Denton’s Art Six Coffee House hosts Fight Boy Theatre production

by Rachel Watts of North Texas Daily

Audiences gathered at Art Six Coffee House Thursday night to feast their eyes on more than bagels and lattes. This time it was a Feast of Love that attracted the crowds to the little white house in Denton.

Feast of Love, a Fight Boy Theatre production, refers to three short plays performed in the Art Six house space during the weekends of Feb. 12 and 19.

"We strive to provide a humble space for local artists to share their work with the community, whether it's theater, music, poetry, dance or any other live art form," said Olivia de Guzman Emile, co-proprietor of Art Six and a UNT alumna.

In the past, Art Six has hosted more than 15 shows in various parts of the space, all of which Emile said were successful as an opportunity to host "guerilla theater," a style of street theater popularized in the mid-to-late-1960s. It is a style of spontaneous performances in unlikely public spaces that are usually political in nature.

Each of the three plays in Feast of Love offers a different perspective of love: esoteric, romantic and irreverent.

"The core message of Feast of Love is that there's not just one kind of love," said Joshua Scott Hancock, artistic director of Fight Boy Theatre. "We wanted to show diversity and a different way of doing things that would appeal across the board."

The first play is Dreaming of the Bones, directed by Fight Boy Theatre production manager Caleb J. Creel. It takes place in the early 1900s around the time of the Irish uprisings. A young man, who fought against the English at the Post Office in Dublin, is confronted in the barren west of Ireland by two ancient spirits. The spirits are doomed to forever relive the last night of their life unless they can convince the young man to forgive their ancient crime, according to a news release for the theater.

The second play, also directed by Creel, is Love in Connemara, a tale of love in life's twilight. An older couple is reunited unexpectedly after almost 50 years of separation and finds that time and circumstances have done little to diminish the feelings they once had.

Last, The Shoe Boy, directed by Hancock, is a classic Cinderella story with a very unusual twist. The cinder boy must find a way to make it to the masked ball to fall in love with the prince before midnight, in hopes that the "fairy godfather" can help him out.

The performances are held at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students and seniors. For reservations and more information, please visit fightboytheatre.com or contact Joshua Scott Hancock at 817-675-5674.

"The beauty of live theater is that once a show's run is over, there will never be another experience like that particular production," Emile said. "You can't truly capture it in pictures or film, you can only experience it as it's happening."