DALLAS: Undermain Theatre has named playwright Jarrett King the recipient of the 2023 Katherine Owens/Undermain Fund for New Work grant. King will receive $10,000 to develop a play to be produced on the Undermain stage in a future season.
The Katherine Owens/Undermain Fund for New Works carries on Owens’s lifelong commitment to thought-provoking new work and supports new artists. Owens was Undermain’s founding artistic director and served in the post for 36 years. Undermain has announced King’s grant in celebration of Owens’s birthday.
King is a playwright, actor, and educator who is an adjunct professor of theatre at Loyola University Chicago. He has held administrative and educational positions with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Silk Road Rising, and other Chicago theatres, as well as Chicago Public Schools. At American Theater Company, King oversaw the in-school residency program American Mosaic. In 2020-21, King directed the four-part virtual showcase Black Teen Lives Matter. He is also an associate artistic director of Penfold Theatre Company in Austin, where his adaptation of A War of the Worlds premiered last year, and is a founder of the arts collective Viceroys. King holds a B.A. from St. Edward’s University and is currently developing a play about the life of abolitionist and magician Henry Box Brown.
Undermain Theatre is a company of artists seeking to inspire, educate, and challenge through innovative theatre productions, with a particular interest in poetic and language-driven work. Undermain has brought cutting-edge theatre to the Dallas area since 1984. As of 2022, the theatre had a budget of approximately $694,000.
