Parade Production Shots

Here are some production shots from WTT's current running show Parade. Photos courtesy of Mark Oristano Photography.

Jennifer Pasion and Theo Wischhusen

Jennifer Pasion, Donald Fowler, Mark Oristano, and Megan Kelly

Donald Fowler with cast

Eleanor Threatt, Matthew Johnson, Wilbur Penn, and Walter Cunningham.

Scenes from a Gala...

This past Saturday, WTT held its annual fundraiser Spotlight 2007 - A Grand Night for Singing! From 6:15 until 10:30, almost 300 guests enjoyed food from six fantastic restaurants, bid on silent auction items and heard the best music from legendary composers Rodgers and Hammerstein.

During the night, our good friend Mike Wang (husband of our Resident Stage Manager Heidi Shen) snuck his camera in to document the festivities.

Here are some highlights of the evening!

Views from inside our transformed Main Stage...

Mayor of Addison and Owner of May Dragon, Joe Chow.

Additional event photos courtesy of Mark Oristano.

Event Co-chairs Nicholas Even and Anita Braun.

Buddy Frazer, Terry Martin, and Glynda Turner.

Terry Martin (center) with (from left to right) John Dunne, Karol Omlor (WTT Board of Director), Jane Dunne (Past-President of TACA), and Jennifer Houser.

A Grand Night for Singing cast (from left to right) Dara Whitehead-Allen, Donald Fowler, Stacey Oristano, Jennifer Green, and Shane Peterman.

WTT Board of Director Alexa Kapioltas (center) and table guests.

Trailer Park Preview

We've put together a preview of The Great American Trailer Park! Remember that it starts March 1 during the Out of the Loop Festival!

A Valentines Offer From WaterTower Theatre...

Celebrate Valentine's Day a little early this year with a special treat from WaterTower Theatre and Kenny's Wood Fired Grill. In a special colaboration, we are able to offer you a special dinner theatre package. This package includes two tickets to any remaining performance of Humble Boy and a $50 gift certificate to Kenny's Wood Fired Grill. So treat your special somebody to a fantastic night on the town. Our dinner theatre packages are limited, so call the box office today at 972.450.6232 to guarantee your package today!

The Great American Trailer Park Musical Press Photos

Now Playing: Humble Boy

Photos by Mark Oristano.

Humble Boy Director's Notes

On one level, this very English comedy is a modern telling of "Hamlet." On another, and perhaps more importantly, it is a stunning study of a mother-son relationship. Ms. Jones has written a play that buzzes with ideas – superstring theory, beekeeping, and, most notably, the challenge of the parent/adult child relationship. What struck me most was the play’s use of Astrophysics as a metaphor, and how this young man’s search to understand the “physics” of his parents meeting, and long marriage mirrors his passionate search for the “quantum theory of gravity.”

Never very good at math, all of the physics references were way over my head. It took quite a bit of research to get my head around what terms like "quantum mechanics," “string theory,” “chaos theory” and “M-theory” mean. I am proud to say I understand theoretical physics a bit more now, and interestingly, I found it all opened my mind even further to this family's very funny and moving story.

The parent-adult child struggle is explored beautifully in this play. When we reach adulthood and begin to relate to our parents as fellow adults, the stories of their youth, the way they met and fell in love, become more and more important to us. Yet the more we learn, the less we in fact understand. As Felix Humble discovers, the parents we know are not necessarily the same people we hear described in our parent’s memories. The challenge of reconciling who our parents are with whom they were seems daunting at best. Nevertheless, if we are lucky and look hard enough, it can be “like pointing a telescope at a blank piece of sky and seeing a star that (we) have never seen before.”

There is a sort of game that the Humble Family plays with “collective nouns.” “Collective nouns” are nouns that denote a collection of persons or things regarded as a unit, such “a herd of antelope” or “a flock of birds.” After his father’s death, Felix searches for comfort by playing this game. During my research, I found some very interesting collective nouns. Here are some fun ones: (these are not made up – they are real!)

An abomination of monks

An ambush of widows

A kaleidoscope of butterflies

A tower of giraffes

A troubling of goldfish

A murder of crows

A den of thieves

A charm of finches

A clutch of eggs

It has been a privilege to work on this wonderful play with such a gifted company of actors.