Native Gardens.

In Native Gardens, cultures and gardens clash, turning well-intentioned neighbors into feuding enemies. Pablo, a rising attorney, and doctoral candidate Tania, his very pregnant wife, have just purchased a home next to Frank and Virginia, a well-established D.C. couple with a prize-worthy English garden. But an impending barbeque for Pablo’s colleagues and a delicate disagreement over a long-standing fence line soon spiral into an all-out border dispute, exposing both couples’ notions of race, taste, class, and privilege.

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Comedy has been, I believe, my forte throughout my career, and this production really put those skills to the test. As I share in my UNT acting classes, I believe the most important key to successful comedy is the understanding that the actions of the play are all very truthful and real IN THE WORLD OF THE PLAY. It doesn’t matter if one is doing The Rocky Horror Show or The Odd Couple, this is reality for these characters. If the actor does not commit to that, the audience is given a “wink/nudge” approach and becomes very conscious of “an actor trying to be funny.” And, without fail, it is unbearable.

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Moreover, director Sylvia Cervantes Blush wanted to create a production that was a nod to the 70’s sitcom, even going so far as to have us work with a laugh track in rehearsal (which was, thankfully, eventually dispensed with because of its obtrusiveness on the action). Being of a certain age, the tone and vibe of the genre was extremely familiar to me, as I grew up with those comedies. So this was a heightened universe that still needed to be REAL.

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As the actors in this four-principle show with the most firsthand knowledge of the 70’s sitcom, I believe the actor playing my wife and I had a great deal of influence on the room. We leaned into the genre we knew, and our director was very pleased with that. The two younger actors followed our lead. The piece required laser-like timing and some moments of pretty broad physical comedy. Not since a production I did of Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky in 2016 have my comedy skills had to be so sharp and precise.

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I am looking very forward to working on Ms. Zacarias’ new play (commissioned by the Guthrie Theater), an adaptation of the Western novel Shane in January of 2025. Ms. Zacarias was on hand for the opening of our production of Native Gardens, another incredibly rewarding benefit of being a member of the Acting Company at Dallas Theater Center—having the playwright’s input and perspective. Particularly interesting here was the fact that the author drew the play from a personal anecdote that a friend (who was literally living the story) shared at dinner one night!