January 30 - February 8, 2025
Written by Carlyle Brown
Directed by Lisa Cote
“…the personal and the historical, the comic and the angry propels THE AFRICAN COMPANY…theatrical and social concerns entwine with powerful resonances to today…Mr. Brown is a writer with a distinct voice and a powerful story to tell.”
—Washington Post.
This powerful historical play is inspired by a true story of the first Black theatrical group in the country, the African Grove Company of New York. Forty years before the Civil War, the African Grove Theatre Troupe in New York sets about staging a production of Richard III to which black and white audiences flocked. But when a major (and white) New York company scores a big name star to be featured in their own production of Richard III, they are determined to shut down the African company's show at any cost. The play ends with the Company, surviving, its integrity intact, and about to launch an equally progressive new chapter in the American theatre: They’ll soon be producing the first black plays written by Black Americans of their day.
Carlyle Brown is a playwright/performer, curator and artistic director of Carlyle Brown & Company based in Minneapolis. His plays have been produced at theatres across the country and internationally. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and a Life Time Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. A scholar and historian, Brown has been an artist in residence or visiting professor at several colleges and universities, and has worked as a museum exhibit writer and story consultant. He serves on the board of directors of The Playwrights’ Center and is a trustee of The Camargo Foundation. He is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Illusion Theater in Minneapolis.
APRIL 11 – 19, 2025
Written by Charlayne Woodard
Directed by Tonya Holloway
“Inspiring, illuminating and engrossing.”
—Newsday (NY).
This one woman show explores beautiful, funny, dark, and exhilarating vignettes tracing Woodard’s life from a premature birth to a joyous maturity at eleven years old. This play is a “rare autobiographical tour de fource” painting one of the most positive pictures of the Black experience on stage. It is a powerful exploration of three generations of family love, struggle and triumph.
Charlaine "Charlayne" Woodard is an American playwright and actress. She is a two-time Obie Award winner as well as a Tony Award and Drama Desk nominee. She was a series regular on the hit FX TV series Pose. She played the title role in the Showtime movie Run For The Dream: The Gail Devers’ Story
APRIL 26, 2025
Written by diannetucker
Soul Rep Theatre Company will spend the next year developing the late Dallas playwright, diannetucker’s final project – a screenplay entitled MADAM QUEEN – for the stage - to be fully produced in 2026 in a multi-disciplinary format. This project is made possible by a TACA New Works grant. This historical drama is inspired by 1920’s Harlem’s Queen of “the numbers” – Stephanie St. Clair – one of the country’s first Black female millionaires.
diannetucker was a prolific writer in the North Texas area and served as an early champion for Soul Rep and mentor to its co-founders. She founded her own theater in 1985, Dallas Drama Company, that operated for 10 years and served as a training ground for two of Soul Rep’s co-founders.
(From an article after her passing in 2022)
Playwright, storyteller, lyricist; the fascinating life of Dianne Tucker began in Marshall, Texas on April 3, 1951. She was the third child born to Azrie and Ellean Tucker. Dianne loved entertaining from the jump. Who else would spend their Saturday mornings recruiting nonunion neighborhood kids to perform her original songs and dances? In the early ’60s, the Tucker family packed up and left the piney woods of East Texas and headed West to Fort Worth.
Dianne went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNT and SMU. S On Dec. 16, 1976, at a Rockwell International company Christmas party, Dianne decided to dance with Roland Young. Well, that must have been quite a dance, because they got married in March of 1980.
Her love of the arts never went away. In the 1985, Dianne and her husband, along with Dianne’s brother Larry Tucker formed Dallas Drama Company, a small nonprofit performing company where Dianne’s original work was produced. The company offered plays until 1995 and then became defunct.
In 2009, Dianne, her husband Roland along with brother Larry and his wife Wanda opened Tucker’s Blues on Commerce Street. Celebrating local blues acts, the timing was right to be in Deep Ellum. After facing unending challenges, Tucker’s closed its doors in 2013. April of last year friends, family and performers from Dallas Drama Company and Tucker’s Blues got together to celebrate Dianne’s 70th birthday.
Sadly, we lost Dianne on New Year’s day after her battle with cancer.
June 5-8, 2025
Written by Jordan E. Cooper
Directed by Guinea Bennett-Price and Ashley Oliver
“An ingenious, outrageous, hilarious, no-holds-barred theatrical event.”
– TheaterMania
Soul Rep is ecstatic to present the North Texas premiere of the Ain’t No Mo’ by Fort Worth native and celebrated playwright and television writer/producer, Jordan E. Cooper. The production premiered on Broadway in 2022 and was nominated for six Tony Awards, including Best Play. Through a blend of sketch, satire, avant-garde theatre and a dose of drag, Ain’t No Mo’ answers the incendiary question: What if the United States government offered Black Americans one-way plane tickets to Africa?
This unpredictable comedy speeds through the turbulent skies of being Black in today's America. A kaleidoscope of moments surrounding this great exodus are told by an ensemble cast featuring Peaches, a larger-than-life flight agent boarding the final plane leaving the United States. Ain’t No Mo’ leaves audiences crying with laughter – and thinking through the tears.
Jordan E. Cooper is an Obie Award-winning playwright and performer who was chosen to be one of OUT Magazine’s Entertainers of the Year. His play Ain’t No Mo’ was a New York Times Critic’s Pick and in 2019, Cooper won a special citation Obie Award for Ain't No Mo'. He was recently selected as a Whiting Award winner for Drama. Jordan was also featured on the final season of FX’s groundbreaking series Pose as MC Tyrone. He recently created and executive produced his first television project The Ms. Pat Show which is hailed by critics as "One of the most radical sitcoms of the modern era". He is currently the youngest black showrunner in television history and is now also the youngest American playwright in Broadway history.
