Lee Walter, center, and the cast of Jada Bells (Photo courtesy of Uptown Players)
Lee Walter brings her alter ego to the stage in Uptown Player’s ‘Jada Bells’
RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
rich@dallasvoice.com
Uptown Players kicks off its new season by getting into the holiday spirit on Friday, Dec. 1, when the company opens its original musical Jada Bells — A Holiday Extravaganza. The show is written by B.J. Cleveland and stars Lee Walter performing as her famous alter, ego Jada Pinkett Fox, and is sure to stir up some holiday cheer.
In some ways, this show begs the question: Where does Walter end and Fox begin? Or vice versa?
“I’m playing myself basically,” Walter said with a laugh, just before entering a rehearsal. “It’s quite fun.”
As Fox, Walter has become a mainstay in the Gayborhood. And as Walter, she’s become a mainstay throughout Dallas, with singing gigs and, of course, a number of marquee roles, the most recent of those roles being Frank-N-Furter in Dallas Theater Center’s production of The Rocky Horror Show. Now, for Jada Bells, all of Walter’s worlds will collide on stage.
Walter has known for a while that the collision was coming: “Last year after Broadway Our Way, Jeff [Rane] and Craig [Lynch] told me they wanted to have a show centered on Jada. I thought they were joking, then when I saw the season announcement, I thought ‘Oh this is real; this is actually happening,’” she said.
Jeff Rane and Craig Lynch are the founders and producers of Uptown Players, and their Jada vision runs through Dec. 10, based on Cleveland’s script. Cleveland also directed the show.
The story is set in Jada’s apartment when she returns home after 13 weeks of filming the Miss Mary Dragmas competition in Los Angeles. As Fox and her friends watch the finale, none of them know what will happen.
Musical selections include contemporary holiday tunes as well as classic holiday and Broadway favorites.
If only Walter liked Christmas music.
“I don’t like Christmas music because retail has ruined it for me,” she admitted. “So I’m really not a holiday kinda girl.”
So how does Walter get into the spirit — even for her own show?
“It was tough when they were asking me for song suggestions. My thought was to go straight to dirty Christmas songs, but that really wouldn’t have been appropriate,” she said.
Clearly, though, they got it all worked out.
“What we have, I am in love with,” Walter said. “We have some songs I’ve never heard, but there will be some familiar tunes as well.”
Along with Walter, the cast includes Presley Duyck, Peter DiCesare, Micah Green, Isaiah Harris, Jacob Hemsath, Coy Covington, David Lugo, Michael Moore, Seth Paden, Sara Shelby-Martin, Sammy Swim, Brett Warner and Evor Wright.
For Walter, these folks are familiar territory. “We know each other so well and have worked together in the past, so it’s just like coming into a family,” she said.
But there’s more to that idea of family. In the story, Walter found a nugget that she latched onto, and it speaks to her idea of this theater family she has in the show and her career.
“There’s a line in there that’s like, ‘I always worried what the world thought of me,’ and after I read it, I thought how true that is,” she said. “We get so wrapped up in our heads and think nobody likes you. I know I have friends, but when you have a whole family of people you work with — that became the message for me. That’s what I love about this show.”
And that makes for some happy holidays indeed.
For tickets, visit UptownPlayers.org.
