Wait, wasn’t Fat Ham just produced by another local company? Yes, the second show in a three-year partnership between Stage West Theatre and the Dallas Theater Center had its run in Fort Worth late last summer and is now moving to the Kalita Humphreys.
The collaboration has so far featured some of the most celebrated titles in recent live drama. Like Primary Trust, staged a year ago by the top companies on each end of D-FW with the same cast, set and director, the comedic takeoff on Shakespeare’s Hamlet won the Pulitzer Prize.
Playwright James Ijames has relocated the action from the medieval Danish court to a Black backyard barbecue in the contemporary American South. Spoiler alert: No one dies this time, at least not in the course of the play. Juicy, née Hamlet, has already lost his father Pap, the king, to his power-hungry uncle Rev, who immediately marries his brother’s wife. Soon, Pap’s ghost is haunting his son, seeking revenge. Juicy choses another route.
The next co-production, Where We Stand, opens shortly at Stage West before moving next month to Bryant Hall. The interactive one-woman show, set at a town hall meeting, stars Theater Center stalwart Liz Mikel as a storyteller spinning a fable filled with music and magic, the audience deciding the fate of a neighbor who has struck a dangerous bargain.
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The ongoing collaboration consolidates costs at a time when post-pandemic audiences have not returned to theater in the same numbers.
“This partnership will allow us to share our work with more people across two cities while providing greater creative opportunities for artists,” says Theater Center executive director Kevin Moriarty, who has also struck co-production deals with the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, Ark., for shows this season.
Details
Fat Ham runs Jan. 30-Feb. 8 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. Where We Stand runs Jan. 29-Feb. 15 at Stage West and Feb. 25-March 22 at Bryant Hall. Tickets at dallastheatercenter.org and stagewest.org.
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