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Ah the weekend, the long weekend…so very close. But we’re not there yet. A little news to carry you through the day.

Sequels:  Piling on to Jerome’s movie round-up theme yesterday, here’s a great piece by Star-Telegram’s Cary Darling. Megafest is holding its first International Faith and Family Film Festival this week, and Darling expands to examine how Dallas has become a hotbed for the Christian filmmaking and entertainment biz. And, with low production costs and high grosses, it is turning into quite a business indeed.

Hot properties: Yesterday, I learned a little about Shailene Woodley. You could say I’m late. Or just in time, since the actress will be starring in Divergent, which many folks are comparing to The Hunger Games. Divergent’s trailer is out. And the film was written by  Evan Daugherty. (His mom is Dallas Children’s Theater resident playwright Linda Daugherty.) Evan also wrote Snow White and the Huntsman. (Hat tip: Nancy Churnin/popcultureblog.)

Fresh Faces: The Dallas Theater Center is getting two new resident actors. Alex Organ and Daniel Duque-Estrada will join the Diane and Hal Brierley Resident Acting Company this fall.  You can look for Organ as Young Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Abraham in The Fortress of Solitude and in next summer’s family musical Les Misérables. Duque-Estrada will play Fred in A Christmas Carol, Creon in Oedipus el Rey and will appear in Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure and Les Misérables. Read more about both after the jump.

Dallas Theater Center Announces

Alex Organ and Daniel Duque-Estrada

as New Members of

Brierley Resident Acting Company

DALLAS (August 29, 2013) – Dallas Theater Center Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty is pleased to announce two new members of DTC’s Diane and Hal Brierley Resident Acting Company – Daniel Duque-Estrada and Alex Organ.

“Danny and Alex are wonderful additions to our Resident Acting Company,” says Moriarty. “They will bring great skill, new ideas and fresh energy into our ten-member company of professional actors, whose work on our stage at DTC and throughout our community is so vital to the artistic health of theater in North Texas.”

Organ recently appeared in DTC’s production of Fly By Night as the eager playwright Joey Storms and in the holiday classic A Christmas Carol. He was also recently named Editor’s Choice Best Actor in D Magazine’s Best of Big D awards.

“Alex is a Dallas favorite whose performances on stage at DTC and at nearly every professional theater in North Texas have earned him the respect and admiration of his fellow artists, audiences and critics, alike,” says Moriarty. “From his training at the Yale School of Drama to the wide variety of his work onstage, which ranges from musicals to dramas and from classics to new work, he has proven himself to be one of the most talented actors in the region. Additionally, with his ongoing acting, directorial and producing work at other theaters, he’ll represent one of DTC’s core values: to serve as a resource for theaters in North Texas and to inspire local artists and audiences to celebrate the work of our greater theatrical community.”

Organ is joined in the company by new-to-Dallas Daniel Duque-Estrada. He is a recent Master of Fine Arts recipient from Brown University. The California native has appeared in productions around the country including several at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI and California Shakespeare Theater.

“From the moment we first met Danny last year, while our company was in residence at Trinity Rep Company rehearsing King Lear, we were all impressed by his artistic skill, collaborative nature and fresh perspective,” says Moriarty. “In the spring we brought him to Dallas to audition further and to get to know DTC and the community at large. All of us were thrilled when he decided to move here and join us as a company member, sharing his artistry with our audience and making his home in our warm, welcoming theatrical community. On stage, Danny is a leading man, well versed in both classics and contemporary plays, who also sings well and is bilingual in Spanish.”

This season, Organ will play Young Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Abraham in The Fortress of Solitude and will appear in next summer’s family musical Les Misérables. Duque-Estrada will play Fred in A Christmas Carol, Creon in Oedipus el Rey and will appear in Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure and Les Misérables.

Moriarty formed DTC’s Brierley Resident Acting Company in 2009 to develop and nurture professional actors within the community, expand DTC’s artistic profile, and create ongoing collaborative relationships with artists. “One of the great legacies of Paul Baker, DTC’s founding artistic director, was his commitment to a vibrant acting company at the heart of DTC’s work, representing his belief in the power of actors to serve as primary artists, significant institutional leaders, and inspiring teachers within DTC and for our community,” Moriarty explains. “In reestablishing the acting company five years ago, I was proud to follow in Mr. Baker’s footsteps and celebrate the centrality of actors in the theater.”

“Members of DTC’s Brierley Resident Acting Company serve as artistic leaders throughout North Texas,” says Moriarty. “In addition to their work at DTC, they represent Dallas when they appear on television, in movies, on stage at other theaters, both locally and on Broadway, and they serve as professors at local universities, as teaching artists in high schools and community centers, and as contributing members in daily civic life.” Current company members are Hassan El-Amin, Kieran (Michael) Connolly, Daniel Duque-Estrada, Chamblee Ferguson, Tiffany Hobbs, Liz Mikel, Alex Organ, Sally Nystuen-Vahle, Christie Vela and Steven Michael Walters. 

Daniel Duque-Estrada is a San Francisco native, whose regional credits include Trinity Rep, California Shakespeare Theater, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Intersection for the Arts/Campo Santo and the Shotgun Players. In addition to his acting credits, he has been a counselor and teaching artist with Trinity Rep’s Young Actor’s Summer Institute. He holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA in acting from The Brown/Trinity MFA Program. 

Alex Organ has been seen on DTC stages in Fly By Night and A Christmas Carol. Elsewhere in the Metroplex he has appeared in Red Light Winter (Second Thought Theater); The Farnsworth Invention (Theatre Three); Putting It Together, Little Shop of Hoorors (WaterTower Theatre); Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, As You Like It (Trinity Shakespeare Festival); Coriolanus, Hamlet, Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare Dallas); The Most Happy Fella (Lyric Stage) He is currently in production for the world premiere of Profanity at the Undermain Theatre. Regionally he has worked with Epic Theatre Ensemble, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and the Elm Shakespeare Festival, among others. Film/TV credits include Law & Order: SVU and Second Guessing Grandma. Alex is an Associate Artist at Second Thought Theater where he recently directed A Behanding in Spokane. He studied at Abilene Christian University and he holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

ABOUT DALLAS THEATER CENTER:

One of the leading regional theaters in the country, Dallas Theater Center (DTC) performs to an audience of more than 120,000 North Texas residents annually. Founded in 1959, DTC is now a resident company of the AT&T Performing Arts Center and presents its Mainstage season at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus and Rem Koolhaas and at its original home, the Kalita Humphreys Theater, the only freestanding theater designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty and Managing Director Heather M. Kitchen, DTC produces a seven-play subscription series of classics, musicals and new plays and an annual production of A Christmas Carol; extensive education programs, including Project Discovery, SummerStage and partnerships with Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts; and community outreach efforts including leading the DFW Foote Festival and recent collaborations with the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Public Library, Dallas Holocaust Museum, North Texas Food Bank, Dallas Opera, and Dallas Black Dance Theater.  Throughout its history, DTC has produced many new works, including The Texas Trilogy by Preston Jones in 1978, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, adapted by Adrian Hall, in 1986, and recent premieres of FLY by Rajiv Joseph, Bill Sherman and Kirstin Childs; Fly by Night by Kim Rosenstock, Michael Mitnick and Will Connolly; Giant by Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson; The Trinity River Plays by Regina Taylor; the revised It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams; Give It Up! (now titled Lysistrata Jones and recently on Broadway) by Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn; Sarah, Plain and Tall by Julia Jordan, Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin; and The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson.

Dallas Theater Center gratefully acknowledges the support of our season sponsors: American Airlines; Case; The Dallas Morning News; Lexus; Texas Instruments and WFAA.

Good morning, hope you’re getting ready for a long weekend.