THE Magazine - Dallas / Forthworth

Making its world premiere at the Bishop Arts Theatre, If By Chance makes the viewer wonder: what if Shakespeare had grown up in Harlem? The story follows Chance Davenport, a biracial college student, as he struggles to find acceptance with this racial identity. Growing up, he was unable to find peace and acceptance, as his mother was a self-hating African-American woman. Portrayed through memory sequences, Davenport faces conflict and conformity until he can find a balance in the world. Playwright Donnie F. Wilson also created www.withoutlabels.com, a movement that aspires to challenge people to become advocates of unity.

This foot-stomping, toe-tapping, soul-stirring musical is the joyous account of a historic event that happened more than two thousand years ago. In this exciting holiday favorite, Langston Hughes tells the story of the birth of Christ by way of gospel music, dance, poetry, and narrative. The play was first produced in New York in 1961 but came under fire from some in the cast for the use of "black" in the title, which some considered too divisive of a word for a Broadway production. Ultimately, "black" in the title did not matter, this liberating and energetic musical opened to rave reviews. The 2008 production falls under the capable direction of renowned dramatic practitioner H. J. Steward and features New Arts Six, a performing arts ensemble made up of classically trained artists devoted to the preservation of African-American music, poetry, and literature.

TeCo Theatrical Productions opened their new season with Leonard's Car at the new Bishop Arts Theater Center, a gorgeously renovated venue in Oak Cliff . The script, an award-winning drama by Dallas playwright Isabella Russell-Ides, has been produced locally a few times but given a fresh polish for this production. Rich in character and dense in subject matter, the story nonetheless gets treated sensitively in this new staging. With a plot filled with tense dialogue and the threat of suicide as the pivotal hook, the able cast drove the story forward in a very realistic portrayal of family dynamics.

Events unfold one afternoon in the art studio of Josey Jeauxcarré, a woman tormented by her own mother's death, and that of her lover's, Leonard. Enter her two grown daughters, each with their own angst directed at their flighty mother. Having discovered mom's secret stash of liquor, pills and suicide notes, the girls challenge her with memories of their shared past. Will mom drive herself over a cliff in her lover's car, and will her daughters really care? As the lead, Cindee Mayfield transforms herself into a cyclone of nerves and humility. (Ms. Mayfield was a late addition to the play after the original lead dropped out. She was recreating the role which earned her honors from an earlier staging.) As her off-spring, Octavia Y. Thomas and Ashley Wilkerson each have their moments, with Ms. Wilkerson giving the play an emotional core as the oft-forgotten daughter.

Much like the performances, the set is also rich and real. Set designer Christopher Jenkins dresses the loft locale with brilliant colors, artworks, fabrics and a lifetime of photos and collectables. Robert G. McVay's lighting is modest, not overly theatrical. All in all, a smooth ride to show-off the new (and much needed for the neighborhood) 170-seat venue.

Local playwright Isabella Russell-Ides, recent winner of the 2008 DFW Critics Forum for Best New Play (Coco & Gigi), has retooled an earlier hit to focus on a new audience. Remounting Leonard's Car with an African American cast at the new Bishop Arts Theater Center, Ms. Russell-Ides says the new show is a bolder version of the play she originally wrote. "Changing ethnicities invites tantalizing theatrical challenges," she says. "For me, not so much in the language itself, because I write a heightened theatrical language that belongs more to the culture of theatre than any particular ethnicity. But any opportunity to move farther outside of one's known environment is an invitation to adventure." Directed by Terri Ferguson, the new production features an exuberant, over-the-top artist, Josey Jeauxcarré -- the reckless driver at the play's center. Her heady flirtation with suicide puts her on a collision course with memory and two grown daughters, Skylark and Ruby Tuesday, who remember differently. Powerful offstage characters, in particular Josey's dead lover Leonard, exert their own gravitational pull. Will Josey restore Leonard's 1955 T-Bird and drive into the big blue nowhere à la Thelma and Louise? While audiences will be seeing a new model, the driving force of the play is intact: Leonard's Car deftly careens between comedy and tragedy on a wild ride.