Stage Notes is a weekly aggregate post about theater, classical music and stage news, events, reviews and other pertinent information.
Stage Notes Calendar
Opening this week:
Alex Hanson Presents: Fatherland, today-July 7 at The Addison.
Dallas Symphony Orchestra: Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 – Resurrection, Friday-Sunday.
Theatre Denton: The Marriage of Betty and Boo, Friday-June 8.
Runway Theatre: Epic Proportions, Friday-June 15.
Sammons Center for the Arts: Artfully, Sammons Jazz Brunch, 11 a.m. Saturday.
Broadway at the Center: STOMP, Saturday and Sunday at the Winspear.
Broadway Dallas: Disney’s The Lion King, Wednesday-July 3, pictured.
Onstage now:
Teatro Dallas: El Otro, through Saturday at the Latino Cultural Center.
Art Center Theatre: Southern Fried Nuptials, through Sunday.
The Firehouse Theatre: The Wedding Singer, through Sunday.
The Cliburn: 2025 Cliburn Competition, through June 7 at multiple locations, pictured.
Upright Theatre Company: Ghost the Musical, through June 14.
The Core Theatre: She Stoops to Conquer, through June 15.
Pocket Sandwich Theatre: Tom,Dick and Harry, through June 21.
Amphibian Stage announces lineup for SparkFest’25: Native Artists Fierce Creativity
Amphibian Stage announced last week its full lineup for SparkFest’25 arts festival. This year, SparkFest shines a spotlight on the Native American and Indigenous community, offering a full schedule of events including theatre, live music, storytelling and poetry. SparkFest’25 runs June 13 -22 with ticket prices ranging from $10-$30.
The full schedule includes a market, spoken word, three stage productions and more.
June 13: Opening Ceremony led by local elder Leslie Thunderhawk and his family. Amphibian will unveil its 2025 mural by visual artist Gregg Deal. The event will feature a catered reception and a concert performance by singer-songwriter Raye Zaragoza.
June 14: SparkFest Indigenous Arts Market at SOMA Micro Park across the street. 4-8:30 p.m.
June 14: North Star, The Magic of Stillness: Story Wisdom of the Original Peoples. Rooted in ancestral wisdom, this story, led by Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal, invites listeners to find strength in quiet moments and trust the path illuminated by tradition and spirit. 4:30 p.m.
June 14: Seeing Red: An Angry Indigenous Perspective on Life in America. Gregg Deal of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe shares his thoughts on his crime of being an Indigenous person of the North American continent in the 21st century. 6 p.m.
June 15: This Is My Story. Indigenous community members take the stage to share personal stories of resilience, identity and connection to land and tradition in an evening of authentic storytelling. 2 p.m.
June 17: Indigenous Words Thru Poetry: English is the only language they let us speak.
Poet Marty Strenczewilk and artist Gregg Deal explore what it means to speak a language forced upon them—and how words can fight back. 7 p.m.
June 18 and 21: New Play Development: The Fish. The water is rising and everything is at stake in this Noah’s ark allegory by Madeline Sayet about three Mohegan/Jewish siblings figuring out what to hold onto from the past in order to survive. Directed by Maddox Pennington.
June 19 and 21: New Play Development: Rotations of the Sky. Johnny, a 38-year-old Chicano/Navajo single father, has captured national attention with his inspiring congressional campaign and is set to deliver the keynote address at a major political convention. But just a week before the speech, his grandfather—the man who raised him—is placed in hospice care. As Johnny grapples with the impending loss, his campaign comes under fire and his teenage daughter goes missing. Written by Joseph D. Valdez and directed by Rhianna Yazzie.
June 19 and 21: New Play Development: Stuck in Honolulu. When Daddy, a sharp-tongued Native Hawaiian elder, is flown to a hospital in Honolulu, he’s outraged to find himself rooming with Tati—a māhū (Hawaiian third gender) patient who’s unimpressed with his opinions. His pageant-obsessed daughter, Lihau, tries to manage the fallout without messing up her platform. Lee Cataluna’s play is a comedy about culture clashes, chosen family and the messy road to empathy. Directed by R. Réal Vargas Alanis.
June 19-21: SparkFest Acting Competition. Now in its third year, 10 Native American and Indigenous actors—selected through a nationwide search—will take the stage to perform monologues in front of a panel of esteemed judges over three rounds.
For more information about the festival, visit the SparkFest website.
Texas Women for the Arts invests more than $320K in arts education across Texas
Earlier this month, Texas Women for the Arts (TWA), a statewide giving circle and program of the Texas Cultural Trust (TXCT), announced its 2024-2025 grant recipients. This year, TWA has awarded $323,333 to organizations across Texas to broaden access to the arts and expand arts education and programming for children.
TWA members raise funds and award grants annually to select arts organizations throughout Texas.
“The arts offer countless benefits for children, from supporting neurodevelopment and emotional growth to boosting academic achievement, as highlighted in our 2025 State of the Arts Report,” Heidi Marquez Smith, CEO of the Texas Cultural Trust said in the May 12 press release. “Through these grants, we aim to create meaningful creative learning experiences for Texas children and remove barriers to quality arts education— so that every child has the opportunity to experience the undeniable power of the arts.”
TWA grants are awarded on an annual basis in the spring, providing funding for community organizations, museums, festivals, after-school programs, summer camps and more that deliver programming for Texas children across artistic disciplines such as music, visual arts, performing arts, dance, creative writing and theater.
Three North Texas organizations were named as recipients, two of which are area theater companies. Those include the North Texas Performing Arts in Plano, Fort Worth’s Stage West and Duncanville’s The MacMillan Institute which prepares public school teachers and administrators at all levels to learn, teach, and lead in the “spirit of liberal learning,” the philosophy and modes of “liberal” education conceived and practiced by Drs. Louise and Donald Cowan.
Since its inception in 2005, the TWA has awarded 403 grants totaling over $4.3 million to arts organizations.
Donald Fowler Theater Arts Memorial Fund named two individuals for its 2025 grant
Earlier this month, the Donald Fowler Theater Arts Memorial Fund announced that area performing artists Lauren LeBlanc and Ian Ferguson have been selected for its 2025 Grant Award.
The Fund, created in memory of Dallas theater artist Donald Fowler, provides support in the form of seed grants to artists living in the Dallas Metroplex, furthering their completion of works of theater, including plays and musicals. The 2025 grant in the amount of $5,000 will assist with early costs of individual theatrical creation and revision.
The grant will support the continued development of the new musical The Penumbra, with LeBlanc as writer and Ferguson as composer/lyricist.
As described by its creators, The Penumbra is a supernatural thriller based on LeBlanc’s young adult novel of the same name. The three-part narrative weaves the stories of a teenage girl in a struggling family, a town reeling from an escalating pattern of missing children, and an ancient folktale of love and destruction.
The Penumbra explores themes of identity, grief, and family—the kinds we’re born into and the kinds we choose—and takes an unflinching look at the strange, heartbreaking process of navigating trauma before you can even drive a car.
“The arts community in Dallas has always been so warm and welcoming—like the whole city was saving me a seat. This story is so important to me personally, and getting to create this version with one of my dearest friends has been such a joy. So finding out that our work has been chosen in tribute to a cherished member of the theatre community… well. It means just about everything,” LeBlanc said in the press release.
Ferguson expressed his gratitude by acknowledging the ties that came together for this award.
“It’s all rooted in connection. A story of a family and a community searching for, and trying to maintain connection in the face of loss. A concept born from Lauren’s connection to her daughters,” he said in the release. “An adaptation conceived in the connection Lauren and I found in making new theatre. To receive this support is a deeply meaningful honor and a rare opportunity to breathe life into something that has grown naturally from this incredible arts community.”
The Donald Fowler Theater Arts Memorial Fund is a 501(c)(3) publicly supported charity. To learn more, visit DonaldFowlerArtsFund.com.
–Rich Lopez