Stage West in the News
Go for the Food, Stay for the Play
At Stage West's Ol' Vic Café
Actors tend to know the ins and outs of food service. Table-waiting pays the bills for many a young thesp until that big break comes along. Edie Falco waited tables at a Manhattan steak joint even after making her film debut playing a waitress in Hal Hartley's directorial debut The Unbelievable Truth in 1989.
Fort Worth actor-director Dana Schultes chalked up a bunch of years as a "wactress," as she puts it. Now she draws on that restaurant experience as the menu creator, manager and server at Stage West's charming little Ol' Vic Café.
The 64-seat restaurant in the art-filled lobby of the theater on West Vickery Boulevard served its first dinners when the space opened on Thanksgiving weekend 2007. With kitchen equipment bought from auctions, the Ol' Vic, which still doesn't have an oven, serves light fare, mostly sandwiches, salads and made-from-scratch soups created by Schultes. Dinner service starts at 6:30 p.m., 90 minutes before curtain time on show nights, with a full brunch starting at 1:30 p.m. before the Sunday matinees. There's a hot entrée offered on Thursday nights.
The food's really good. When I review a show at Stage West, I always get there early for a nosh. And because the only other place to eat near Stage West is a Jack-in-the-Box, it's the best option for any anxious theatergoer who doesn't want to rush through a pre-show meal in downtown Fort Worth or on the University strip. At the Ol' Vic, you can get a nice glass of wine, a bowl of Schultes' organic vegetable soup (my faves are the autumn squash and the black bean/pumpkin) and a slice of cheesecake for about $12. I'm also partial to the fruit and cheese plate (big enough for two to share) offering three artisanal cheeses (recommended by Central Market cheesemonger Jeff Crain), crispy flatbreads, a dollop of fig jam, some grapes and mixed nuts. You can also pre-order coffee, wine and dessert for intermission, thus bypassing the bar line.
Stage West, founded in 1979 and still run by actor-director Jerry Russell, actually has a history of food service going back decades. Thirty years ago Russell's European Sandwich Shoppe was inside the theater's first home on Houston Street. The Ol' Vic still offers a few of those original menu items.
Schultes, who's also Stage West's director of development and a frequent leading lady in its productions, says running the café helped in her transition from busy actress to new mommy. She and husband Justin Flowers, who also works at Stage West, are parents to 2-year-old Matilda. Stage West regulars remember watching Flowers schlepp meals to tables with one hand while holding baby Matilda in the other.
The menu gets a tweak with each new show, with varying success. "The most controversial was the Danish beer soup we served during the run of [Michael Frayn's] Copenhagen," says Schultes. "People either loved it or really hated it."
The next show at Stage West is the comedy The 39 Steps, opening August 26. For that show, Schultes is putting a simple $5.50 bowl of chips and salsa on the Ol' Vic lineup. Why? "Oh, I dream of cooking gourmet meals here," says Schultes, "but this is just giving the people what they want."
Elaine Liner, The Dallas Observer
HELP FORT WORTH'S STAGE WEST CELEBRATE 30 'PEARLY' YEARS
The theatre group is ready to party at its anniversary gala on April 3.
Knit one, pearl 30: That's the design that has woven the colorful history of Stage West. One founder, Jerry Russell, who is still active as producing director, and 30 years of growth.
Stage West began as a modest storefront dinner theater and progressed through varying locations such as Caravan of Dreams, the Texas Christian University movie theater and the Sanders and Scott theaters at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center before returning to its roots on Vickery Boulevard.
Today, this highly acclaimed regional theater group is at home again in a newly remodeled 150-seat proscenium-stage theater where enthusiasts once again can enjoy dinner and award-winning live productions
Arts patrons are invited to celebrate the journey at 6:30 p.m. April 3 at Ridglea Country Club as gala chair Barbara Wyatt joins honorary chair and State Sen. Wendy Davis to welcome revelers to 30 Years of Pearls. If enjoying theater is your oyster then you'll want to turn out for this evening of dining, dancing and bidding planned by Kay Bolz, Linda Fulmer, Maggie Knapp, Joslyn Marksbury, Stella Norman, Gary Payne, Dana Schultes, Carol Stanford, Ginny Tigue, Bob Urban and Judith Webb.
You'll discover some real pearls to bid on at the silent and big board auctions...the luminescent kind nd the on-of-a-kind kind, such as a tour of the Texas Capitol with Davis as your guide. And between bids, you can do a little two-stepping to the popular sounds of Trey and the Tritones.
Tickets are $150 each or $1,500 for a table of 10. Get them through the box office at 817-784-9378 or go online to www.stagewest.org/30th-anniversary-gala.
-Melinda Mason, Star-Telegram Click-
TOPS IN 2008
Performing Arts
Stage West's first full season in its new-old theatrical home:
Call it a reunion between one of Fort Worth's most revered theater groups and its long-lost home. When Stage West kicked off 2008 with its production of The Clean House, it marked the first time since 1991 that it would raise the curtain on a play in its former home at 821 W. Vickery Blvd. A series of fortunate events, including the city's eleventh-hour decision not to tear down the old theater space, paved the way for this year's full-fledged reunion of local theater with its beloved old stage.
-Andrew Marton, Star-Telegram-
HOME OWNERSHIP IN FORT WORTH
Late last year — after 16 years of wandering around to different performance spaces in Fort Worth — Stage West came back to its long-time home at 821 W. Vickery. The company left the old warehouse because the reconstruction of I-30 had made it perilous for theatergoers to get there. But the I-30 re-routing is done, large portions of downtown Fort Worth are racing to redevelop — so Stage West raised a quarter of a million dollars to renovate the space and moved in with a revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings. It’s hard for an arts organization to build a stable audience without a permanent home, so it was little short of miraculous that Stage West managed to survive - let alone that it returned in such comfy shape.
It was just a brief announcement in the business section of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram yesterday, but Stage West has now passed another milestone: They’ve bought the building.
The irony is that Stage West’s current show is an extended run of Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s farce, as you no doubt remember, concerns a dysfunctional theater troupe that falls apart at the seams during the run of a stage farce.
-Jerome Weeks, Art&Seek Blog-
BIG WELCOME HOME
Stage West greets the season with a smile at its new theater.
Stage West has a sleighful of gifts for visitors this holiday season, including a beautiful new space near downtown where there's a generously sized lobby/dining area with a very cool art exhibit hanging, and a 150-seat theater with not a bad view in the house.
-Mark Lowry, Star-Telegram-
