Andi Allen is a very busy woman. She’s in demand as a director, actor and choreographer around various Dallas-Fort Worth theaters — all while holding a day job. In fact, scheduling an interview for this article was accomplished via late-night, after-rehearsal emails. It’s apparent, however, that she enjoys juggling, especially if it involves theater activities.
Because this is true, she has added a new metaphorical bowling pin to keep in the air, that is, the role of artistic director at Theatre Frisco. Handpicked by the previous artistic director, Neale Whitmore, Allen is halfway through her first season at Theatre Frisco, finding her new normal even as she maintains her theater connections across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As she puts it, “I’m navigating this new phase as best I can.”
Theatre Frisco traces its history back to 1984, when a group of citizens floated the idea of putting on a one-off production. The initial meetings to gauge interest drew so much attention that they forged ahead and formed the Frisco Community Theatre (FCT), headed by Jack Scott as the executive manager. Shortly after its formation, the theater developed a relationship with the city of Frisco, renting space in a city building.
Like any arts organization that survives for decades, FCT had its ups and downs. In the late 2000s, structural weaknesses were discovered in the theatre building they were using. FCT had to vacate due to safety concerns. In 2010, the city of Frisco completed and opened the Frisco Discovery Center, which included a black box theater capable of seating 100 audience members. FCT renewed its relationship with the city and began producing shows in that location. Theatre Frisco has been there ever since.
Shortly after FCT took up residence at the Discovery Center, lighting and sound designer Neale Whitmore started directing musicals for the company. In 2017, Whitmore was named as the artistic director, the first person in the organization to hold that title. It was at about this time that the board also decided to take the organization to another level, removing “community” from its name and rebranding it as Theatre Frisco. Their intent was to move in the direction of becoming a professional theater company.
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Andi Allen was born and raised in Dallas. “The only time I’ve lived anywhere else was when I attended college at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches,” she says. Of course, it was in Dallas that she first experienced live performance for the very first time, but not exactly in a theater and not a children’s theater production.
“My first memories of live performance were actually when I was very young, probably first years of elementary school,” Allen recalls. “My mother was part of a local women’s political activist group, which was headed by a certain Ann Richards, who many years later would become the governor of Texas. They would do fundraisers for candidates and would perform a variety show that parodied state and national politics.”
A variety show was probably great preparation for Allen’s first onstage appearance: in an elementary school talent show. If these experiences only planted a seed for her life’s direction, it came into full bloom in junior high school. “Mom found me a local children’s theater troupe to audition for,” she says. “That was that — acting bug firmly in place.”
After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts in musical theater at SFA, Allen returned to Dallas to build theatrical relationships and a resume. She can claim acting, directing and choreography credits at such venues as Garland Civic Theatre, Uptown Players, Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas, Firehouse Theatre and, of course, Theatre Frisco. It’s worth noting that this is only a partial list.
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Neale Whitmore’s path to artistic director was quite different from Allen’s. As he describes it, “I tripped and fell and got into theater.”
Whitmore grew up in Atlanta, where he spent part of his early adult life in rock ’n’ roll, playing in bands and learning to run equipment in recording studios. When he left that behind, he went into sales, and his company transferred him to Texas, first to Houston and then to Dallas. It was in Dallas that a friend enticed Whitmore to join him as a volunteer at a community theater by noting that the play had a lot of cute girls in the cast. Volunteering to build sets led to running a light board — not that different from running equipment for a rock ’n’ roll club show — and one thing led to another, such that he became a prominent lighting and sound designer around Dallas-Fort Worth.
As he watched how theater was made, he started to think he might like to direct. While negotiating with a theater to become its tech designer for the season, he said he’d do it if they let him direct one of their shows. It was at that theater that he first ran into Andi Allen, who was auditioning there. Whitmore and Allen began running into each other at different theaters, sometimes when he was directing and she was acting or when she was directing and he was designing, but they built a working relationship over the years.
All things wind down and come to an end, and Whitmore started to look ahead to retiring from the artistic director position, too. His original plan was to start the transition this year, 2024. But then there was a pandemic. More precisely, there was the return to live theater after everything had been closed down for over a year. Whitmore was directing the first show back, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, in the fall of 2021, which involved the ambitious innovation of hiring Theatre Frisco’s first performers who were members of Actors’ Equity, the professional actors’ union. Making theater in the age of COVID and negotiating with the union added up to a lot of stress. “I was driving to rehearsal and I was like, this is just getting to where it isn’t fun anymore,” Whitmore recalls. “So I moved my timeline up for wanting to retire by two years.”
Whitmore had the luxury of handpicking his replacement, and he almost immediately had a short list of people he thought would be good successors. One of those people moved away before Whitmore could ask. Another was contemplating his own retirement from theater work. And then there was Andi Allen.
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Allen did not jump at the opportunity. She still works a full-time day job, and she still enjoys working with different theater companies in the area. She spent some months of 2022 thinking it over, first saying no, then saying maybe, then saying no. She was already on tap to direct the 2023 season’s opening show, Side by Side by Sondheim, for Theatre Frisco, and as she prepared that show, she told Whitmore she thought maybe she could do it, but she still had questions. When the Sondheim show opened, they talked some more, and she committed. “I had the depth of experience for the job, as well as the organizational skills,” she says. “I guess I was at that time in my life and career that this seemed like the right time and opportunity. And I love working with Theatre Frisco.”
Allen spent the rest of 2023 following Whitmore around, sitting in on committees and learning the ropes. With the 2024 season (Theatre Frisco’s seasons follow calendar years), the transition is complete. “Now, she’s on her own,” Whitmore says, “except she has an open line to me to answer any questions.”
When asked if she had plans to take Theatre Frisco in any new directions, she responded with a “don’t fix what isn’t broken” attitude. “Neale did a wonderful job in shaping Theatre Frisco, and I hope I continue in the solid direction he began,” she says.
“And even if I wanted to do something crazy, which I don’t, I have a board and a season selection committee who are part of our planning. Decisions are made with multiple people involved. I am really one of a team working together to present good theater.”
There is one minor change Allen brings to the artistic director role. Whereas Whitmore directed two shows each season, Allen will direct one. Otherwise, she will be the main liaison with the city, securing season dates at the Discovery Center, hiring directors and technical crew, working with publishers to secure performance rights to the scripts and generally putting out fires as they ignite. As Allen puts it, the short version of her job description is, “The artistic director is responsible for what goes onstage.”
Whitmore sums up his hopes for the new artistic director. “What I was wanting in getting my replacement was someone better than me with at least as much, and in Andi’s case, more experience than I have, to take Theatre Frisco up to the next level.”
Allen directed the third show in the 2024 season, the musical She Loves Me, book by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. It opened July 26 and ran through August 11.