The Dallas Theater Center’s Kevin Moriarty has said since he started there as artistic director that his goal was to provide every audience an experience in the “city’s theater.” The diversity evident in the coming season reflects that. (Three gay playwrights are represented next season.)
The seven-production season is divided into both “classic” (four plays) and “contemporary” (three plays) series — two musicals, a holiday tradition, a famous play and its unofficial sequel among them.
The “big” news is the first locally-produced professional production of Les Miserables, which closes the season in the summer of 2014. Before then, however, are six more shows.
The season begins with gay playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (Sept. 13–Oct. 27), about an upwardly-mobile black family in 1950s Chicago. That show will be performed, partly in repertory, with the new play Clyburne Park (Oct. 4–27), a volatile modern comedy set in the same house as Raisin. Clybourne Park won the Tony Award for best play in last year.
Even things that haven’t changed, have. For the first time ever, the DTC staple A Christmas Carol (Nov. 21–Dec. 24) will be performed at the Wyly Theatre, after nearly 10 years at the Kalita Humphreys. This isn’t the first time the show has been in the Arts District; for years, it was routinely performed at the Arts District Theater, which used to exist on the site where the Winspear is now. But this new version — adapted and directed by Moriarty, as a 90-minute one-act — will (for this season only) be part of the “regular” season subscription.
The first show of 2014 will be Oedipus el Rey (Jan. 16–March 2), MacArthur “genius” grant winner Luis Alfaro’s provocative retelling of the Oedipus myth moved to the street gangs of South Central Los Angeles.
“It taps into recidivism [among inner-city criminals] and the idea that fate is predetermined,” says Moriarty, who describes the production as having tons of violence and nudity. Moriarty will direct that show as well.
The Fortress of Solitude (March 7–April 6) is a new musical with a book by playwright Itamar Moses, whose last show at DTC was Back Back Back, the steroid-in-baseball drama. Michael Friedman, the gay composer who scored Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, writes the music and lyrics. It is not, however, a sequel to DTC’s It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman, but deals instead “with boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s and ’70s — one, a white boy named Dylan who befriends an African-American boy named Mingus.” It combines soul and funk music “in its trajectory,” says Moriarty. “There’s a quality of magical realism to it — the boys fly briefly.” It is being produced in cooperation with The Public Theatre in New York.
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure (April 25–May 25) will be Moriarty’s third directing duty of the year, helming Steven Dietz’s adaptation of the Conan Doyle story about the English supersleuth. Les Miz closes the season from June 27–Aug. 10.
The season is notable for several reasons; it’s the first since the move to the Wyly without a Shakespeare play, and the first where all the shows will performed inside the Wyly without forays into Uptown’s Kalita (all except Oedipus el Rey will be in the Potter Rose Performance Hall; it will take place in the Studio Theatre).
Also, the DTC, known for its race-blind casting, will be hemmed in slightly; race and ethnicity play central parts in Raisin, Clybourne, Fortess and Oepipus all deal with race integrally.
Moriarty also revealed that The Dracula Cycle by gay scribe Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, schedule for this season, will debut during the 2014 season. So we already have a leg up on that one.
NOTE: To see a two-minute video of the season announcement, watch this:
