Meet the Lovell Piper family!

Meet the Lovell Piper family! They are avid Pegasus Theatre supporters and are famous for the great questions they ask in the audience talkbacks after our play readings. We asked them a few questions to get to know them better. Here’s the result. As you can see, we have our work cut out for us to research some great suggestions!

It’s always a delight to see you at our shows! How long have you been coming to see Pegasus Theatre’s productions?

We think our first production was A Critical Case of Murder! at the Eisemann Center in January 2007. We know we have not missed a Living Black & White™ production or any of the more informal readings or RadioVizion™ productions of Harry Hunsacker since our first.

What keeps you coming back each year?

We enjoy Harry and we enjoy sharing him with our children and friends.

Are there any special moments that stand out for you in the shows you’ve seen?

Michael really enjoyed seeing Nigel informally trying to fix Harry up with a date and Harry’s response. [Editor’s note: That happened in the RadioVizion™ production of Deadline!] More generally, the longer running backstories are cool and interesting. Tamara’s favorite part of each show is how frustrated Lt. Foster gets when dealing with Harry (maybe she identifies with him a little bit).

You bring your children to the shows, and they always ask such intelligent questions in our audience talkbacks. Tell us a little about them and their interests.

Our girls are triplets who are just starting high school. They are voracious readers and enjoy the theater. Elizabeth is in theater and orchestra as well as dancing outside of school, Kathryn is in technical theater (but also enjoyed going on stage as a chorus member in the high school production of Les Mis), and Madeleine is in orchestra. Liam is starting middle school and loves comedy. He is in choir and has had a blast showing Harry to various friends of his. For Liam’s friends Harry has typically been their introduction to theater in Dallas. All of the kids play or have played several musical instruments and enjoy singing (and not surprisingly like musicals). They also all four are on recreational soccer teams (one girls’ team, one boys’ team) that Michael helps coach that have been together for over nine & seven years respectively.

What about you two? What are your vocations and avocations?

Michael is a patent and trademark attorney. He loves to read but with family and work struggles to find time. However, he has recently discovered audiobooks as an outlet while driving. Tamara is an entertainment law attorney (primarily music) who also does litigation and employment law work but is not practicing while dealing with the surplus of children. She loves to read and plays several instruments and sings when she can find the time. She really enjoys writing a variety of works. Her favorite activities are going to Nashville to listen to songwriters and going to New York to see plays and musicals. We both grew up on the Alley Theater in Houston and are also season ticket holders at Water Tower now. We look forward to more regular seasons from Pegasus Theatre in addition to the LBW productions.

If you could pick one Pegasus show to have us bring back, which one would it be?

Michael would be interested in learning more about H’mlet! to see what Kurt was doing with Shakespeare long before Something Rotten! taught us that it’s “hard to be the Bard”. Michael would have suggested an interest in seeing a revival of Kurt’s play whose title did not end in an exclamation point — but cannot find a record of such a play having been produced by Pegasus Theatre. [Editor’s note: There are three such plays: a ten-minute play called Shot For Shot (produced as part of 8×10 in 1994); a short play called Thank You Berry Munch (produced during the 2010 Festival of Independent Theaters); and a one-act play called Dead of Night (produced during the 2012 FIT).]

Anything else you’d like to tell our audience about your family or your experiences at Pegasus?

We enjoy seeing Harry live but have also enjoyed the efforts to bring back Pegasus’ other traditional types of shows through Churchmouse and otherwise. We would love to see more. We think Harry is a great pathway to introduce theater to our younger crowd and we love the talkbacks after the smaller shows supporting that.

We think it would be awesome to potentially market one or two of the Living Black & White™ performances each year to High School and Middle School theater (or English) classes (maybe even try and adapt the timing a little to leverage the set already created and not take away from the regular shows). The teachers and students could come together and you could have talkbacks after those shows interacting with them (we know you don’t usually do cast and crew talkbacks after the LBW productions, but it would be cool for the kids and potentially interesting for the cast and crew).

We also think it might be interesting (and possibly a way to make $) for Pegasus to do teen workshops on any and everything from playwrighting to acting to technical theatre, either as a summer thing or on weekends. Our kids have done and enjoyed the WaterTower Conservatory for several years but it is skewed to a younger age group and more to being on stage. If there was motivation among your group to work with the next generation — you would seem really well positioned to teach them about [various levels of production values] as well as the opportunities to make a vocation and an avocation out of a love of theater.

Finally, we think audiodramas of Harry’s adventures would be an excellent way to experience Harry without the production costs of a full show. Plus – once one was put on – it could be sold/purchased over time so eventually the full catalog was available. It would not replace the theatrical experience but might instead introduce the characters and motif and create a desire to see it live in RadioVizion™ or even better in Living Black & White™ when the opportunity presents itself.