West Dallas neighborhood is the stage for ‘Family Dollar’ performance art
A rabbit jumped out of the woods onto the church lawn. Morgana led us around the empty shotgun houses, a breeze blowing through the open windows. It was such an idyllic setting that I almost forgot I was in Dallas, save for the large modular condos that towered across the railroad tracks.
A few nights later, the same street was lined with cars. Neighbors exchanged greetings. Roosters crowed, dogs barked, children ran across the verandas of the now busy shotgun houses. Compared to the previous silence, the houses were now filled with the bickering and laughter that go with everyday life.
But it wasn’t an everyday life. This was a performance art production. A memory.
From left: Jennifer Culver plays Alice and Gelacio Eric Gibson is Kenneth at the Family Dollar Performance on West Main Street in Dallas on July 1, 2021.(Nan Coulter)
The latest version of Family Dollar, a project by the Artstillery community collective, brings together oral history, architectural preservation and immersive theater to tell the story of a community in West Dallas that is struck by the levee on one side and the floods of the on the other Gentrification is threatened. Artstillery partnered with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s public art initiative, Nasher Public, on the project. The collaboration will result in a virtual reality component of Family Dollar that will allow guests to interact with the stories and performances even after the show has ended.
Artstillery was founded in 2016 by Ílknur Ozgür and is an innovative volunteer organization dedicated to creative interior design.
“We’re not just an arts organization, we’re an arts and service organization that really speaks to the motto of the ecosystem of social change,” says Morgana Wilborn, co-director of Family Dollar and a member of the Artstillery core team.
In support of Family Dollar, Pastor Hersey L. Hammons III of Lone Star Missionary Baptist Church, Artstillery’s community partner, wrote that “Ílknur and her team have found value in people’s lives and have chosen to share their stories to INCREASE. “
And they increased it. But first they had to dig them up.
From left, Ilknur Ozgur (writer / director) and Morgana Wilborn (writer / director) took pictures at the Family Dollar Performance on West Main Street in Dallas on July 1st, 2021.(Nan Coulter)
Ozgür, Wilborn, and co-writer and actress Jennifer Culver wrote Family Dollar based on five years of interviews, community conversations, and healing workshops with residents along West Main Street. These interviews revealed firsthand accounts of forced bus rides, cultural assimilation, and contagious racism.
Actor Jackie Kemp, who plays Rogelio, says his character’s story is “very precisely my story. Just like the shotgun houses in McKinney. “The grandson of Mexican immigrants, who traveled to Texas from Ohio after the harvest, remembered what Texas was like when he was a boy:”[At] Sam Houston Elementary, you could speak to someone in the hall and you could get in trouble if you speak Spanish. “
Perhaps because of these realities, West Main Street residents speak fondly of a pervasive sense of community that has kept their members safe for years. This closeness wasn’t just feeling; it came with extensive work organization among Latinos and a collective fund to help neighbors in the black community pay property taxes.
These stories of survival and joy intertwine in Family Dollar as the tales of three families – one black, one Latino, and one white – unfold simultaneously on the set.
From left, Kay played by Rebecca McDonald and Rosemary played by Priscilla Rice at the Family Dollar Performance on West Main Street in Dallas on July 1, 2021.
The 360-degree set was created out of an effort to save the two remaining shotgun houses on the West Main from demolition. With the help of architects from Mead & Hunt and parishioners like a lifelong resident named Mr. Teddy, Artstillery rebuilt the houses on the Lone Star Baptist Church property.
The frenetic energy of the immersive performances intensifies the closeness of the viewer to the precariousness of the residents of West Dallas – and even their participation in it. We peer into homes and witness the characters struggles with predatory developers, economic oppression, addiction, and police violence. As we follow the actors from window to window, scene to scene, a question arises: what would we do to protect our neighbors?
At the height of the play, an outsider tries to get Alice, an elderly white woman with dementia, to sell her home for $ 14,000, even though prices for surrounding homes soar as high as $ 300,000. To protect Alice, her neighbors intervene immediately. They curse the outsider and ask Alice not to listen to them. An angry neighbor even takes her chancla from her and throws it to the intruder. I happened to be in the middle of the scene and the disastrous argument sparked such a frenzy that I couldn’t help but berate the businesswoman for trying to take advantage of an elder.
The inspiration for this scene comes straight from what West Dallas residents said. One resident told Artstillery that newcomers to the neighborhood would walk into his property and ask if they could buy his home for that exact amount, less than the average cost of an annual rental in Dallas.
Rooster (Red) played by Raven McCarthy at the Family Dollar Performance on West Main Street in Dallas on July 1, 2021.(Nan Coulter)
Ozgür spoke passionately about this encounter. “That black community in West Dallas has never been told you don’t have to sell your land. You can actually be the developer. And when we had that conversation with them … at first they cried. And they said, ‘Nobody ever told us we could do this.’ I thought, ‘You hold the land. Don’t sell. Build.'”
Stories like this have shaped Artstillery’s approach to engagement. His main focus is building community capacity as the fourth wall is torn down and false narratives deconstructed.
“If you are a real arts and service organization, an organism and an ecosystem,” says Wilborn, “that means something different than [being] an institution in which everything is rooted, everything is set in stone. “
Although Artstillery uses the tools of performance art, Artstillery does not see itself as a theater group. “We are what our community needs from us,” says Ozgür. That has involved everything from buying a new car for a refugee family to paying Mr. Teddy’s phone bill to helping Lone Star Baptist secure adequate street lights at night.
“This is about a community that uplifts other communities and communities that uplift each other,” says Ozgür over a beer at Manhattan Project Beer Co., one of Artstillery’s sponsors.
Family Dollar is still up for four weekends, enough time to see it twice. Missing them means missing the most impactful performance art. Seeing it means celebrating the Black and Latino communities that shaped Dallas forever.
details
Family Dollar runs through July 31st at 323 W. Main St. in Dallas. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., $ 25 general admission, $ 10 student. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit artstillery.org/familydollar.
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