Soul Rep Theatre Company Opens 2021-2022 Season

Photos by Anyika McMillan-Herod

In November, Soul Rep Theatre Company will kick off its 2021- 2022 season – WAYS OF KNOWING – with four live performances of Shay Youngblood’s dynamic play SHAKIN’ THE MESS OUTTA MISERY, directed by Anyika McMillan-Herod.

This ensemble piece, set in the mid-20th Century, explores a tapestry of Black southern women who unite to help raise an orphaned girl. The live performances will take place (with COVID precautions) Thursday, November 11 – Sunday, November 14, 2021, in the Pavilion at Dallas Heritage Village, 1515 S. Harwood Street, just outside downtown Dallas. Thursday – Saturday performances are scheduled for 8 pm, Sunday at 3 pm (matinee) only.

Streamed performances of SHAKIN’ THE MESS OUTTA MISERY will take place December 20 – 26. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at www.soulrep.org.

The season will continue in February with a world premiere short film written by co-founders Tonya Holloway and McMillan-Herod, FLESH AND BONE.

Holloway, who now holds the position of Soul Rep’s Associate Artistic Director of Film (a direct result of Soul Rep’s successful recent season of solely virtual offerings), will direct this heartwarming contemporary film set in a fictitious Dallas jook and chicken joint run by Puddin’ and Abe, a feisty middle-aged couple.

The piece features a cast of eccentric characters who rely on the blues music they love and each other to express their love, fear, joy, and pain.

The in-person premiere will be February 12, 2022 at 7 pm at The Texas Theater, in Oak Cliff. The film will then stream the remainder of the month.

Soul Rep’s longtime company member and newly named Associate Artistic Director of Theater, Dee Hunter-Smith, will direct the regional premiere production of Ngozi Jane Anyanwu’s brilliant new play, GOOD GRIEF, that will be performed in person April 26 – May 1, 2022, at Dallas Heritage Village.

The production follows a first-generation Nigerian named “Nkechi” or “N” – a would-be goddess – as she navigates first loves and losses, and tries to find answers in her parents, the boy next door, and the stars. This production will also be streamed May 23 – 29, 2022.

The world premiere staged performance of DO NO HARM, which was presented as a film earlier this year, will serve as a bonus production for Soul Rep’s current season. Presented as part of ATTPAC’s 2021-22 ELEVATOR PROJECT, this celebrated new work writ- ten by co-founder Anyika McMillan-Herod and directed by Soul Rep’s Artistic Director, Guinea Bennett-Price, will run March 10 – March 19, 2022 at the Wyly Theater in the Dallas Arts District. Streamed performances will take place in April.

DO NO HARM gives voice to three enslaved women – Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy – who were experimented on by “The Father of Gynecology,” Dr. James Marion Sims.

A season pass is only $45 (excludes DO NO HARM) and can also be purchased at Soul Rep’s website, www.soulrep.org.

Soul Rep’s dynamic 2021-2022 season is sponsored in part by the generous support of Texas Instruments, City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, Heritage Giving Fund, Moody Fund for the Arts, and TACA.

SOUL REP THEATRE COMPANY’S MISSION & VISION

Soul Rep Theatre Company exists to provide quality transformative Black Theater. Our vision is to shift the paradigm of how the Black ex- perience is valued.