Click here to read other pieces in our series on the real characters behind Dallas’ theater scene.
Jon Christie bent down to shake my hand, but his grip was gentle. Tuffs of charcoal curls were visible above the valley of his turquoise v-neck and his boyish blue eyes were set in an ageless face, marked only by the thick stubble across his jaw line. At 23, Christie strives to break into Dallas Theater with the kind of youthful eagerness ignited by one’s ..read more
On most days, Lloyd Fruge is a roofer. He is 62 and has a head of wispy hair and brown-blue eyes. He wears a work shirt, sleeves rolled up around his elbows and glasses in his breast pocket. He is a roofer, but once a month he travels to New York City to watch musicals and talk to directors, producers, and investors on Broadway. He reads one or two scripts a week and serves food to touring production ..read more
This is the part of summer series focusing on the real characters behind Dallas’ theater scene. To read other installments in this series click here.
I sit and wait for theater director and producer Raphael Parry at a round table on the third floor of the renovated Pump Station along Harry Hines. His receptionist speaks softly while the phone rings repeatedly. She smiles, telling me Parry will be right in. Moments later a man with a thick white beard that ..read more
According to Linda Blase, it’s impossible to make a living as a stage lighting designer in Dallas. That’s why she’s also a teacher and a photographer, and even after juggling multiple jobs for more than four decades, she doesn’t see retiring as an option anytime soon.
If you’re looking for money, get out of regional theater. Blase acknowledges that neither she nor anyone in the arts is in it for the money. If they were, then they wouldn’t have stuck with ..read more
This is part of our summer series focusing on the real characters behind Dallas’ theater scene. To read other installments in this series click here.
Growing up in Dallas, Morgana Shaw didn’t experience the things that are meant to expose a child to a life in the arts. She never made childhood trips to the theater, went to summer camp, took voice lessons. Real life packed enough drama. She spent much of her youth being passed around between members of her family, from grandparents to cousins, dealing with multiple parental separations. She never really knew where or with whom she would be living next. “Making ends meet” was a familiar phrase long before she decided to delve into the life of a working actor.
This is the part of summer series focusing on the real characters behind Dallas’ theater scene. To read other installments in this series click here.
Mathew Posey lives in storefront on Exposition Blvd. steps from Fair Park. Instead of a kitchen table he has forty-five plastic orange chairs. Instead of living room couches, he has a ten-by-twelve foot wooden stage. During the day, the space is called home. At night, home transforms into The Ochre House, an in-your-face performance space.
This is ..read more
This is the first in summer series focusing on the real characters behind Dallas’ theater scene. To read other installments in this series click here.
Lee Trull woke up at thirty, realized he needed glasses and he was going to die one day.
An aspiring actor in his twenties, for Trull, mortality had not been something he had the leisure to consider. Death was a line in a script; he was invincible. He had to be. As an actor, he lived in expectation of rejection, and becoming unbreakable, Trull says, was “just part of it.”
Now 32, the Associate Artist, Casting Director, and member of the Diane and Hal Brierley Resident Acting Company at the Dallas Theater Center admits it takes a certain kind of person to deal with the type of rejection that comes from endless auditioning. To walk into a room and hand someone a picture of yourself, show them your most vulnerable self only to be told “no thank you” is demoralizing, to say the least.