Lights out

DFW theater exits the scene following COVID-19 challenges

Marsha Norman's play 'Night, Mother was part of the final season.

Photo courtesy of Tarrant Actors Regional Theatre

After seven years of producing live theater, Tarrant Actors Regional Theatre (TART) has announced it will permanently cease operations on all mainstage productions.

"Due to the loss of our primary source of funding and recent staffing changes, not to mention the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects, this season has been the 'perfect storm' for our organization, from which we simply are unable to recover at this time," says Allen Walker, TART's president and artistic director, in a release.

It is the first DFW theater company to close completely since the pandemic began.

With a mission to "entertain, inspire, challenge, and educate its audiences through live theater," TART continually grew year after year thanks to the support of loyal patrons and dedicated volunteers. Stipends for performing artists and creative staff were provided per production, a structure many theater companies of TART's size have been unable to duplicate.

"It has been a fantastic seven seasons and I am very proud of what we've accomplished," Walker says.

This season, TART presented 'Night, Mother by Marsha Norman and Hay Fever by Noel Coward. The summer musical, Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party, announced its cancellation during pre-production due to COVID-19-related health and safety concerns. All ticket holders were refunded in April.

Along with Walker, Tarrant Actors Regional Theatre has been managed by Alex Krus (executive vice president), Karen Matheny (director of development), Charles M. Gatlin Jr. (board secretary), and Nicole R. Dobbins (board member).

Although the group will no longer produce full-scale productions, the board of directors is committed to continuing their established collaborations in the Fort Worth Fringe festival and other local arts events.

closings theater

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.

$\u200bJeremy Biggers at Netflix House$ Jeremy Biggers at Netflix HouseNetflix House

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