Cheyenne Haynes as Mimi in the world premiere of Gracie Gardner’s “Saturn Return” at Undermain Theatre.
Paul Semrad
Christina Cranshaw considers herself “a big ‘woo-woo’ person.” She’s interested in the mysteries that lie beneath the surface of things.
“I’m big into astrology. I know my chart,” she says in a Zoom interview about her new position as artistic associate at Undermain Theatre and Saturn Return, the new Gracie Gardner play she’s directing for the 42-year-old company.
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It’s named for the astrological event that occurs between a person’s 27th and 30th birthday. The planet Saturn returns to the same position in your chart as it was at the time of your birth. “This landed in my lap,” Cranshaw says. “I’m a Libra sun, a Leo moon and have Capricorn rising. Then everything underneath is Scorpio. There’s a lot of emotion.”
Undermain is producing the world premiere of this latest effort from Gardner, who won the company’s Katherine Owens award, named for its late co-founder, in 2024. That same year, Undermain produced the New York playwright’s Athena, about a pair of fencers training for the Junior Olympics. It starred Cranshaw and Nadia DeWolf, who plays the main character Tory in Saturn Return.
Tory is one of four 27-year-old “theater kids” on the cusp of their Saturn returns brought back together for the memorial service of a high school classmate. Cranshaw, 31, just went through hers. In the midst of it almost a year ago, she got her new post at Undermain.
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“It just feels like everything in my life kind of has put me in these places where it all aligns,” she says.
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Among her duties is helping artistic director Bruce DuBose plan future seasons. DuBose has been running the company since Owens, his wife, died of lymphoma in 2019. Then the 65-year-old had a stroke in December 2024. He has mostly recovered, acting in the only speaking part in the demanding An Iliad.
“We were just talking about how Katherine had done Macbeth with people hanging from the pillars,” Cranshaw says. “I’m so interested in doing works that uncover the things that we’re all scared to uncover … the stuff that we hide and the mask that we present to people. What’s underneath that mask and who gets to see it?”
The plot of Saturn Return revolves around Tory and her relationship with the deceased Jake, Cranshaw says, with the audience learning about Jake from each of the characters’ viewpoints, including Mr. Littman (Patrick Bynane), their former teacher on the verge of his second Saturn return.
“It’s about their disconnections and miscommunications,” she explains. “Each Saturn return is different. We see people yearning for something. Whether it’s fulfilled or not, I won’t spoil it.”
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If you’ve seen her perform or just talked to her, you know Cranshaw is a fireball of feelings. In the recent Undermain production of Thornton Wilder’s bizarre classic The Skin of Our Teeth, she played two characters plus a version of herself when she steps out of one of the roles to loudly protest the scene unfolding onstage.
Earlier this season, Cranshaw directed Sam Shepard’s absurdist play Action during which a cooked turkey was partially consumed by the cast, partially thrown around the stage. Later in the show, one of the nonsensical characters facing the aftermath of some kind of apocalypse sliced up a fish. The smells were palpable.
“I’m scared I’m getting the reputation for being the icky director in town,” Cranshaw says, adding her adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis at Fort Worth’s Hip Pocket Theatre in 2024 to her résumé of visceral productions.
In the book, Gregor Samsa gets fed milk. For the stage production, Cranshaw decided to have the actor playing him, Doak Rapp, who also appears in Saturn Return, pour a powdered milk mixture all over his body.
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“I’m very sensory,” she understates. “I just love the fact that we as artists can actually smell that fish being gutted. It’s so much more potent if we do the things we say we’re going to do on stage.”
Doak Rapp as Bucket in Gracie Gardner’s “Saturn Return.”
Paul Semrad
Trained in the physical movement technique developed by French theater artist Jacques Lecoq, Cranshaw says she chooses action over talk. “As a director, I’m not great with words. When I get excited, I’ll start juggling or throw myself in a trash can. I love getting up there with the actors and seeing if they have an idea. Just extreme collaboration.”
She was such a ham as a child, Cranshaw says, her mother put her in acting classes at KD Studio when she was 4. In another full-circle moment, she’s now teaching at the affiliated KD Conservatory. Along with the Undermain artistic associate position, it made it possible for her to quit her 9-to-5 job.
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Growing up in Mansfield, Cranshaw remembers being 10 and thinking she would skip college, move to Los Angeles and live out of her car. Instead, she put herself through school, eventually graduating with an acting degree from Texas Christian University.
One of her influences was her cousin Patrick Cranshaw, an actor who had small roles in movies like Bonnie and Clyde. He played a bank teller who’s robbed by the outlaws. She says he gave her the confidence that she could do it, too.
A year after graduating from high school in 2013, Cranshaw started acting professionally at the avant-hippie Hip Pocket and studying with co-founder Johnny Simons and his daughters Lorca and Lake, who run the troupe now. She has continued to work there and is scheduled to direct the 50-year-old company’s season opener, The Three Cuckolds, in June.
Cranshaw has also worked at other theaters around D-FW, including Dallas Children’s Theater, Ochre House Theatre, Casa Mañana, Cara Mia Theatre, WaterTower Theatre, Stage West Theatre and Jubilee Theatre.
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Around the same time she began appearing at Hip Pocket, she saw her first Undermain show, the near-future sci-fi drama Tomorrow Comes Today. Technological advances have made it possible for the rich to cheat death by moving into a new body.
“I remember being blown away by the innovation of the writing and appreciated that I would never see anything else like that in the DFW theater community,” Cranshaw says. “Since then, I’ve seen show after show after show and started developing these relationships where Undermain started to become the place I lean towards. They were doing stuff that I wanted to do. I thought, ‘How can I get involved with them?’ Finally I got my bachelor’s degree and became this butterfly.”
She first auditioned for Undermain in 2021 and was cast in Fairview, the company’s co-production with Bishop Arts Theatre Center of the Pulitzer Prize winner that examined racial issues.
“I was so nervous,” she recalls of the audition, “but had a lot of trust in my piece. I did something from Dance Nation, gave it 110% — went truly out there wild — and left everything on the table.”
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She was invited back to read for Bondage, a play that takes place on a failing Southern plantation during slavery, and was cast as the precocious daughter of the plantation owner.
After that success, DuBose told her Undermain wanted her to star in Athena, a play the company had been trying to produce for years. Then at Undermain’s Christmas party, he approached her about becoming artistic associate, a new part-time staff position.
“We want that person to be able to create their place the way they want it, and give us time to work with each other,” he said of the job in an interview last June, shortly before publicly announcing Cranshaw had been hired.
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“Bruce has really allowed me to take ownership of what I’m doing this season,” she says. “I’m very grateful because I was in a mode of doing show after show after show and relying on a lot of stipends.”
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Cranshaw hopes to be a creative force at Undermain if she’s not already. She has ideas around increasing community activities and possibly starting a salon series. “I’ve been given this opportunity,” she says, “to bring a fresh perspective and new eyes.”
Details
Saturn Return runs April 30-May 24 at Undermain Theatre, 3200 Main St. $18.50-$48.50. undermain.org.
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Carson Wright as Franklin in Gracie Gardner’s “Saturn Return.”
Paul Semrad