Teatro Dallas is nearing the start of its 40th season with a reality check. The storied theater this evening will close its 39th year with “Time Stands Still” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies. Running November 8 to 23, the play tackles some of today’s biggest topics, like America’s role in international conflicts and what our place in those wars look like as Americans.
“This is the first play in a while that is us talking about international affairs,” says Mac Welch, the director and Teatro Dallas’ resident producer. Even as the theater celebrates four decades, “Time Stands Still” represents a continued shift in its creative direction. For more than 20 years, Teatro Dallas has hosted an annual International Theater Festival. As the theater looks ahead, Welch says Teatro Dallas wants to place an even greater spotlight on international playwrights and on plays that speak to global issues like “Time Stands Still,” all while continuing to emphasize Latin works.
Welch doesn’t want audiences to mistake “Time Stands Still” for “one large political commercial” or an abrasive wake-up call. Instead, he calls it “a reality check that sits you down over a cup of coffee.”
That’s because the play is simultaneously a dark comedy and a moving, thoughtful exploration of relationship conflicts backdropped by global affairs. Margulies himself sees his play as a “love story” or “relationship drama” rather than a political piece.
“Time Stands Still” follows Sarah, a photojournalist injured while covering the Iraq war. After returning home with her partner James, a foreign correspondent himself, the couple navigate their evolving, rocky relationships with each other and their work as they find themselves drawn together at home following Sarah’s injury. While recovering, they also receive visits from their editor friend Richard, alongside his younger new girlfriend, Mandy.
Welch compares James and Sarah’s relationship struggles to people forced to stop working and simply exist at home with one another during the pandemic, despite the fact Margulies wrote the play more than a decade prior. He credits the play’s honest, relatable and often hilarious approach with helping audiences feel comfortable engaging with its weightier worldly topics as they see Sarah and James emotionally arguing their viewpoints.
For Gisela Guajardo and Caleb Mosley, the actors playing Sarah and James, “Time Stands Still” has been so engaging that their scenes onstage have begun to feel personal. “I feel like we’re actually experiencing something absolutely every time,” Guajardo says of how “real” it feels running scenes in rehearsals. Mosley credits Welch for creating a fun and positive environment in spite of the hefty and emotional material, calling it a “blessing” to be able to respond as James in a personal way.
Welch views that kind of authenticity as crucial to the play and its ability to engage audiences with its more challenging themes regarding our responsibilities to ourselves and the world. “You can feel when actors are lying, and you can put a certain distance between yourself and the work,” Welch says. “But, whenever you have such brilliant actors like this and such a brilliant play, it is infectious, and you get sucked in.”
Guajardo describes being “astounded by the general audacity of Sarah” when she first read the script. She compares her scenes to the often-referenced experience of “being at your family’s house during the holidays” when politics come up at the dinner table. “It’s really interesting that it feels that uncomfortable in a really good and honest way,” Guajardo says, highlighting the show’s humor in those moments.
Performing as Sarah and James have helped the actors explore their own emotions related to the show’s sensitive subjects as well. Mosely singles out the play’s question, “You really think what you do can actually change anything?” as what drew him to the show. This sentiment is something he’s gone back to throughout the rehearsal process as he reflects on his feelings and self-identity as someone who’s long described himself as an activist. He says he’s been “finding out a lot about myself” through playing James and exploring the character’s outlook.
Mosely says he hopes the play leads audiences to question if they owe more to the world or to themselves. He hopes audiences consider how their actions reflect that question, and what would happen if they did the opposite. “What if they sometimes gave to the world or to themselves? What if they found a balance?” Mosley says. “I know, for me, that’s something that I’m still now so hyper aware of since the question was first asked, and so now I’m wanting the audience to also leave with that as well.”
‘Time Stands Still’ plays at the Latino Cultural Center through November 23. Buy tickets here. Correction: This is still technically part of the 39th season, not the 40th, as the headline previously indicated.
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