In Memoriam

Jerry Russell, Stage West founder and father of Sen. Wendy Davis, dies

Jerry Russell, founder of Fort Worth theater company Stage West and father of Sen. Wendy Davis, passed away peacefully this morning at Harris Methodist Hospital. He had been hospitalized for several weeks following complications from abdominal surgery. He was 77.

Friends and family began reporting on his condition two weeks ago on Facebook, and a page on the website Caring Bridge was created to keep well-wishers informed of his status. Early this morning, Davis posted on her Facebook page that her father had passed away, surrounded by his wife and children:

During his time in the hospital, there was never a moment that one of us wasn't by his side. We, and the community, will forever be grateful for the significant impact he made on our lives. He and his warm, sparkling brown eyes will be deeply missed. My family and I thank you for surrounding us with your prayers and comfort during this time.

Russell had retired (for the second time) from Stage West last year, ending a tenure that began when he founded the company in 1979. Appearing not just with Stage West but also Dallas Theater Center, Casa Manana and others, Russell was a beloved member of the Dallas-Fort Worth theater community.

His most recent onstage appearance was in the one-man show Clarence Darrow that played Stage West in April, a role he was reprising for the third time. He was slated to star in The Sunshine Boys at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas later this month.

Russell was in the third week of directing Stage West's season-closing show, Thank You, Jeeves, when he became ill in August and was admitted to the hospital. There's no word yet on how Russell's death might affect the theater's upcoming 35th season.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced, but there has been an outpouring of online support from both the local arts community and Davis' supporters. Kevin Moriarty, artistic director at the Dallas Theater Center, released a statement about Russell's death. It reads in part:

Jerry was a beloved figure in the theater community for his unerring truthfulness on stage, his deeply collaborative creative process, his glorious sense of humor, his colorful storytelling and his deep, abiding love of theater. Jerry acted in six productions at Dallas Theater Center over the years, including those directed by DTC's former artistic director, Richard Hamburger, and myself. His last appearance on our stage was as Gonzalo in The Tempest in 2011.

I had the great pleasure of collaborating with Jerry on that production. I was in awe of his ability to bring Shakespeare's words to life on stage with such beauty and grace, and I was equally enthralled offstage by his stories of a lifetime of creating theater. I was fortunate to see much of his work at Stage West over the years and to count him as a trusted colleague and friend. It's hard to imagine theater in North Texas without Jerry Russell. All of us are grieving and share our condolences with his family.

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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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