Dallas-based playwright and TV writer Franky D. Gonzalez is Bishop Arts Theatre Center’s playwright-in-residence.

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“Bishop Arts Theatre Center was my first artistic home,” he stated in a media release. “I sincerely believe that my career would have not been the same — or even existent — without Teresa Coleman Wash and the [theater’s] team’s championing of my work in my earliest years as a playwright.”

The theater received a grant from the Small Business Administration’s office of disaster assistance after it was closed because of the pandemic. It was enough to pay off the nonprofit’s construction loan debt from a 2006 renovation of the century-old building on Tyler Street, which was donated to the nonprofit in 2004. Construction was completed in 2008.

“Now is the time for us to really start invest in our people and cement the infrastructure of our organization,” executive director Teresa Coleman Wash said.

Full-time staff members now receive health insurance benefits and a retirement plan for the first time.

Gonzalez, a University of North Texas graduate, was a staff writer on the TV show 13 Reasons Why, and his work has been performed at The Lark, the Sundance Institute and the Ojai Playwrights Conference.