Competitors strive to put family first in TeCo fest
02/22/2003
TeCo Theatrical Productions is determined to bring us plays that are good for
us. Once in a while they’re even good. So once you’ve finished your
broccoli">
Competitors strive to put
family first in TeCo fest
02/22/2003
TeCo Theatrical Productions is determined to bring us plays that are good for
us. Once in a while they’re even good. So once you’ve finished your
broccoli, by all means head over to the Hall of State in Fair Park, where the
company’s second annual New Play Competition opened Thursday. The mini-festival of six plays culminates March 2 with one of the authors
winning $1,000 and other prizes based on patrons’ votes. But all of the
writers get the prize of knowing they’ve helped TeCo “promote awareness of
family values through dramatic artistic expression.” My Funny Valentine by
Linus-Lynell shows a mentally challenged couple, Bo (Vern Thomas) and Cissy
(Stephanie Starr), enduring a visit from a social worker (Allyn Carrell) who
could send them to a group home with the stroke of her pen. But after hearing Bo
and Cissy out (“We slow, but we real happy”), she concludes that “the
world would be a better place” if we were all more like them – impaired,
presumably. In Joyce A. Wallace-Baxter’s Got to Get Ready for My Heavenly Livin’,
an elderly lady, Miss Maggie (Veronica Sanders), dispenses rhyming words of
wisdom to the fellow tenants in her apartment building: “Gossip should just
not be done/We all deserve our privacy, each and every one.” In When Days Go By, written by Willie Holmes, Lisa (Dale Evans) tries
to play both sides of virtue. To her fiancé, James (Lawrence Varnado), she’s
saving herself for marriage. To local “player” Rasheed (Marcus M. Mauldin),
she’s an off-night back street. Or is she? The Timekeeper (Tony Key) turns up
to help Lisa find out, giving her a chance to live one day of her life over
again. “The sleep cycle was introduced to man in order that he can exist
within time,” he helpfully explains. Slavery times are revisited in all three plays in the second half. The 100
Year Old Wedding Dress by Paula Sanders Samad pits modern materialism
against a treasured heirloom inherited from plantation days. No White Man
Would by Warren J. Sylvan is a commendable capsule history of John Brown’s
anti-slavery revolt. If there’s dessert, it’s Laterras R. Whitfield’s House Nigga/Feeld
Nigga, an amusing look at the ways slave classes are reflected in modern
mores. Alankeith Caldwell and Larry Johnson play blue- and white-collar
antagonists who eventually reverse roles and reconcile. Suzan-Lori Parks it
ain’t. But amid the platitudes and bumblings of the other works, it’s a
clear winner. E-mail tsime@dallasnews.com New Play Competition, presented by TeCo Theatrical Productions in the
Al Hill Lecture Hall, lower level, Hall of State, Fair Park, through March 2.
Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets $10. Call
972-291-8001, or go to www.tecoplays.com.