Finally.
More than a decade after it was forced to leave the McKinney Avenue Contemporary where it had become a cornerstone of one of the country’s largest theater scenes outside of New York and Chicago, Kitchen Dog Theater is through wandering from venue to venue, opening what it hopes will be its forever-home.
Years of fundraising, construction delays and rising costs have repeatedly pushed back what turned into an almost $3 million renovation of a former tile warehouse in the growing Northern Design District. In 2016, the group bought the 10,000-square-foot building for just under $1 million. Initial plans called for the new facility to open two years later after $750,000 in construction costs.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” co-artistic director Tina Parker said in a late-January interview inside the building’s rehearsal space, at the time lined with equipment still to be installed as the company prepared for the first show, a revival of the 2018 musical comedy Pompeii!! Written by three company members, it opens with a preview performance Feb. 12.
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The company’s truncated 35th season also includes two other full productions, a new works festival of staged readings and a festival of plays by area high school students.
Kitchen Dog Theater is through wandering from venue to venue, opening what it hopes will be its forever-home in a renovated former tile warehouse in the growing Northern Design District.
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Kitchen Dog is now one of the few professional theater companies in North Texas to own its space, along with Theatre Three, Dallas Children’s Theater, Bishop Arts Theatre Center, Stage West Theatre and Amphibian Stage.
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Other groups, even those with long-term track records in venues they’ve leased for years like Deep Ellum’s Undermain Theatre and Latino Cultural Center resident companies Teatro Dallas and Cara Mía Theatre, lack security, while dozens without a regular place to perform struggle to find spaces in the tight and expensive Dallas market.
It’s a phenomenon that’s happening all over the country, says Kitchen Dog managing director Tim Johnson. As a result, companies of their size and age are engaging in capital campaigns to build their own venues.
But the endeavor has risks. Though a lot of money was raised to buy the warehouse and help pay for the renovation of 4774 Algiers St., Kitchen Dog took out a $2 million loan to finish the job. What was borrowed cannot be paid down with just the usual mix of ticket sales, grants and donations.
The lobby of the new Kitchen Dog Theater is highlighted by a versatile LED lighting system that can change colors.
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“We spent every penny we have,” Johnson says. “We have this building and debt.”
A capital campaign is underway. There is a bit of breathing room as the loan was set up to delay payments for a year.
Naming rights are one possible avenue, a source of ongoing humor inside Kitchen Dog. “Quite frankly, it could be the Philip Morris Theater for $1 million; I don’t care,” Johnson half-jokes, referring to the tobacco conglomerate. “I’ll put a camel on the side of the building.”
“You can name a bathroom stall after your ex or a person in your life named Lou or John,” Parker adds.
You could purchase the naming rights to one of Kitchen Dog Theater’s new unisex bathroom stalls.
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Kitchen Dog also plans to rent space to other theater troupes and for corporate events and even weddings.
The beauty of the new facility is that besides the main black box theater, it has a separate, soundproof rehearsal hall that can double as a small, cabaret-style performance space and a scenic shop. That means that while the company is building sets or rehearsing for its next show, another group could be performing in the main theater. Or when the company is performing in the main theater, another group could be doing a show in the cabaret.
Since exiting the original MAC, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Uptown, after a 20-year run, Kitchen Dog has performed all over town, including a few years at the Trinity River Arts Center. Its last full season, 2023-24, took place entirely in a series of unconventional venues: a Frisco baseball park, a Design District CrossFit gym and an East Dallas record store.
Founded in 1990 by five graduates of the theater program at Southern Methodist University, the company became a link between the past and future of a local theater scene that had been anchored for decades by Dallas Theater Center and Theatre Three.
Kitchen Dog’s main performance space is a flexible black box theater that can accommodate up to about 135 audience members.
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Other avant-garde theaters existed at the time, most notably Undermain. But Kitchen Dog proved that Dallas artists could stay here and thrive. The company produced up to nine shows a season at the MAC, the norm being four to six. But in 2015, owner Claude Albritton closed the iconic blue building and relocated its art gallery to the Cedars. Eventually, the building was knocked down to make way for a new 8,000-square-foot bakery.
Since the group’s founding, it has become normal for local theater school graduates to not only ply their trade in North Texas instead of moving to one of the country’s theater capitals but also to start their own companies. Second Thought Theatre, launched by alumni of Baylor University in Waco, is now 23 years old.
Kitchen Dog has made its mark on the national alternative theater scene as well, as a founding member of the National New Play Network, a consortium of companies that identify promising new work and share what they call rolling world premieres.
Johnson hopes the troupe can become a model for other local companies looking for permanent homes and envisions a scenario where multiple groups could share venues. “Just think about the difference it would make in the city,” he says, “if there were five new theater spaces that had resident companies.”
The box office and concession stand are in the lobby of Kitchen Dog Theater’s new venue.
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Details
Pompeii!! runs Feb. 12-March 8 at Kitchen Dog Theater, 4774 Algiers St., Dallas. $15-$35. kitchendogtheater.org.
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