpart, the basement space will see a dramatic shift in programming during artistic director Jeffrey Schmidt's first year on the job.

We were previously promised new plays by local artists Matt Lyle and Jessica Cavanagh, along with a new work by local movement company PrismCo., and that's exactly what we're getting. This season will also see the final run of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, which has been a Theatre Too staple for the past 18 years.

All three of the new works have been commissioned by Theatre Three, proving with cold, hard, cash Schmidt's dedication to nurturing local talent.

"The arts scene in Dallas has an obligation to local artists including writers, and every organization should play a role in fostering their development from readings and workshops to full productions with professional actors," says Schmidt in a release. "I’m proud to include Theatre Three as part of the local resources writers have access to."

First up is a new play by Matt Lyle, whose hilarious Barbecue Apocalypse received a smashing world premiere by Kitchen Dog Theater in 2014. Titled Cedar Springs or Big Scary Animals, it centers on an older white couple from the country that unknowingly moves to "the gayborhood" to be closer to their granddaughter in Dallas. It has had multiple staged readings and is now "ripe and ready" for its premiere production. It will run September 7-October 1, 2017, with Schmidt directing.

Lear, PrismCo.'s wordless interpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear is next, using dance theater to focus on the relationship between the aging king and his daughters. This innovative company uses dance choreography, stage combat, mime, weight sharing, clowning, and simple, everyday actions to "plunge even further into the complex depths of the human subconscious, all without uttering a single word.” It will run October 26-November 19, 2017

Shifting forward a bit from its usual New Year's Eve opening, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change will welcome back B.J. Cleveland to direct the final run of Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts' crowd-pleaser. Theatre Too promises some surprises and special events to mark the occasion and help Dallas say goodbye to the long-running musical. It runs January 11-March 4, 2018.

Jessica Cavanagh has turned her unexpected real-life experiences into Self Injurious Behavior, a play about a woman raising an autistic son. This very personal account is a reminder that life never turns out the way you plan it, but that it can turn into a life you love. Marianne Galloway will direct, and Cavanagh plans to continue developing the play at Theatre Three in preparation for a production next spring. It runs May 17- June 10, 2018.

"In the coming years, patrons will have the opportunity to witness all phases of the creation process. It gets to the heart of the meaning behind Theatre Three’s name: actors, authors, audience," says Schmidt. "T3 is proud to claim some Pulitzer Prize winners amongst its alumni. It’s time to discover the next one."

Single tickets will be available for purchase at a later date, and subscribers get half off tickets to all Theatre Too shows.

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Season Announcement

'Come find your people' in Echo Theatre Dallas' 2025 season

Photo by Joan Marcus

A scene from the Off-Broadway production of Catch As Catch Can.

The theme for Echo Theatre's 2025 season is family, with the tagline "Come find your people." Echo, if you need a reminder, is the Dallas-based company that solely produces plays written by women-plus.

"We recognize the limiting nature of the binary use of the word 'woman,'" the company explains on its website. "We use the term 'women-plus' to include an expansive and diverse array of people, including those born female, those who identify as women, and those who are gender non-conforming."

“This season, my thoughts have turned to family in all its forms,” says artistic director Kateri Cale. “Every person experiences generations of family expectations, judgements, competitions, celebrations, and disappointments, over and over again. If we're lucky, we experience the fierce love of family too.”

First up is the regional premiere of Catch as Catch Can by Mia Chung.

Double-cast across gender, generation, and race and set in a blue-collar New England town, the drama follows two families — the Irish-American Phelans and the Italian-American Lavecchias — as the prodigal son returns home for a holiday gathering. Two off-stage characters, who are Korean and Korean-American, impact the families as they face the weight of generational expectations.

“With Catch as Catch Can, I wanted the audience’s experience of what they’re watching to mirror that felt by the characters; the character doubling articulates and enhances the propulsion of the play," says Chung in a release about the play's Off-Broadway debut in 2022. "I believe in performance, I believe in the actor’s capacity to inhabit a character to the extent that an audience may stop seeing that the actor is a man, or is Asian, or is 30 years younger than the role they’re playing. The cognitive dissonance is by design.”

It runs February 3-March 8, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Next is OPEN by Crystal Skillman, a queer love story told by an amateur magician, presented during Pride Month.

A woman called the Magician presents myriad tricks for our entertainment, yet her performance seems to be attempting the impossible: to save the life of her partner, Jenny. But is our faith in her illusions enough to rewrite the past? The clock is ticking, the show must go on, and, as impossible as it may seem, this Magician’s act may be our last hope against a world filled with intolerance and hate.

It runs June 6-21, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Last is El Rey del Pollo, a world-premiere "nuevo comedy" by Anna Skidis Vargas that the playwright describes as "a Shakespearean telenovela that’s loosely based on King Lear, but it’s a lot shorter and a lot sillier."

Reymundo Lear is about to retire from his fried chicken empire, and he is leaving everything to his three daughters. But things aren’t as easy as they seem. Cordelia gets disinherited, and Gisela and Raquel hike the prices. El Rey del Pollo features a hungry old man, essential oils, a giant chicken suit, and all the family drama you can eat.

It runs September 11-27, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

The Echo Reads free play readings will continue next year, and are scheduled for the months of March, April, May and September, October, November.

Season tickets are on sale now at echotheatre.org. Single tickets will be available at a later date.

A fun fact about Echo Theatre productions: Up to 10 free tickets are set aside for every performance and given out on a first-come, first-served basis. Patrons must email the box office directly at reservations@echotheatre.org to participate.

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