Broadway Babies

High school stars shine at Broadway Dallas' teen musical theater awards

Musical theater's rising stars had their night in the spotlight on June 3, when Broadway Dallas hosted its 12th annual High School Musical Theatre Awards.

Broadway veteran Major Attaway hosted the event at the Music Hall at Fair Park, which is modeled after the Tony Awards and features student performances, award presentations — including $60,000 in scholarships — and acceptance speeches from the winners.

The 2023 Outstanding Musical Award went to Guyer High School’s production of Anastasia, and the awards for Outstanding Lead Performer were presented to Fabiola Caraballo Quijada (Hairspray, Tyler Legacy High School) and Corbin Ross (Anastasia, Guyer High School).

UPDATE 6-28-23: Ross was named a top eight finalist out of 93 students at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (the Jimmy Awards) on June 26. He received a $3,000 scholarship.

Previous winners of the HSMTA have found success as professional performers, including Haley Dortch, who is currently starring as Fantine in the national tour of Les Miserables.

A list of all 2023 winners, participating high schools, and their productions can be found at https://broadwaydallas.org/education-community/hsmta/.

“As we always say, the Broadway Dallas High School Musical Theatre Awards is our favorite night of the year and this year’s ceremony was nothing short of spectacular,” says Ken Novice, president and CEO of Broadway Dallas. “We are so proud of these hardworking students and teachers, and it’s our honor to be able to celebrate them on the Music Hall stage. Congratulations to all the 2023 nominees and winners!”

A total of 74 productions from 72 participating high schools were evaluated by a diverse group of highly qualified judges from the North Texas theater community.

Awards were presented in 14 categories and scholarships were awarded to outstanding graduating seniors who were nominated by their teachers and selected by the Broadway Dallas scholarship panel. To date, the Broadway Dallas HSMTA College Scholarship program has awarded more than $500,000 in cash scholarships to deserving students.

In addition, award-winning producer, writer, and founding artistic director for the Bishop Arts Theatre Center, Teresa Coleman Wash, was presented with the 2023 Fullinwider Award in honor of her accomplishments within the North Texas theater community and beyond.

Wash is a National Arts Strategies fellow, having studied at Harvard Business School and is the recipient of several accolades, including the Theater Communications Group’s prestigious Peter Zeisler Memorial Award for Artistic Integrity and Ingenuity in 2019, the Irma P. Hall Theatrical Excellence Medal in 2020, and most recently the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce’s Quest for Success Award.

The Fullinwider Award is named for Leah and Jerry Fullinwider, the founding donors of the Broadway Dallas High School Musical Theater Awards. The award was created to honor the Fullinwiders for their initial gift of $100,000, which helped fund and produce the HSMTA program in 2012.

Photo courtesy of Broadway Dallas

Melissa High School's production of Matilda was nominated for Outstanding Musical.

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Mural News

Netflix House will debut in Dallas with murals from acclaimed artist

Netflix House

Jeremy Biggers at Netflix House

A long-awaited immersive venue is opening in Dallas, and it will debut with local art on its walls: Netflix House, a year-round exhibit revolving around Netflix shows and movies, will open at Galleria Dallas on December 11, with two murals from award-winning Dallas multi-medium artist Jeremy Biggers.

Netflix House is an immersive dive complete with merchandise store, film house, arcade, and restaurant-bar. When it opens, Dallas will be the second location in the U.S., following Philadelphia, where it debuted in November 2025, also with murals from a local artist.

A graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Biggers is a renowned artist whose murals can be found spashed on walls across Dallas. Many, such as the Selena portrait on the wall outside Top Ten Records at 306 S. Bishop Ave., have become local landmarks.

He's a logical choice, having worked with a number of corporations including Nike, Adidas, the Dallas Mavericks, and IBM, for whom he created the "THINK" mural in their Dallas corporate office. His works have also been exhibited nationally, including a 2024 solo exhibition "be safe out there bro" at Band of Vices, a gallery in Los Angeles.

"Being chosen to be the artist to paint this mural, it would have been a disservice to myself, as well as the art scene in the city, not to try to infuse myself into it," he says.

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Biggers did two murals featuring his interpretation of Netflix figures including the Squid Game Young-hee doll, characters from KPop Demon Hunters and megahit series Stranger Things, plus Pandy and DJ Catnip, the best friends in the interactive series Gabby’s Dollhouse.

Both murals are intensely colored works that incorporate Biggers' signature motif: a grid of polka dots spread across the image.

One is on the exterior of Netflix House, at the parking entrance, a colorful collage of characters, measuring 38 feet x 50 feet — the tallest mural Biggers has tackled. He painted it with aerosol; it took him two months to complete.
The other is on the interior, on the mall side entrance of Netflix House, measuring 57 feet x 12 feet — a study in moody blacks and blues, with accents of neon-red that give it a 3D effect.

“I'm trying to tell the story of Netflix, and the story of where Netflix has been historically, where Netflix is headed in the future, and then also infusing my own narrative and my own language visually into that story,” he says.

“They could have opened this anywhere, so for Dallas to be one of the very first locations — that’s a testament to us as a market, as consumers of arts and consumers in general," he says.

Jeremy Biggers at Netflix HouseNetflix House

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