UPDATE 8-28-2022: The venue for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof has changed, see updated venue below.
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After 25 years of presenting seldom-produced plays for curious Dallas audiences, WingSpan Theatre Company has announced its closure.
"WingSpan Theatre Company completed its journey after 25 years," reads a Facebook post dated June 14, 2022. "We are very proud of our contribution to the Dallas-Fort Worth theatrical community. Special thanks to the Bath House Cultural Arts Center and to all of our patrons."
Producing artistic director Susan Sargeant confirmed the shuttering via email.
"What gave me the most joy was being able to provide opportunities to artists and shining a light on their talents," she says.
WingSpan Theatre Company was founded in May of 1997 for the purpose of producing plays that have seldom or never been produced in the Dallas area, with a particular emphasis on plays written by and about women.
Its first production was the one-woman play The Last Flapper, by William Luce about Zelda Fitzgerald and starring Sargeant. The final production was the critically acclaimed Two by Beckett: Footfalls & Not I in 2019.
It was a regular participant in the Festival of Independent Theatres — of which it was a founding member — and hosted one staged reading a year of a new, unproduced play that fit its mission statement, often by a local playwright.
Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, and Henrik Ibsen were popular scribes for WingSpan's mainstage productions, with Sargeant earning the unofficial title of DFW's expert interpreter of modern absurdist dramas.
She plans on continuing her artistic journey in DFW as both an actor and director, and is set to direct Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for The Classics Theatre Project, running August 26-September 11, 2022, at the Margo Jones Theatre at Magnolia Lounge, 1121 1st Ave. Dallas. in the black box theater at the Addison Conference and Theatre Center.
Susan Sargeant and Mark Oristano in Edward Albee's Marriage Play, 2004.
Former President George W. Bush painting in his Dallas studio.Photo courtesy of Crown Publishing