My second season as Artistic Director!
"Addison — If Joanie Schultz's first season at Artistic Director of WaterTower Theatre didn't signify changes coming to the Addison theater — one of the top five professional theaters in DFW, in terms of budget size — then the just-announced second season should do the trick. It's the boldest season the theater has ever managed, mainly because aside from Ibsen's A Doll's House, adapted by Schultz, it's filled with titles that even a somewhat savvy theater-goer familiar with recent off-Broadway titles and playwriting awardees wouldn't have heard of.
That, folks, is how you do it.
The mainstage season opens with A Doll's House, and follows with three regional premieres of the plays Guadalupe in the Guest Room and Everything is Wonderful and the musical The Ballad of Little Jo, and closes with the world premiere of Nathan Alan Davis' Origin Story, which was seen in a reading at WaterTower's first Detour Festival this year. Noteworthy: Not only are these plays women-driven in terms of character and story, they're all directed by women. Schultz takes on Doll's House and Little Jo, Kelsey Leigh Ervi has Everything is Wonderful, Christie Vela helms Guadalupe, and Tiffany Nichole Green does Origin Story, which she also directed at Detour. Also important to note: two of those women are women of color (Vela and Green).
Season extras include the second Detour festival (moved to January), the return of the devised holiday work The Great Distance Home, and a special presentation of Unveiled: A One Woman Play, written and performed by Chicago-based Rohina Malik, who tells the stories of five Muslim women.
To boot, WaterTower is the 2018-19 home for Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, which will have three productions in the season at WTT, each featuring new works by local and national choreographers. Dark Circles was one of the highlights of the first Detour festival, and the space must have worked out for the group.
I also want to note something Schultz has done with both season announcements that you typically don't see from arts organizations here, aside from the Dallas Opera: A unified photo story themed to the season. Just look at the pics in the slideshow (click the button on the floating menu at the bottom left of your screen). Fantastic work from rising local photog Evan Michael Wood, who's also a photography regular with Stage West and Second Thought Theatre."