Photography by Yuvie Styles
Sonya Eudaley has played a number of roles throughout her life. Entrepreneur. Florist. French Revolutionary. Mrs. Claus.
In addition to being a Bishop Arts business owner for 15 years, she is a high school theater kid who never escaped the stage’s siren song. She now uses themed events around the neighborhood as an excuse to dress up and perform. On the annual Bastille Day hosted by Go Oak Cliff, she turns the storefront of her business, Dirt Flowers, into a full barricade a la Les Misérables.
“Flowers have been my work for 20 years,” she says. “Because I’ve been a florist for so long I haven’t been able to do much theater.”
She was just getting around to changing that when COVID-19 hit; she’d planned to host murder mystery dinner parties at her venue space, House of Dirt. Four years later, the small businesses of Bishop Arts were finally getting their feet back under them, and Eudaley was itching for someone to die.
In April, she hosted two murder mystery dinner parties at House of Dirt as a fundraiser for the Bishop Arts Merchant Association. It was a trial run for the idea, and for her new nonprofit, Good Show Theater Co., which she started with Lake Cliff neighbor Brooks Thomas in an effort to bring more theater to Bishop Arts while lowering the barrier to entry for those interested in the hobby.
“There are plenty of platforms and opportunities for professional or semiprofessional actors to find shows and projects to work on,” Eudaley says. “What we don’t have enough of are opportunities for people who maybe theater is not their number one focus or their full-time career.”
Thomas moved to Lake Cliff 10 years ago after graduating from Southern Methodist University and has witnessed the “clay” of Bishop Arts change dramatically over the years.
He initially bonded with Eudaley over his own high school theater experiences, and thinks Good Show Theater Co. could serve as a way to remedy the “transactional relationship” he sees permeating the Bishop Arts community. Instead of just buying from Bishop Arts store owners, he wants to perform alongside them, in front of audiences made up of other Cliff Dwellers.
“As the clay gets larger it gets a little bit harder to mold,” Thomas says. “I think this, at least for me, has been an opportunity to take back a little bit of that moldable, sculptable clay and inject what has made Bishop Arts so appealing in the past back through theater.”
They want to start by commissioning live performances, like living statues, on the Bishop Arts streets. (“I would love to see some puppetry and mime work happening,” she says.) Then, another murder mystery dinner party will raise money for a full-scale show sometime in September.
Once shows are underway, tickets will be free or donation-based.
Anyone is invited to join the troupe, whether they have a background in theater or not. A banker with a knack for painting can help design sets. An office administrator with a thrifting addiction can become a costumer. The mother of three who still thinks about her line in the seventh grade production of Footloose can find center stage once more. The most important thing, Eudaley and Thomas say, is creating a creative space for the neighbors of Bishop Arts and its surrounding areas.
“There’s a lot of new businesses and a lot of new neighbors moving in every day,” Eudaley says. “They have moved here for the promise of the arts and while there is definitely not a shortage of art or theater in Dallas-Fort Worth, right here in the Bishop Arts District we could use a little more.”
