Actor Spotlight

Secret opera singer Lulu Ward talks Tennessee Williams and Dallas' best Chinese food

When we asked Lulu Ward for a list of her previous Dallas-Fort Worth theater credits, what we received easily tops 30 productions. From Echo Theatre to Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, WaterTower Theatre to Theatre Three, Ward has been a significant presence on the local theater scene for years.

Now she’s returning to the boards with WingSpan Theatre Company’s production of Tennessee Williams’ The Two Character Play, running October 10-25 at the Bath House Cultural Center. Ward plays Clare, who along with her brother Felice (Kevin Scott Keating) “arrive on a deserted theater stage where their company is scheduled to perform. They have been abandoned by their troupe and thus begin to enact The Two Character Play.

“The play-within-a-play proves to be so compelling and deeply affecting for Felice and Clare, that soon both the actors and audience are treading the fine line between what is real and what is illusion.”

Ward recently took the time to fill out our survey of serious, fun and sometimes ridiculous questions.

Name: Lulu Ward

Role in The Two Character Play: Clare

Hometown: I grew up an Air Force brat and count two places as home: Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where I spent most of my school years (second grade through grad school at Southern Miss), and Oglesby, Texas, where my grandparents lived. I spent every summer and Christmas in Texas when I was growing up.

Where you currently reside: Garland

First theater role: Rosamund in The Robber Bridegroom. It was my junior year of undergrad at Mississippi University for Women.

First stage show you ever saw: Little Mary Sunshine (a tour that came to my high school).

Moment you decided to pursue a career in theater: 1986 was a year of huge change in my life. My father died in the spring and four months later my first husband left me. The summer of ’86, while working on a community theater production, I met some students who were in the undergrad theater program at USM. That fall I began the MFA program in acting at USM. It was there that I fell in love with theater.

Most challenging role you’ve played: Each role has its own unique challenges. My character in The Two Character Play is pretty challenging!

Special skills: Making “crack” balls for fellow actors. They are actually called date balls, but the theater community refers to them as “crack” balls.

Something you’re REALLY bad at: I have an adversarial relationship with technology.

Current pop culture obsession: Imgur!

Last book you read: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Favorite movie(s): To Kill a Mockingbird, Cinema Paradiso, Dazed and Confused, Imitation of Life

Favorite musician(s): Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Django Reinhardt, Stéphan Grappelli, Willie Nelson, Johnny Gimble, John Prine, Linda Ronstadt

Favorite song: There is no way for me to name only one song! I love music. So many songs speak to me or hold special meaning for me. Here are just a few: “What a Wonderful World” as recorded by Louis Armstrong; “The Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys; “Steel Guitar Rag” by Leon McAuliffe as recorded by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys; “La Mer” by Django Reinhardt; “Lover Man” by Billy Holiday; “How High the Moon” as recorded by Emmylou Harris with Ricky Skaggs; “Last in Love” by Glenn Fry and J.D. Souther as recorded by Nicolette Larson; “Fever” as recorded by Peggy Lee; “Hello Walls” by Willie Nelson; “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” as recorded by Roberta Flack; “In Spite of Ourselves” by John Prine with Iris Dement; “Magnolia” by JJ Cale; “Lazy River” by the Mills Brothers; “Inchworm” by Frank Loesser as sung by Danny Kaye in the film Hans Christian Andersen.

Dream role: This is always changing, but right now I’d say Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.

Favorite play(s): It is almost impossible to narrow this down. I will say that my favorite playwrights are Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and David Mamet. So just about any play from any of those playwrights will be my favorite.

Favorite musical(s): Spring Awakening, Cabaret, Chicago, Grease, Miss Saigon, Little Shop of Horrors, A Chorus Line

Favorite actors/actresses: Glenn Close, Emma Thompson, Lily Tomlin, Allison Tolman, Sally Vahl, J.K. Simmons, John Malkovich, Bryan Cranston, John Lithgow, Adam Driver, Blake Hackler, Chamblee Ferguson

Favorite food: Onion pancakes from Jeng Chi. It is the best authentic Chinese food in Dallas.

Must-see TV show(s): Fargo, Breaking Bad, Archer, Parks & Recreation, Sherlock, Girls, Rick and Morty

Something most people don’t know about you: My undergrad degree is in vocal performance from Mississippi University for Women, where I studied opera.

Place in the world you’d most like to visit: Fukuoka, Japan. That is where my mother was born, and I’ve missed every trip she has ever taken there because I was in a show.

Pre-show warm-up: I do a 30 minute actor stretch/yoga physical warm-up as well as a vocal warm-up. All of my exercises (physical and vocal) are things I’ve learned over the years in one class or another or from another actor.

Favorite part about your current role: The gorgeous poetry of Tennessee Williams.

Most challenging part about your current role: At the moment? Memorization!

Most embarrassing onstage mishap: Once in a production of Uncle Vanya my wig flew off my head! Luckily it was seconds before the end of the act, and the lights came down almost immediately after it happened.

Career you’d have if you weren’t a performer: Animal rescue

Favorite post-show spot: Home with my husband and dogs.

Favorite thing about Dallas-Forth Worth: The abundance of really good theater here.

Most memorable theater moment: There have been many! The one that comes to mind right now is a production of Edward Albee’s Counting the Ways for the Festival of Independent Theatres (for Wingspan Theatre Company) in the summer of 2012.

During a matinee performance at the Bath House Cultural Center, the power went out. It was storming heavily that day. At the suggestion of castmate Adrian Churchill, we moved the show into the lobby and completed the play for the audience who wanted to wait out the bad weather and see the full production. It was a splendid “the show must go on” moment.

Dallas actor Lulu Ward.

Photo courtesy of Lulu Ward

Dallas actor Lulu Ward.

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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.

fair park theater obituary