Today we’d like to introduce you to Catherine Luster.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Catherine. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am a theatre teacher, writer, director, producer and lighting & sound designer. In short, I’m theater people – we can usually do a little of everything! And in recent years, I’ve even been dipping my toes into local film and TV as a writer and director! I’ve been experiencing the arts in Dallas since I was a child thanks to Montessori education and later a fully enriching arts experience as a student at Booker T. Washington HSPVA. After a couple college degrees, touring the country with a few different theatre companies and meeting my husband Mike, I developed the idea of a theatre company that would do something no one else was doing in Dallas. Shades of Brown Theater was born from my love of writing and helping other writers find their voice.
Years ago, Jiles King of Urban Arts Center was the first producer to take a chance on me by putting my work on stage through a play festival he was producing at the time. I developed friends and collaborators born of that experience that flourish to this day. Now, thanks to Jiles’ input and collaboration, the first production for Shades of Brown Theater will be a 10-minute play festival in the spring that not only will feature women writers of color exclusively, but will also result in them walking away from the event as compensated, published playwrights! We were going to produce in September of 2020, but as it was and is for a lot of other productions, COVID presented challenges that forced some changes for the safety of everyone involved.
Moving forward, in 2021, Shades of Brown will not only be producing it’s first play festival, I will also launch a writers workshop for women of color on ANY skill level of writing, begin workshopping both full-length plays I’ve spent my stay at home Mom time working on, and a unique collaboration with Gina Nacole of Ginasys Productions where we will have one show with two connective parts that will be written by each of us. Collaboration is life for me. I don’t work with anybody that’s not interested in the beautiful swirl of ideas that can happen when everyone brings their best ideas to the table! One of the best theatre jobs that I have going into 2021 is that of being a teacher at Harry Stone Montessori Academy. Harry Stone is one of the best schools in Dallas ISD as far as I’m concerned. I have a long personal history through my family and teachers that I already know there because my daughter goes to school there. Harry Stone has a storied history of excellence in Fine Arts and I am incredibly excited to become a part of that legacy and to eventually see what those amazing kids are capable of once we can get on stage and perform again! More importantly – I look forward to working with the girls of color at my new school and give them opportunities to learn more about producing and performing through Shades of Brown. Who knows? I might find that I have some talented little writers on my hands!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Like most women who choose to have children, pauses in my professional life were necessary to get my babies into the world. My husband and I started our journey as parents quite rough. In 2012, we experienced the loss of a son – at full term – to stillbirth. It was the most un-creative I’ve felt in my entire life – I didn’t write anything for months as I did my best to hold off a depression hole that threatened to swallow me whole. Thanks to supporting from friends, family, Mike and I were able to get married shortly after the loss and we had our daughter Winter soon after that, I started graduate school when Winter was a baby and felt an incredible surge of creativity that resulted in the idea for Shades of Brown. Six years later, I became pregnant with our twin boys Phoenix & Onyx.
The pregnancy was difficult and it forced me to resign from my teaching job at the time to get them safely into the world. I spent that time setting up the company, doing re-writes to a screenplay involving four plus-sized women of color in the lead roles, tightening up a full-length play that involves a Black teenager who struggles with the pull of her dangerous neighborhood against learning about the joys of high school theatre, and developing a play based on the life of a friend of mine and her struggle with men, dating and the unique circumstance of being a Black woman who is judged for dating so many men in her search for a life mate. As you can see, I am most passionate about telling the stories of women of color who I feel are under-represented or otherwise marginalized. Most importantly, I want my kids to grow up knowing how important representation in storytelling is – especially for WOC!
Please tell us about Shades of Brown Theater.
Shades of Brown Theater specializes in producing works written by women of color. The names come from the idea that I want to produce shows that represent a woman who are all shades of brown. I’m producing not only Black and Latina WOC writers but also Asian women, Native women and even mixed-race women because their stories are important as well! There are plenty of companies in Dallas who produce works by women of color, but they are usually mainstream and fairly well-known writers. Every season, I want to produce a slate of shows that ONLY focus on the experiences of women of color! Even further, I wanted to help produce local women writers of color because I know a lot of good writers in Dallas whose works haven’t been published. I also intend to produce in Oak Cliff/South Dallas as much as possible because that is where my people are. I have lived in Oak Cliff my entire life, and my kids go to school and daycare in Oak Cliff as well. This part of Dallas is definitely in my DNA.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I’m really tight with my family, so most of my favorite childhood memories involve my family. I’m the oldest of four siblings and have what feels like hundreds of cousins, which resulted in a busy, but awesome childhood. My parents made sure we had diverse education and extracurricular experiences. People are never surprised to find out that I went to Booker T, but I actually went there for music as a cello player. I didn’t get involved in theater until my senior year when I found myself doing sound design for Vicki Washington. That planted to seed for my love of and education in tech theater. Ms. Washington is still one of my primary mentors to this day.
That being said, I’d have to say that one of my favorite childhood memories is actually a show that I saw my freshman year at Booker T (which I keep wanted to call Arts Magnet, but maybe that’s me showing my age – I graduated in 1997) My freshman year, the spring musical at Arts was The Wiz directed by Nedra James. I was mesmerized. The production was so polished and professionally produced. It’s the reason I fell in love with theater (though inherent shyness would keep me from going all-in as an actor, singer, writer and director until after college). That experience is also the reason that The Wiz is one of my favorite shows to this day.
Contact Info:
- Email: shadesofbrowntheater@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/browngirltheatr
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/browngirltheatr
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/browngirltheatr
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