The Sports Page

Feb 9 to Mar 18
Larry Herold
If this show were a football play, it would be a 60-yard completion to a wide-open receiver who walks into the end zone.

Punch Shaw, Star-Telegram

The Sports Page
runs Feb 9 through Mar 18
Thursdays 7:30
Fridays & Saturdays 8:00
Sundays 3:00

Dallas playwright and former sports writer Larry Herold takes a comic look back at a Dallas Cowboys training camp in 1966, when the whole media world is about to change. Television has landed in the form of the first woman reporter in a man’s world!

Read the TheaterJones interview with Larry here. 
Check out the cast video below, and then watch the rest of the videos on our YouTube page. 

Crusher - Bob Allen
Red Gage - Jeff McGee**
Jane Jordan - Sherry Hopkins**
Doyle Miller - Mark Fickert*  
Zinc Tucker - Chuck Huber*
Pick Waters - Bryan Pitts*
Scott Young - Joshua Buehler** 
Cheerleader Girls - Morgan McClure**, Chelsea Ryan McCurdy** 
Bob Allen

Work at Stage West includes:  Rex Bart in Johnny Guitar, Wilbur in Buck Nekkid.
Work outside Stage West includes:  Stephen Price in The African Company Presents Richard III, Hump D in Alice Wonder, Dave in

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Joshua Buehler

First appearance at Stage West.
Work outside Stage West includes:  Julian in Morgan’s Folly (Tulsa PAC), Victor in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Harrison in Terre Haute (bothRogers State Univ. Theatre),

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Mark Fickert

Work at Stage West includes:  Jim Stools in Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music.
Work outside Stage West includes:  Byron in Ages of the Moon (Undermain Theatre), Joe Foster in Becky’s New Car, LBJ 

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Sherry Hopkins

Work at Stage West includes:  Florence in Jeeves in the Morning.
Work outside Stage West includes:  Belinda in Noises Off, Female Greek Chorus in How I Learned to Drive (both Theatre Arlington), Witch in Seven in One Blow, Gloria in Boeing, Boeing

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Chuck Huber

Work at Stage West includes:  Bertie in Jeeves in the Morning, Ivan Curry in The Seafarer, Malcolm et al in Macbeth, Dvornichek in Rough Crossing, Goche in The Herbal Bed, Alceste in The Misanthrope, Alan in Come Blow Your Horn, Michael in Dancing at Lughnasa.

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Morgan McClure

Work at Stage West includes:  Louka in Arms and the Man.
Work outside Stage West includes:  Novel Woman in A Most Dangerous Woman (Echo Theatre), Witch 1 in Macbeth, Audrey in As You Like It (both Trinity Shakespeare Festival), 

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Chelsea Ryan McCurdy

First appearance at Stage West.
Work outside Stage West includes: Missy in The Winter Wonderettes and The Marvelous Wonderettes, Snow White in The Panto Sleeping Beauty (all Stages Repertory Theatre), Maureen in

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Jeff McGee

Work at Stage West includes:  Cheesewright in Jeeves in the Morning, Ashenback in Talking Pictures, Micky in RolePlay.
Work outside Stage West includes:  Mr. Weiss in Flora, the Red Menace (Lyric Stage), Howie Newsome in Our Town (WaterTower)

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Bryan Pitts

First appearance at Stage West.
Work outside Stage West includes:  The Douglas in Henry IV, Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (both Dallas Theater Center), Antonio in Twelfth Night, Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet 

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Director - Jerry Russell
Production Stage Manager - Peggy Kruger-O'Brien
Technical Director - Jason Domm
Lighting Design - Michael O'Brien
Props/Set Decor - Lynn Lovett 

The Sports Page, winner of Stage West's 2010 Texas Play Competition, began as a short one-act play about an aging sportswriter tutoring and abusing an ambitious whippersnapper.
 
But playwright Larry Herold says he quickly realized the story was bigger: "The more I looked into the history of sportswriting and the National Football League, I saw that the guys’ story should be set against the vast changes on the sports scene in the 1960’s. In those innocent days, sportswriters and the players they covered made the same money, drove the same cars. Then came Joe Namath and television and lots and lots of money. For the players, not the sportswriters.
 
I grew up in Dallas, when pro football was still a novelty, and attended Cowboy games in the Cotton Bowl. In the summer of ’66, the NFL came up with the idea of a “Super Bowl” to wipe out the AFL and give TV a January football game. The idea came together so quickly that CBS, which showed the NFL games, and NBC, which broadcast the AFL, couldn’t agree on who deserved to show the big game. So – get this – in January of 1967, they both did, simultaneously. You could look it up.

"I set the story in the last training camp before the first Super Bowl, and added a second writer and a P.R. man. Then I realized the entire play had to be about change: the arrival of women into a man's world, the rise of the talented-but-uncooperative superstar, the influence of gambling.

"One other thing: as I wrote, I began to see parallels between the way television threatened newspapers in the 60’s and the way the internet destroyed newspapers in the 00’s. It’s almost as if everything that newspapers feared back then came true, only 40 years later.

"But at Dallas Cowboys training camp in 1966, nobody knew any of this. Somewhere far out at sea, a tsunami named television was gathering strength. When it hit the beach, everything changed."