{"id":342708,"date":"2026-06-19T10:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T10:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/342708\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T10:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T10:44:17","slug":"playwright-steve-yockey-gives-love-in-the-modern-world-a-lesbian-flair-in-kdts-venus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/342708\/","title":{"rendered":"Playwright Steve Yockey gives love in the modern world a lesbian flair in KDT\u2019s \u2018Venus\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Currently onstage at Kitchen Dog Theater is the regional premiere of Steve Yockey\u2019s Venus. The story centers on two women who recap a date gone horribly wrong \u2014 and that\u2019s underselling it.<\/p>\n

These women have a meet-cute and go out on a date that is followed by love bombs and possible manslaughter. No U-hauls were involved on this lesbian first date. Instead, Yockey\u2019s character exploration was an absurdist dramedy of sapphic proportions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Venus<\/a> runs through June 28.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact that the play opened during Pride Month was a nice bow on top for Yockey.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was a happy accident but I\u2019m not mad about it,\u201d he said. \u201cAlthough I think people celebrating Pride would maybe want it to have a happier end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The catalyst for the show came from a philosophical treatise that Yockey came upon that questioned whether real love can exist in this modern world. In The Agony of Eros, Byung-Chul Han posits that today\u2019s hyper-connectivity and self-importance are killing the notion of love and romance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it becomes everyone imitating what they read in books or see in the movies in terms of love, like we\u2019re taught to act the part,\u201d Yockey said. \u201c Like we can\u2019t really do the real thing anymore, but I don\u2019t agree with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought about the two things that are most applicable [and] are always in the background: social media and fear. Everyone needs to be right all the time, because if you\u2019re right, then you don\u2019t have to be afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cIf you are afraid all the time, how can you really connect with another person? And so that\u2019s where it\u2019s started for me, the exploration of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The play is directed by Christie Vela and stars Tina Parker as Beth and Sally Nystuen Vahle as Nicole.\u00a0Although this marks the first pairing on stage for Parker and Vahle, all three women have deep ties to the theater. Parker is KDT\u2019s co-artistic director and company manager; Vahle is a founding member of the company, and Vela is a member of its artistic company.<\/p>\n

And all three kill it.<\/p>\n

Nystuen played Nicole with a grounded sensibility that hides her own neuroses. It is a structured performance filled with nuance.<\/p>\n

Beth is more assertive and chases Nicole. Parker brought her to life with a punchy vibe and delivery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under Vela\u2019s direction,the show moved at a lovely pace that allowed each character to breathe into their existence so that the audience could connect. Mostly taking place smack dab in the center on a platform, the actors and director conveyed Yockey\u2019s words with a superb flair. And for a show that has a lot of visual symbolism through dialogue, the actors all painted Yockey\u2019s colorful pictures so vibrantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Queer audiences may also recognize themselves in either \u2013 or both \u2013 characters. We\u2019ve all been a little too excited about a date \u2014 only, maybe not so much to cause bodily injury or leave someone in a shallow grave.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a gay male writer, why did Yockey choose to deliver a story centered on romance between two queer women?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like that\u2019s what it needed to be. It can\u2019t be a man and a woman because he is automatically more threatening, even if he\u2019s the nicest guy in the world. I suppose it could have been two gay men, but I feel like that would be more aggressive out of the gate than the play wants to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so there was something about making it to women and making them as specific as possible,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additionally, how refreshing it was to see women of a certain vintage in the throes of romance as well as red flag behavior!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is the second show this year that highlights relationships between two lesbian women from vastly different perspectives. First, was Amphibian Stage and Second Thought\u2019s historic Bull in a China Shop about Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks, two established intellectuals navigating their relationship through careers in a time when women were fighting for voting rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here, in Venus, Nicole and Beth fight over the color of flowers and the contents of a junk drawer. Seeing these actors in these roles felt like a revelation. Only, the age of the characters in Yockey\u2019s play is inconsequential.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe age isn\u2019t specified so far,\u201d Yockey said. \u201cSo this is a rolling world premiere, and I just saw the production in Atlanta with actresses who were slightly younger than the actresses in Texas, and it\u2019s a very different vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which may just be the entire point of Yockey\u2019s play.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He goes on to say, \u201cWhat I love so much about having Tina and Sally do it is that it\u2019s so unexpected. Like, you, you would just think, they both carry this life experience to the stage with them, but also, they are kind of old enough to know better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of age, love can still fuck you up,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For tickets, visit KitchenDogTheater.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RICH LOPEZ | Staff writerRich@DallasVoice.com Currently onstage at Kitchen Dog Theater is the regional premiere of Steve Yockey\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[42268,102,104,103,38737,21719,2039,122166,6529,2040,122167,2509,122168],"class_list":["post-342708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-christie-vela","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-featured-this-week","tag-lesbian","tag-rich-lopez","tag-sally-nystuen-vahle","tag-stage","tag-stage-notes","tag-steve-yockey","tag-theater","tag-tina-parker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}