Juicy (Tyler Ray Lewis) sings karaoke in Dallas Theater Center’s co-production with Stage West Theatre of the comic “Hamlet” takeoff “Fat Ham.”
Evan Michael Woods
Co-productions between theater companies are not a new phenomenon. But since the pandemic, with costs growing and audiences dwindling, they’re on the rise. Second Thought Theatre just announced a season of them.
Last year, Dallas Theater Center and Fort Worth’s Stage West formalized an agreement to collaborate on shows over multiple seasons. Three productions have taken place so far: Primary Trust, Fat Ham and Where We Stand.
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But the deal has been paused, at least for the 2025-26 season, as DTC’s new artistic director, Jaime Castañeda, wants to concentrate on exclusive world premieres in his first year on the job.
Nationally, the Theatre Communications Group, a consortium of more than 650 organizations and 3,000 individuals, has started a discussion about co-productions. In the typical arrangement, the shows have separate runs at each of the theaters using the same cast, set and design teams, including the director.
Lee George, left, and Tiana Kaye Blair in “Primary Trust,” a co-production of Stage West Theatre and Dallas Theater Center.
TayStan Photography
Fueling the trend, in part, is the possibility of sharing costs, though North Texas theater makers say there are myriad other reasons, including that it would sometimes be impossible to produce a play they’re interested in without a partner due to factors like cast size and makeup.
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A related incentive is that the agencies that license material usually look to place their shows at the biggest theaters possible, often freezing out smaller companies like Second Thought.
“We knew we wanted to work with several people,” says artistic director Carson McCain. “We thought, ‘What if we did all of them in one season? What if we made this our theme?’ Then the timing happened to align. It was both intentional and serendipitous.”
To open its 2026 season — organized around a theme of “What do we fight for? What are we revolutionized by?” — Second Thought is staging the historical feminist play Bull in a China Shop.
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The production originated at Fort Worth’s Amphibian Stage in February. That company’s leader, Jay Duffer, has directed at Second Thought. He’s friends with McCain and executive director Parker Gray. They’ve talked about collaborating for years.
The cast of Amphibian Stage’s production of “Bull in a China Shop” rocking out to Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” at the top of the show.
Evan Michael Woods
Duffer brought the project to them. “We’re both theaters that embrace bold work, perhaps something that our audiences have never seen or will never get a chance to see otherwise,” he says. “I know I’m not only going over there to be entertained, but the whole drive back to Fort Worth, the play is sticking with me. It’s a common denominator.”
“Because our messaging and our brand and our aesthetic are so aligned, we feel like sister theaters,” Gray adds. “We know we can do the exact same type of show at Amphibian that we would do at Second Thought, and both audiences would love it.”
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For its other productions this year, Dance Nation and Camp Siegfried, Second Thought is collaborating with the theater program at the University of Texas at Arlington, the young troupe Watering Hole Collective and Stage West.
Dance Nation, set in the fierce world of preteen competitive dancing, will feature six UTA theater students alongside four professionals. Such a collaboration is not new to UTA. In fact, the program partnered in 2023 with Amphibian on a co-production of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit.
Duffer was teaching at UTA when Felicia Bertch, head of the BFA acting program, approached him about the project. Bertch says UTA is well positioned between Dallas and Fort Worth, making it easy for its students to see and participate in theater in both cities. She reached out to Second Thought about collaborating on Dance Nation.
McCain was a fan of the play but thought she would never be able to produce it. The cast size is too big for a typical Second Thought show and calls for multiple generations to be portrayed. Neither the company nor the school could do it on its own. It will have a single run from mid-September to early October at Bryant Hall, where Second Thought performs.
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“It’s a win-win,” Bertch says. “For our students, it’s like a field trip.”
Second Thought’s season closer, Camp Siegfried, based on a Nazi indoctrination camp that operated on Long Island in the 1930s, started as a co-production with Watering Hole. A single run was planned for December at Bryant Hall. Now Stage West has joined the collaboration with a second mounting scheduled in Fort Worth.
“Carson and I are interested in telling a story across the season,” Parker says.
“This year, we would not be able to achieve the storytelling without the co-productions,” McCain adds. “The pieces are all in conversation with each other.”
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Laura Salvie, development director for Watering Hole, is set to direct Camp Siegfried, with operations director Jenny Dang stage managing. Both have previously worked in shows at Second Thought.
“It’s great for actors and team members to get to work at multiple houses,” says Dana Schultes, executive producer at Stage West. “It extends their contract. It lets them chew on the work a little bit more. And it gives us access to titles. Certainly, we got to produce Primary Trust and Fat Ham because of the Theater Center.”
In turn, DTC was able to mount its current show, the sprawling musical Ragtime, because of the involvement of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University as co-producer. Ten students are acting in Ragtime, making up almost half the cast.
Later this season, DTC is co-producing the premiere of local playwright Jonathan Norton’s Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem with three out-of-town troupes.
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“They’re on the rise,” Norton says of co-productions, and not just because of the ability to share costs. They offer “the theaters an opportunity to share a different taste, a different voice, a different type of vision with their audiences that they might not be familiar with. …With the industry in a rebound moment, we’re discovering that we’re stronger together than apart.”
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Details
Bull in a China Shop runs April 1-18 at Bryant Hall, 3400 Blackburn St. $32. secondthoughttheatre.com.
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Ragtime runs through April 19 at Wyly Theatre, 2400 Flora St. $30-$160. dallastheatercenter.org.