Our 50th Season is Upon Us!
Three artistic visionaries with a common goal: To create theatre their own way and on their own terms. A homemade artful theatre that embraced unconventional ways of sharing stories on stage by using movement, dance, mask, music, image, mime, spoken word, and puppetry. Hip Pocket was born! And its birth ignited imaginations and fulfilled a desire to create in ways that were not accessible at that time. Hip Pocket offered something new and different to audiences and to the artists that came out to play by taking theatre to another level of expression and energizing the imagination and encouraging us to play outside the lines. This is Hip Pocket Theatre at its heart.
When Johnny, Diane, and Douglas founded Hip Pocket Theatre in 1976 they fostered a community, a theatre family dedicated to theatre that integrated playfulness, artful expression and creative experimentation. That dedication to the theatre community is something we hold up to the light and cherish deep within our hearts and souls as we take the big steps into our 50th year of sharing theatre that explores storytelling, excites audience, honors legacy, while continuing to strengthen and deepen our ties with our community.
The 50th season consists of plays that get back to the roots of Hip Pocket and take us to the precipice of what’s to come! We kick things off with a big bunch o’ commedia dell'arte wildness, The Three Cuckolds. It was the first play presented at Hip Pocket in 1976 at George’s Backdoor on highway 80! We then welcome back to Fort Worth, international puppetry guru, Basil Twist. A Twisty Intergalactic Spectacle lands back on our prairie to spread tidings of love and togetherness. The third show in our season is all about honoring our founders and two of Hip Pocket's legends, Johnny Simons and Douglas Balentine. Raggedy Farm written by Simons and Balentine, is a poignant story of love told through music and movement. First done in 1980 and again in 1982 at the Oak Acres location. The 4th show of the season brings Lorca Simons back home to her Texas roots as the creator behind this devised new work, Soul Notes From The Velvet Elk. Our 5th and final production of the season is sure to make us squirm and scream with delight, our very own Johnny Simons will direct a stage adaptation, Mega Python vs Gatoroid (The Musical). We end the season with our 4th Annual Twilight Soiree. An occasion to honor loved ones who have passed and gather together in our community to make art, perform ritual, and show respect to the land where Hip Pocket resides and the animals and spirits that freely roam there. If you haven’t participated before, we highly encourage you to do so.
And that is our 50th season! There is so much to celebrate and be grateful for. Theatre and community are front and center. Let’s come together as patrons, artists, art lovers, friends, and family.
Photo by Loli Kantor