Three North Texas Theaters Unite for a Season of Groundbreaking Productions — Inside Black Broadway Summer

This summer, three North Texas theaters are teaming up to launch Black Broadway Summer. Each theater is producing an award-winning play from the 2022-2023 Broadway season all written by Black playwrights. First up will be Soul Rep Theatre’s production of Ain’t No Mo from June 5 through 8.

General Manager of Soul Rep Theatre Company, Ashley Oliver, vividly remembers the moment the Dallas theater company was approved for the performance rights for Ain’t No Mo’.

“I was in the lobby when a show was going on and applied for the rights,” Oliver tells PaperCity Fort Worth. “We were denied at first. We tried again six months later [and were approved]. Some people were worried about the language and subject matter, but we don’t shy away from those types of works. The playwright has something to say.”

Teaming Up for Black Broadway Summer

The Tony Award-nominated play by Jordan E. Cooper ran briefly on Broadway in late 2022. Oliver says she was drawn to the work not only because of Cooper’s North Texas roots but also for its bold subject matter and unflinching commentary on Black identity in America. When she realized that two Fort Worth companies — Circle Theatre and Stage West Theatre — were also staging plays by Black playwrights this season, she saw an opportunity for collaboration. She reached out with the idea of joining forces to promote the works as a collective experience via Black Broadway Summer.

Circle Theatre’s staging of A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson will run from June 19 through July 12, and Stage West’s presentation of Fat Ham by James Ijames will be from August 28 through September 14. The partnership offers patrons who purchase a ticket to one show a 20 percent discount on the other two.

Circle Theatre artistic director Ashley White says North Texas’ close-knit theater groups are always looking for ways to draw new audiences and work together, so the collab made sense.

“Hopefully, we can encourage audiences to see all three [works] and draw new audiences to each of our theaters,” she says. “We are also sharing marketing resources and amplifying each other’s voices with social media so we can increase the footprint of all three shows as a whole and show a united theater community.”

Exploring the Productions

Ain’t No Mo’ at Soul Rep Theatre Company is a satirical odyssey that imagines a government initiative offering Black Americans one-way tickets to Africa. Through a series of vignettes blending sketch, satire, and avant-garde theatre, the play delves into the complexities of Black identity in contemporary America.

A Strange Loop is a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical that follows Usher, a Black gay man writing a musical about a Black gay man writing a musical. This metafictional narrative offers a raw and exhilarating dive into identity, creativity, and self-perception. White describes it as “one of the most exciting and provocative pieces of contemporary music theater — period. It is very unique in its style and storytelling, and it is unapologetic in how it just rips back the curtain on the queer Black experience.”​

Fat Ham reimagines Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the context of a Southern family barbecue. Juicy, a queer Black man, confronts the ghost of his father, who demands vengeance, leading Juicy to grapple with cycles of violence and his own path to liberation.

“It is one of the most produced plays in the nation this last year,” says Garret Storms, associate producer at Stage West. “It is based on Hamlet. There are Shakespeare allusions, but the language is contemporary.”

The Stories Changing the Stage

Tying all three works together, Storms says, is the act of storytelling as liberation.

“These plays are about people who are owning their stories,” he continues. “That looks different in each play. They are political in so much as the act of creating art is a political act. These characters are revelatory.”

Audiences who watch all three shows as part of Black Broadway Summer will experience works by leading voices in dramatic theater. The queer Black voice is historically underrepresented on stage, making viewing these works an opportunity to identify with different perspectives and backgrounds.

For White, partnerships like this one aren’t just a good strategy. They’re essential to the future of storytelling.

“I’m hopeful for new people to experience modern theater and consider life from a perspective they may not have before,” she says. “This kind of partnership — artists supporting artists — is so beautiful to me. It’s what lights me up as a producer.”

In a time when local funding for the arts remains low, collaborations offer a win-win, Storms says.

“A win for one of us is a win for all of us,” he says. “Theater should be a place for everyone. You can sit beside someone who lives a different life than you, watch a story about someone different from you both, and walk away with something in common.”