With ‘The Thanksgiving Play,’ Undermain Theatre’s Bruce DuBose builds on the legacy of his late wife – The Dallas Morning News

The Thanksgiving Play puts four white artists in charge of creating a holiday pageant that manages to honor both the myth-filled U.S. holiday and the American Indian point of view. Of course, only disaster can ensue. The uproarious fun at Undermain Theatre, where the broad yet incisive comedy is now running, is in the how.

A member of the Lakota Nation, playwright Larissa FastHorse takes obvious pleasure in turning the tables. FastHorse came up with The Thanksgiving Play after she got tired of theater companies rejecting submissions featuring American Indian characters, using the excuse that it was too difficult to find cast members.

She has taken flak for her all-white strategy. But it worked. The Thanksgiving Play is one of the top 10 most-produced stage shows of the season, with runs at theaters from Tampa to Seattle.

If she wrote a play that just centered on all of the tragic elements of the experience of Native Americans in this country, it would be probably so sad that people might not be able to get through it, says Bruce DuBose, directing his first production since the death in July of Katherine Owens, his wife and Undermain co-founder. But what shes done is wrapped it inside a satire so that we can laugh at ourselves and start a conversation, hopefully.

At the center of this satire of political correctness is super-woke couple Logan (Jenny Ledel) and Jaxton (Garret Storms). When not fighting off their desire for public displays of affection and non-vegan cheese, they're twisting themselves into silly knots trying to figure out the right way to make a fair and balanced piece aimed at their elementary school students.

They certainly cant play American Indian roles or get beyond their privileged outlook on the world. Enlisting help from Caden (Ben Bryant), a nerdy, frustrated playwright who teaches at another school, and Alicia (Kelsey Milbourn), an L.A. actress imported with grant money, their solutions skewer not just white guilt but also some of the ideas behind theater-making itself.

Its a comedy based on good intentions and wrong assumptions that anybody can make when we try to speak for some group other than whatever conglomerate of ethnicities we might come from, DuBose says in Undermains legendary Deep Ellum basement space. Caden brings all this very true, factual history, and its so horrible that they cant even consider putting it in the pageant theyre creating. Thats whats fascinating about this piece to me. Yes, its a wonderful comedy, but at its center are these great dark things that kind of drive it.

DuBose and Owens had picked the shows and done a lot of the casting for the 2019-20 season, including The Thanksgiving Play, before she died of lymphoma at age 61. Owens co-founded Undermain in 1984 with Raphael Perry, who now runs Shakespeare Dallas. It was one of the citys first avant-garde theaters and played a huge role in turning Dallas into a first-rate theater town. DuBose joined the company a year later.

Im doing well, he says. Im still in shock about Kat. But working at the theater and working on what we worked on together all these years, this has been helpful to me. And its helpful to feel like Im continuing along the lines of where we were headed, what Katherine wanted and what we wanted to do with the theater. This is really our extended family, so its very comforting.

DuBose and Owens had a long agenda of projects that he will carry through as producing artistic director. This season alone, Undermain will mount an ambitious production of Adrienne Kennedys never-produced play based on the classic 19th century novel Madame Bovary. Its going to require 14 actors and period costumes, DuBose says, calling Kennedys style cinematic.

The company is also workshopping a new play by David Rabe, Hes Born, Hes Borne, as part of its Whither Goest Thou America festival in the spring, with a full production slated for the 2021-22 season. DuBose says it has a medieval, agrarian setting with peasants, angels, Death as a character who roams the Earth and its own vocabulary, kind of the way Anthony Burgess did in A Clockwork Orange.

Rabe will spend about six weeks in Dallas leading up to the workshop production. Undermain has a long tradition of developing new work with experimental playwrights like Rabe, John OKeefe, Mac Wellman, Jeffrey Jones, Erik Ehn and Len Jenkin.

In that vein, DuBose is looking at the possibility of producing a new Jenkin play as soon as next season, plus a piece about French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil that Owens had been discussing with playwright Lenora Champagne. Owens is a character in the Champagne play, he says. Next year, Undermain also will produce a new translation of a classic play that DuBose cant reveal yet.

To help him plan and execute this ambitious future, he has hired multi-talented Danielle Georgiou as associate artistic director, a move that he and Owens had been talking about. The dancer, choreographer and Eastfield College professor has her own accomplished performance group. She has been choreographing at Undermain for two years and has also started directing.

The company has established a new work fund in Owens name that DuBose says has already raised $60,000. Undermain is also looking for more space to build sets in, rehearse, teach and possibly produce second-stage shows.

As if she wasnt busy enough, Owens was also a painter and photographer. DuBose has assembled her sketchbooks for a display now up in the theater lobby, and hes figuring out how to publish her writings on theater theory.

Katherine and I together over the years created a culture here, he says, a method and an approach to theater that I want to install in the future of Undermain.

The Thanksgiving Play runs through Dec. 1 at Undermain Theatre, 3200 Main St. $20-$30. 214-747-5515. undermain.org.

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With 'The Thanksgiving Play,' Undermain Theatre's Bruce DuBose builds on the legacy of his late wife - The Dallas Morning News