DALLAS: Dallas Theater Center has announced its 2015–16 season. It will include three world premieres, including Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, Clarkston by Samuel D. Hunter and Deferred Action by Dallas playwrights David Lozano and Lee Trull.
“Our 2015–16 season continues our commitment to producing new plays and musicals, collaborating with local and national theatre companies, creating fresh new interpretations of classics and telling diverse stories that speak to the world we live in and spark meaningful conversations within our community,” said artistic director by Kevin Moriarty in a statement.
The season will open with the Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical (Sept. 2–Oct. 11) from country singer/songwriters Clark and McAnally (who is from Dallas). It will feature a book by Robert Horn, direction by Gary Griffin and choreography by Denis Jones. Moonshine is an adaptation of the popular ’70s-era syndicated variety comedy show, based loosely on sketches from the Grand Ole Opry.
The next show in the season will be Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop (Sept. 16–Nov. 15), about Martin Luther King Jr’s final night on earth at the Lorraine Motel. For the holidays, DTC will stage its annual performance of A Christmas Carol (Nov. 25–Dec. 26).
Around the same time, DTC will present the world premiere of MacArthur “Genius” grantee Samuel D. Hunter’s Clarkston (Dec. 3–Jan. 31), a three-hander about the friendship between two young men in rural Washington.
DTC’s first show of 2016 will be Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (Jan. 27–Feb. 28). Martin Luther King will appear again as a character via Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way (March 3–27), about President Lyndon B. Johnson’s effort to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Moriarty will direct All the Way, in a coproduction with the Houston-based Alley Theatre.
Next, local Latino troupe Cara Mia Theatre Company will coproduce Deferred Action (April 20–May 15), co-written by its artistic director David Lozano and DTC staffer Lee Trull. The play takes on a hot-button Texas topic as it follows the lives of young, undocumented Latino immigrants.
The final production of the season will be the musical Dreamgirls (June 10–July 24) by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen, about an African-American girl group and their rise to success during the ’60s Motown era.
Dallas Theater Company, founded in 1959, is the largest theatre in the city, performing to more than 120,000 North Texas residents annually.
