Season Announcement
Collaboration is key in Bishop Arts Theatre Center's 2022-23 season
A major theme in Bishop Arts Theatre Center's 2022-23 season is collaboration. From partnering with other local arts organizations to inviting local playwrights to submit their work, the five-show season showcases teamwork.
First up is Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury, in partnership with Undermain Theatre. At the Frasier household, preparations for Grandma's birthday party are underway. Beverly is holding onto her sanity by a thread to make sure this party is perfect, but her sister can't be bothered to help, her husband doesn't seem to listen, her brother is MIA, her daughter is a teenager, and maybe nothing is what it seems in the first place.
Fairview is a searing examination of families, drama, family dramas, and the insidiousness of white supremacy. Directed by Jiles King, it runs October 20-November 5, 2022.
Black Nativity, the hand-clapping, toe-tapping, finger-snapping theatrical wonderment inspired by Langston Hughes' retelling of the Nativity story, returns to the BATC stage for its 18th anniversary. Directed by Bridget Moore, it is in partnership with B Moore Dance and runs December 1-17, 2022.
Directed by Gabrielle Kurlander, The 1619 Project is a one-act festival featuring eight commissions by local and national playwrights that weave together stories that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America.
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia with a cargo of 20-30 enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. It runs February 9-26, 2023.
Franky Gonzalez then adapts Shakespeare's Othello, reimagining the play's hero as a wealthy black woman living in Dallas. Directed by Albert Wash and Zetra Goodlow, it runs May 4-20, 2023.
The season closes with One Year in Egypt, written by Camika Spencer and directed by Sheridan Singleton.
It details the journey of writer and Oak Cliff native Spencer during her first time abroad as a middle school ESL teacher in Al Giza, Egypt, during the same year she turned 50.
Frank, funny, emotional, and informative, she narrates her personal transformation while deconstructing the myths associated with how she romanticized Africa as a "woke" woman who'd never been to the Motherland. It runs August 10-26, 2023.
Tickets can be purchased by visiting bishopartstheatre.org or calling 214-948-0716.
