Meagan Harris arrived one day at Carlos Garc铆a Est茅vez鈥檚 studio outside Madrid feeling scared.
The North Texas actor had traveled to Spain for a week to work with the renowned theater artist known for his deeply rooted improvisational techniques. She hoped to begin the process of creating a show but with no pressure to complete it in such a short time.
鈥淗e was like, 鈥楾hat鈥檚 cool. We鈥檙e just going to look into each other鈥檚 eyes.鈥� I was crying and freaking out just having to look into someone鈥檚 eyes,鈥� Harris recalls. 鈥淭hen as we kept working, I was again having a hard time being vulnerable and sharing. What he does is very challenging because you can鈥檛 hide and everything in your body, everything about society, everything about our world says you cannot be vulnerable or you will die.鈥�
This time, Est茅vez told her to close her eyes, stop worrying and go for it.
鈥淚t was wild because for like 25, 30 minutes straight, I improvised a whole crazy thing, and all this poetic language came out,鈥� Harris says. 鈥淚t wasn't preconceived. I wasn't trying to be smart. I wasn't, 鈥極h, look at me.鈥� It was something subconscious, something larger than me. When I got out of my own way, when I let my ego drop, then a whole universe of ideas came. The pursuit of that became the show.鈥�
Specifically, Lux: a solo show, starring Harris and directed by Est茅vez, which is making its U.S. premiere at the theater group Artstillery鈥檚 intimate performance space in West Dallas. Dressed like a clown down to the red nose, Harris plays Sally deLux, a troubled woman dealing with many of the problems that modern life presents. Her issues are not unlike those Harris had creating her.
This whole show is meta-theatrical,鈥� she says. 鈥淚鈥檓 facing insecurities and fears by putting together a show like this. I wanted to hide, I wanted to resist, I wanted to do something good or something interesting or something whatever. Sally developed taking elements of myself. If you'd asked me a few years ago, I never would have believed I could have or would have done it.鈥�
Harris describes herself as painfully shy growing up in McKinney. She began studying theater in high school and went on to Southern Methodist University, where she earned undergraduate degrees in acting and art history.
Since then, she has worked as an arts administrator and in recent years has been raising her profile as an actor in shows at Ochre House Theater and Fair Assembly. She has done a lot of Shakespeare.
Before Lux, she was the understudy in two other solo shows, including a recent stint in Crystal Skillman鈥檚 Open at Echo Theatre. It included sleight-of-hand magic and pantomime.
The unlikely journey to Lux started when Harris was part of the cast of Diosa, a 2024 collaboration between Dallas鈥� Cara Mia Theatre and Est茅vez鈥檚 company, Manifesto Poetico. The piece of physical theater about the battle between human materialism and nature was devised by the actors, Est茅vez and Paige Allerton, the other Manifesto Poetico artistic director.
Afterward, Est茅vez invited Harris to attend a commedia dell鈥檃rte workshop in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she asked him if she could come to Spain for further studies. Earlier this year, they met back up in Guadalajara to compose the show that has become Lux and premiere it.
Working without a written script -- it鈥檚 all in her head -- Harris gets from points A to Z with language and movement that may shift a little each night, including whether she says certain lines in English or Spanish. Helping anchor the piece is music composer Armando Monsivais, who performs an original score live in a kind of give and take with Harris. Sometimes the music drives the action, sometimes it鈥檚 the other way around. Multitalented Dallas theater artist Justin Locklear contributes a puppet and elements of the set.
鈥淪ally is going on this journey to try to liberate herself, to find her own courage, her own voice, to find who she is outside of the expectations of others, out of her own demons and fears,鈥� Harris explains. 鈥淚n that same meta-theatrical way, that's what I'm doing as an artist in my career right now. How do I want to create? What stories do I want to tell? Sally developed out of this hyperbolic, transposed, universal version of my own inner child with all of its good and all of its bad, all of the beauty and innocence and purity and love of life and all of the fear, anxiety and self-hatred, all those things that are in constant balance.鈥�
Harris isn鈥檛 interested in spoon-feeding the audience, something she learned from Est茅vez and Manifesto Poetico鈥檚 way of creating theater. That means not only audience participation during Lux but an approach that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and what audience members bring to the show from their own experiences.
鈥淚 wanted to create a show that was very much from me, of me, relative to my own personal experience, but at the same time also being incredibly universal,鈥� Harris says. 鈥淪ally is dealing with fears of not being good enough. Lux touches on addiction and depression. A lot of these things are pretty dark, but they're presented in a joyful, celebratory way. Sally is trying as best she can to be OK even if we know she鈥檚 not. But as the creator of the show I鈥檓 not going to tell you how to feel.鈥�
Details
July 11-20 at 723 Fort Worth Ave. $20. artstillery.org.
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