TableCo/Lab founders are, from left, Chris Sanders, Sarah Powell and Caroline Rivera
The Table Co/Lab closes season with queer stories showcase
RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
rich@dallasvoice.com
The Table Co/Lab is a new face on the local theater scene, having just kicked off its inaugural season last September. The company began with the music production Beyond Perfection, followed by the stage production of The Danger Year. Now the eclectic season approaches its end this weekend with Tales from the End of the Rainbow, a two-day mini festival of new works by local queer playwrights.
Sarah Powell, one of three founders of Table Co/Lab, expressed her excitement at closing the season this way because of how it speaks to the intent of the new company. “When we started this, we saw a need for more representation and wanted to put women and nonbinary and transgender individuals at the helm of their own stories,” she said by phone. “That really comes to fruition through this and it’s a fulfillment of our mission.”
Tales from the End of the Rainbow will go down on Saturday and Sunday at Lyric Stage’s rehearsal space in the Design District.
The response to TCL’s call for shows garnered a number of submissions. Powell said they received up to about 40 works — a number that felt impressive to her and the others.
“If this were a national call, that would be nothing, but for local submissions, that’s a decent amount,” she said. “Everyone we read and who is in the showcase are from Dallas/Fort Worth as well.”
The three founders and a reading committee whittled down the submissions into five selections by DFW playwrights being featured across two days. Tales From the End of the Rainbow includes Green with Enby by Allison Fradkin, Happy Birthday to Me by Alle Mims, The Legend of Caeneus by Zander Pryor, People Seeds by Hadley Shipley and June and Max Go to Space by Erin Malone Turner.
While there was no official breakdown, Powell said that transgender and nonbinary stories seemed to be the overwhelming theme and reference among many of the shows that she read as well as in the final five. She’s glad to see these stories making their way in front of new eyes and hopes the trend continues. With this first new works showcase, Powell figures that TCL can help usher in these stories this weekend and beyond.
“We’re really hoping this festival will become an annual event and lead into a fully-staged production,” Powell said.” The community is out there for this.”
The company is looking ahead into its second season with the next production already lined up: “We have an upcoming production of The Scarlet Letter, a new musical by the same writer as Beyond Perfection who is from Dallas,” she said. “We want to put emphasis on local writers. That’s a niche we can offer and cultivate.”
That production will be staged this summer at OhLook in Grapevine.
For Powell and her TCL co-founders Caroline Rivera and Chris Sanders, they envisioned their new theater company as a place for new works that give space to marginalized genders.
“We knew people wanted to see these stories on stage,” Powell said. “As we put the festival together, it began building and buzzing. The community wanted something and we were able to put it into practice.”
Powell said that TCL, in her mind, grew out of the #MeToo movement where she posited what theaters would look like with people like her at the helm. “It was time to let these ideas out, so we started a theater during the pandemic when theaters were closing,” she said with a laugh. “Reflecting on larger theaters, there are more cis white men at the helm and we wondered, with our demographic and diversity, how that would look. We are nonbinary, African-American and Latina, and we wanted to bring the things that people like us wanted to see and provide a space to feel collaborative and safe and welcome.”
Tales from the End of the Rainbow sounds just like that space with its diverse lineup of both playwrights and directors for each new work, and the TCL founders are ready to not only present it, but to bring distinct representation to the stage on its own terms: “People will hear voices from the local community that you wouldn’t normally hear or see onstage,” she said. “We’re interested in cultivating these queer stories and this selection runs the gamut from hilarious to poignant.”
