Season Announcement

New season at Dallas' Bishop Arts Theatre Center hits race and censorship

The cast of Arden Theatre Company’s 2025 production of August Wilson’s 'King Hedley II.'

Photo by Ashley Smith, Wide Eyed Studios

An American classic, a banned books festival, and a family-friendly world premiere headline the 32nd anniversary season at Bishop Arts Theatre Center in Dallas.

Founded in 1993, Bishop Arts Theatre Center is an award-winning, multicultural, multidisciplinary arts institution based in Dallas. This eclectic lineup reflects the company’s enduring commitment to cultivating local artists, celebrating cultural traditions, and sparking urgent conversations.

“For more than three decades, Bishop Arts Theatre Center has stood at the intersection of community and creativity,” says executive artistic director Teresa Coleman Wash. “This season continues that legacy with stories that are both deeply personal and profoundly universal. From August Wilson’s searing portrait of redemption, to the joyous celebration of Black Nativity, to a bold festival challenging censorship, and a family-friendly world premiere by a Dallas artist, this is a season of firsts that reflects our city’s resilience and imagination."

October 9-26: The season begins with August Wilson's King Hedley II, directed by Jemal McNeil in a co-production with Soul Rep Theatre.

Part of Wilson’s legendary American Century Cycle, this gripping drama is set in 1980s Pittsburgh and follows an ex-convict fighting to rebuild his life against the crushing weight of systemic injustice.

“August Wilson is a giant in the American theater, and it has always been our goal to produce his work,”says Guinea Bennett-Price, co-founder and co-artistic director of Soul Rep Theatre. “We are grateful to the Parrish Charitable Foundation for making this vision a reality, and thrilled to share this collaboration with Bishop Arts Theatre Center.”

December 4-21: A cornerstone of Dallas holiday traditions returns next: Black Nativity. Inspired by Langston Hughes’s groundbreaking 1960 Broadway production, this version is written and directed by Calvin J. Walker, with music direction by Steven A. Taylor.

Through partnerships with local high schools, including Sunset, Molina, and Adamson, this year’s production deepens the tradition by welcoming first-time actors and youth participants into the cast.

“I’m honored to reimagine this timeless work,” says Walker. “My prayer is that audiences of all ages experience joy, connection, and inspiration this holiday season.”

February 19-March 8, 2026: In an era of rising censorship, Bishop Arts Theatre Center reaffirms its commitment to amplifying silenced voices with its annual Banned Books Festival. Inspired by Ijeoma Oluo’s acclaimed So You Want to Talk About Race, six playwrights will create original works responding to the book’s urgent themes of race, identity, and justice.

The festival extends beyond the stage with talkbacks and roundtables, including a special conversation with Oluo herself. Together with The Writer’s Garret and director Charles Jackson Jr., the festival invites audiences into a deeper dialogue about the power of art, literature, and free expression.

“As censorship attempts continue, it’s our responsibility to defend free speech,” says Aaron Glover, executive director of The Writer’s Garret. “The arts remain one of the most powerful tools to connect, uplift, and challenge us. We are proud to co-present this festival with Bishop Arts Theatre Center.”

September 10-20, 2026: The season closes with Portalgraphs, a magical new musical directed and with book by Justin Cavazos, and original music by Dustin and Justin Cavazos.

It follows a spirited grandmother and her sassy granddaughter who stumble into a photo album that becomes a time machine. What begins as a whimsical journey through memories evolves into a moving story about love, legacy, and living in the moment. By engaging students from BATC’s Summer STEAM Camp and after-school programs, the production also welcomes local youth and first-time actors, building bridges between generations while nurturing the next wave of storytellers.

“This is a fun show for the whole family,” says writer/director Justin Cavazos. “The songs are catchy, the jokes land for all ages, and the story will touch your heart.”

All performances will be held at Bishop Arts Theatre Center, 215 S. Tyler Street in Dallas.

Tickets are available online or by calling 214-948-0716. Seniors, students, and groups of 15-plus are eligible for discounts.

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A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set

Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Photo courtesy of Dallas Symphony Orchestra

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Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.

While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.

“Wagner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually — not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,” Luisi said. “I think the music tells everything.”

Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with (the now late) Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.

“Fabio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?” recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. “So, I said, well, let’s give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.”

After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.

Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).

Delavan sang Wotan at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage’s much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.

“We’re accessible and they know that we’re hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,” Delavan said. “What conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I’m going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I’m going to get a solid technique, and I’m going to get pretty good acting chops.”

Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.

“The wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we’re not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,” she said of the Dallas performances. “And for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.”

A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti’s famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl Böhm’s live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski’s 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden’s Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi’s Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of “Das Rheingold” to the final strains of “Götterdämmerung.”

“I have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,” he said. “I consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is “Walküre,” which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is “Siegfried,” of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.”

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