Actor Spotlight

Prolific Dallas actress exposes carnie roots and obsession with Amy Schumer

In Amy Herzog’s Belleville, Abby and Zack are young married Americans living in a funky Paris neighborhood. He’s a doctor without borders; she teaches yoga. In typical dramatic fashion, this seemingly charmed existence is too good to be true, and the audience watches helplessly as dishonesty and insecurity slowly, heartbreakingly break down their relationship.

Second Thought Theatre is tearing into this 2011 drama with Lee Trull as director and two of Dallas’ most impressive actors: Jenny Ledel and Drew Wall. Though Wall is an artistic associate at STT, and Ledel’s husband, Alex Organ, is the company’s newly appointed artistic director, it’s been a few years since Ledel has been on the STT stage. That’s because she’s been nonstop busy all over Dallas-Fort Worth, working in theater, film and television while also penning her own plays.

Before she opens in Belleville, which is playing at Bryant Hall from May 20 through June 13, Ledel took the time to fill out our survey of serious, fun and sometimes ridiculous questions.

Name: Jenny Ledel

Role in Belleville: Abby

Previous work in the DFW area: Wilde/Earnest, The Arsonists, Becky Shaw, The Turn of the Screw, Macbeth and Detroit at Kitchen Dog Theater; Tomorrow Come Today at Undermain Theatre; Julius Caesar and The Taming of the Shrew at Trinity Shakespeare Festival; Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, The Tempest and Hamlet at Shakespeare Dallas; The Glory of Living, Anton in Show Business and Pluck the Day at Second Thought Theatre; On the Eve at Theatre Three and Spacegrove Productions.

Hometown: Bedford, Texas

Where you currently reside: Dallas

First theater role: Mrs. Warren in The Boys Next Door

First stage show you ever saw: The Velveteen Rabbit at Casa Mañana

Moment you decided to pursue a career in theater: I honestly don’t remember an exact moment. It just always made sense that I’d end up here.

Most challenging role you’ve played: Anna in The Arsonists at Kitchen Dog Theater. I doubled as a chorus member, which meant frequent quick changes, difficult music and choreography to learn, and very little stage time and few lines to establish with the audience who I was. Sometimes the smaller roles are the most difficult.

Special skills: Yoga, roller skating, running, knitting, IT/tech problems, cooking, baking, notary public (not really a skill but I can stamp and sign stuff).

Something you’re REALLY bad at: Don’t ask me for directions … anywhere. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been there 1,000 times. Don’t ask me for directions. I will either tell you wrong or find out I’ve been going at it the wrong way for a long time. Don’t ask me for directions.

Current pop culture obsession: Amy Schumer

Last book you read: Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen

Favorite movie(s): The Birdcage, Melancholia, From Here to Eternity

Favorite musician(s): Radiohead, Rachmaninoff, Regina Spektor, the many talented local musicians here

Favorite song: "Danse Macabre" by Saint Saens

Dream role: Irina, Masha and Olga in The Three Sisters; Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible; Blanche and Stella DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire; Lady Macbeth, Hamlet. Let’s be real — I want to play all the parts in all the shows.

Favorite play(s): A Streetcar Named Desire, Macbeth, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, Becky Shaw

Favorite musical(s): Oklahoma (No joke — I love it.) And I really enjoyed Fly By Night at Dallas Theater Center a few years ago.

Favorite actors/actresses: Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Dame Judi Dench, Frances McDormand, Marion Cotillard, Juliette Binoche, Viola Davis, Carey Mulligan, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Naomi Watts, Charlotte Gainsboro, Donna Reed, Lucille Ball, Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Paul Newman, Sam Rockwell, Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Robin Williams, Bill Murray — I could go on.

Favorite food: Mashed potatoes

Must-see TV show(s): Better Call Saul, Last Week with John Oliver, The Comedians, Louie, Broad City

Something most people don’t know about you: My family used to own and operate a carnival that began, I believe, with my great-great grandfather. I have childhood memories of traveling around with it so we could see my dad during the summer.

Place in the world you’d most like to visit: Couch space right next to Dame Judi Dench.

Pre-show warm-up: It really depends on the demands of the show and the particular day in question. If I spend a lot of time on the phone, for example, I may not do a ton of vocal warm-up that evening. I like to do a little yoga to get the breath/mind/body on the same page. I also like to make physical/eye contact with everyone in the show before we start.

Favorite part about your current role: Abby’s so wonderfully flawed, clinging to things that hurt her, avoiding problems and self-medication. She leaves the room mid-sentence on occasion. She’s in no way a strong female to look up to but a very real human trying and failing.

Most challenging part about your current role: There’s nudity required, playing drunk, self-mutilation and tracking many props throughout the show. There are many “pauses” in the show: “brief pause,” “pause” and “long pause.” The stage directions are specific and beautiful and deserve the attention to detail Amy Hertzog offers her actors.

Most embarrassing onstage mishap: Back when I was performing in Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare Dallas, I had to change into a wedding gown onstage in front of the audience. … The temps outside went up to the 100s, and I accidentally pulled down my underwear when I pulled down my jeans and gave the audience an accidental eyeful … an audience that consisted of my entire extended family. I hoped they didn’t notice, but they absolutely did.

Career you’d have if you weren’t in theater: I have this non-theater fantasy where I own a B&B and bake/cook all day and teach yoga classes.

Favorite post-show spot: At my place, in my living room next to my husband Alex Organ and Willis (our cat.)

Favorite thing about Dallas-Fort Worth: In Dallas, I get to be a part of new works and a full range of classical/contemporary work as well. I also get to perform regularly with friends I’ve known for years and years, which can be like getting a running start on a process. I love that there’s so much theater here, you really can’t see everything.

I love that it’s a 9-to-5 town, and people take their downtime seriously. I love the restaurants, the sports, the stupid-hot summers and the strange psychology behind the Grassy Knoll.

Most memorable theater moment: I took some advice while I was living in NYC to volunteer my time at theaters I want to work at. So I volunteered at the Public Theater and for the Cherry Lane Theater. The Cherry Lane didn’t have an intern program — so I asked if I could be it. And they accepted.

The first show that season was The American Dream and The Sandbox, directed by Edward Albee and starring Kate Mulgrew. I remember putting together an opening night gift for a donor when the Edward Albee came around the corner and asked me what I was doing. After I explained, he remarked “That’s so [expletive] stupid.” Wise words from a man of many.

Drew Wall and Jenny Ledel in Second Thought Theatre's Belleville.

Second Thought Theatre presents Belleville

Photo courtesy of Second Thought Theatre

Drew Wall and Jenny Ledel in Second Thought Theatre's Belleville.

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In Memoriam

Matthew Posey, founder of Dallas' Ochre House Theater, dies at 68

Ochre House Theater presents Dr. Bobaganush

Photo by Robert Hart

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Matthew Posey, the actor, director, and playwright who founded Ochre House Theater and was a founding father of Dallas' experimental theater scene, died at his home on October 2, 2026, the theater confirmed. He was 68.

In 2008, Posey opened Ochre House in Exposition Park near Fair Park. The 45-seat storefront venue became what the theater calls a legendary lab for raw, original art. Posey and his core company called themselves the "Pioneers of the Suavant-Garde," a name that promised surrealist, experimental performances delivered with a surprisingly sophisticated charm. The work was known for a deconstructed, musical-narrative style, built on live music, magic-realist imagery, and elaborate puppetry inspired by the Japanese Bunraku tradition.

Posey wrote, directed, and produced more than 40 plays there, including Morphing, Dr. Bobagonush, Moving Creatures, Mrs. Haggardly, Bill, Original Man, and Soft Noodle Map. Many began in his bound notebooks, which held more than a decade of original pieces. They examined love, family, class, addiction, violence, forgiveness, greed, and the search for one's place in the universe. He often staged them quickly enough that the theater reflected current social and political events as they unfolded (see: Moving Creatures, a politically charged satire about an evil and intolerable oligarch and his tyrannical rise to power). Ochre House also gave its core company of performers, designers, and musicians the chance to write and direct their own original work.

Posey also built a lasting bridge between Dallas and the flamenco world. For 15 years, he partnered with the Dallas-based Flame Foundation on original full-length plays featuring authentic flamenco. The collaboration brought international and local artists to stages in Dallas and New York.

Ochre House was not Posey's first venture in the city. After studying theater at Texas Tech University and interning at Houston's Alley Theater, he came to Deep Ellum and founded the Deep Ellum Theatre Garage. The venue hosted boundary-pushing work, including Sexual Mythology Part 1: The Underworld, a collaboration with another Dallas-based theater legend, Fred Curchack.

Posey later spent 12 years in Los Angeles, working in the film industry and ghostwriting, and he earned a master's degree in film from the American Film Institute. When he returned to Dallas, he joined the company at Undermain Theater before founding Ochre House.

In January 2017, Posey was shot in the face and thigh outside Cold Beer Company in Deep Ellum after leaving the bar with a friend. The attack came just days after previews began for his new musical Dr. Bobaganush, and that week's performances were canceled. But Dallas' arts community rallied around him with a benefit concert, and he returned to the Ochre House stage as the titular doctor that March.

Jerome Weeks, the former KERA and Dallas Morning News theater critic, recalled in an Oct. 3 Facebook post a story from that time. Weeks had reviewed Posey's first shows at the Deep Ellum Theatre Garage and ended up meeting his wife Sara, a member of Posey's first acting troupe, there. After the 2017 shooting, Weeks sent flowers to Posey's hospital room with an unsigned note: "This is what you get for introducing me to my wife." He knew Posey would appreciate the dark joke. Years later, Posey told him the flowers were the first public sign of what had happened, so when they reached the nurses' station, police grew suspicious of the sender. For a few hours that morning, Weeks was the chief suspect. The bullet had damaged Posey's teeth, cheek, and tongue, and, still groggy from anesthesia and painkillers, Posey could only gesture and mumble to the police that it was a joke — that the local theater critic had not tried to murder the artist. When Weeks learned of this long afterward, he was stunned and didn't know how to apologize. Posey, laughing, told him: "It was absolutely the only laugh I had that day."

Posey's career also reached well beyond Dallas. Over more than 35 years, he appeared in more than 60 major film and television productions, including Oliver Stone's JFK, the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, and The Magnificent Seven. On television, he appeared in Lonesome Dove, Rectify, AMC's The Son, and HBO's Love & Death. His recent work includes the independent film El Tonto Por Christo and a role in the Austin-set, Matthew McConaughey/Woody Harrelson series Brothers.

Matthew Posey was born July 31, 1958, in Houston, the youngest of five children of Marvin R. Posey and Mary Louise Wrba Posey. His family says his gift for performance appeared early, with him staging "interviews" with vegetable at age four. By his sophomore year at Coronado High School in Lubbock, he had found a bigger audience as the emcee Click Dark in a class play based on American Graffiti.

He was remembered as a beloved partner, brother, uncle, friend, and artistic father figure.

"He was a unique and unforgettable person whose humor, creativity, stories, and larger-than-life personality made an impression on everyone who knew him," the theater said in its obituary.

Posey was preceded in death by his parents. He is survived by his life partner, Suzanne Thomas. He is also survived by his sisters Marlis Hodges and Candis Posey, his brothers William Marvin Posey and Richard Daniel Posey, and numerous nieces and nephews, countless friends, and his cats Chet and Etta.

"His family will remember Matthew not only for the life he lived, but for the memories he created and the love he shared," says the theater's obituary. "His presence will be deeply missed, but his stories, his work, his humor, and the memories he gave to those who loved him will remain."

A celebration of life is being planned, and details have not yet been announced. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to Ochre House Theater at OchreHouseTheater.org.

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