Kurt Kleinman, Artistic Director
The mission of Pegasus Theatre is to produce new and original comedies in a forum that highlights the talents of North Texas theatre artists. We’ve produced three dramas in our history (including the searing White People by J. T. Rogers in 2014), which confirmed two things for us: (1) we excel at producing heart-stopping drama, and (2) it isn’t what we want to do with our lives. We’re passionate about comedy, especially new works that haven’t been seen yet by North Texans!
We frequently get asked “Why focus on comedy?” Here’s why:
1. Comedy is more challenging than drama.
It’s more challenging to perform in and direct a comedy, if you want to excel at it. A lot of that has to do with understanding comic timing, making the difference between a joke that “lands” and a joke that sits there “like a turd in a punch bowl”, to quote the talented Susan Sargeant. Truly talented comedic actors can make the transition to drama much more easily than vice versa: think of Jackie Gleason or Jack Lemmon. We find that the extra challenge of producing comedies is exhilarating!
2. Comedy is good for you!
Witness the studies in recent years that reveal the health benefits of laughter! Or the legendary story of Norman Cousins, who documented his self-cure for a life-threatening disease with laughter in a book called Anatomy of an Illness. We firmly believe that we are making people’s lives better every time we elicit a laugh. And that in turn makes our lives that much better.
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814549/
- http://www.laughingdiva.com/how-laughter-therapy-cured-norman-cousins-of-a-life-threatening-form-of-arthritis/
3. Comedy gets the message across.
Not every comedy has to have a message, but many of them do. In our experience, messages go down a lot easier in a comedy than in a drama. The hilarious Catholic School Girls by Casey Kurtti dealt with moments of questioning God; A Girl’s Guide to Chaos by Cynthia Heimel touched on self-acceptance; and Unrequited Love’s a Bore by Steve Lovett urged our audience to view gay romance with new eyes.
Whatever our motivation, in the end our goal is to delight you, our audience. We hope we’ve succeeded more often than not over the past 30 years. And we look forward to doing more to make you laugh over the next 30 years!
Tickets are still available for Pegasus Theatre’s current show The Naughty Bits, playing Fridays and Saturdays through August-29 at the Bath House Cultural Center in Dallas. Go to http://thenaughtybits.bpt.me/ and get your tickets now!