World Premiere of an exciting new play by a Legendary Houston Theatre Artist!

The Book of Mary (It Costs a Lot to Be Real), is an autobiographical one-woman show, written by and starring Houston’s own Mary Hooper, and directed by Ted Swindley, founder of Houston’s STAGES theatre and author of the popular musical, Always…Patsy Cline. It’s a raucous ride: from her Beaumont beginnings as a shy child of deaf parents, her timely escape to the gay neighborhood of Montrose in the 70s and 80s, to her adventures onstage in Houston’s way off Broadway theatre scene. Both funny and poignant, The Book of Mary is a love letter to the diva in us all.

The Book of Mary is made possible by the generosity of Sue Smith.Read more

“Love me or kill me.”

Sarah Kane’s brief, boundary breaking career prompted the terms “a theatre of extremes” and “an ethics of catastrophe.” In a former university, society’s “undesirables” are imprisoned and subjected to a series of tortures designed to test the limits of human love on the battlefield of the human body. Explosively aching, hauntingly poetic, and disarmingly tender, Cleansed is a fever-dream fable of unimaginable brutality and miraculous beauty. This whiplash for the soul comes soaked through with hope. Cleansed is undeniably a love story. Given this country’s immediate threat to the bodies and lives of those that look, live, or love in ways that deviate from the most conservative societal ‘norms’, 25 years after it was written, Cleansed feels nightmarishly prescient.

The regional premiere of Cleansed is co-directed by Jason Nodler and T Lavois Thiebaud with production design by Afsaneh Aayani and James Templeton, reuniting the team that created last season’s production of Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, which The Houston Press called “an imaginative bulldozer of a production” and “a testament to the collaborative work that happens when two theater artists [Thiebaud and Nodler] are performing at the top of their game.”Read more

What Do We Do Now? is a poignant and timely play based on the book by Kevo Aregbe, tackling important themes of race and identity in a fresh and meaningful way.Read more

Set in the fictional northwestern Louisiana parish of Chinquapin, the play opens at Truvy's in-home beauty parlor where a group of women regularly gather. They discuss Shelby's upcoming wedding to her fiancé, Jackson. The plot covers events over the next three years relating to Shelby's Type 1 diabetes, and with how the women cope with their conflicts, while remaining friends: Shelby's decision to have a child despite jeopardizing her health, Clairee's friendship with the curmudgeon Ouiser; Annelle's transformation from a shy, anxious newcomer in town to a good-time girl then repentant revival-tent Christian; and Truvy's relationships with the men in her family. Read more