Dallas — My Tidy List of Terrors doesn't necessarily sound like a play title that would come from a writer who shrinks from violence in film and pop culture, especially if guns are involved. But for Dallas playwright Jonathan Norton, it's the horrors of real life that drive his art.
Norton, 36, is a Dallas native who graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts, studied theater at Marymount Manhattan College and recently received a Master's in Liberal Studies from Southern Methodist University, where he also works. Although he has acted and directed at such local theaters at Theatre Three in Uptown and TeCo Theatrical Productions in Oak Cliff, he has long been interested in playwriting.
Some of his one-acts have been produced on local stages over the years, too, notably at TeCo and by the now-defunct African-American group Soul Rep Theatre Company, which gave him a big break when they produced his play dealing with religion and teenage pregnancy, The Virgin Shenequa, in the early 2000s.
My Tidy List of Terrors is his first full-length work to get major attention. It was given a reading at Texas State University in San Marcos in 2010, and was a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwright's Conference in Connecticut in 2011. It's receiving a full production at the South Dallas Cultural Center in January, under the direction of Cora Cardona, the founder and artistic director of the city's longest-running Latino theater company, Teatro Dallas. The South Dallas Cultural Center's Vicki Meek serves as producer.
Norton says he feels like his efforts are finally paying off. "I'm proud that there's an investment being made in the show," he says over mid-morning coffee.
Set in 1980, the play uses the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981 as a backdrop for the story of an affluent black family that invites their domestic, a single mother, and her son to live in their home. As African-American children and teens are being abducted and found dead (a black man was convicted for two of the murders, but some have alleged that the Ku Klux Klan was involved), issues of class and religion drive the characters and the play.
"I am so proud of Jonathan for having the artistic courage to step outside of his comfort zone to embrace the seriousness of this tragedy and to flesh out the characters he puts on the stage," wrote Vicki Meek in a blog. "He delves into issues of humanity and how easily it can be compromised when fear and ignorance drive one's actions. He makes us look at the complexity of human relationships and how easy it is to assume rather than to confirm."
One way those relationships are expressed is in a convergence of realism and ritual. "The play is a collision of American history and African religion," says Norton, noting that the rituals of Yoruba come into play.
Religion has been a theme in many of his works, including The Virgin Shenequa and Our Lady of South Oak Cliff, something he says stems from his rearing as a Southern Baptist, and his own childhood fear of not being baptized by the age of 12. Politics have also played a role in his writing, which is influenced by such playwrights as George C. Wolfe, August Wilson and Tony Kushner. His one-act 84, for instance, used three child characters (played by adults) to take on issues of Reagan-era Cold War paranoia and religious hypocrisy in an absurdist comedy.
But there was one major event in his life that he feels has had a profound effect on his work. When he was 15, his adopted father was murdered in a robbery at small food store his parents ran. About 10 years later, his mother died from a heart attack. (His birth mother was 15 when she had him, but that's all he knows about her.)
"My early work was comedic and satirical, I didn't want to dwell on anything too serious," Norton says. "I've always hated violence but my dad's murder pushed it over the edge."
Besides, who needs violence when there are other, more personal terrors in everyday life to contend with? Expect Norton to be wrestling with those through his writing, and expect to hear more about this talented writer for years to come.
◊ This story originally ran in Dallas South News, which is a TheaterJones media partner.
