As a follow-up to her Best New Artist Grammy nomination last year, country singer-songwriter Brandy Clark moves from music to musical theater. It’s not as surprising as it once might have been, but her source material might be: Hee Haw. Clark and her frequent collaborator Shane McAnally both watched the down-home variety show growing up.
For Moonshine, the Dallas Theater Center’s 2015-’16 season opener, Clark and McAnally have kept the location (the fictional Kornfield Kounty) while adding new characters and a plot. Misty Mae is a Kornfield native who follows her big-city dreams all the way to Tampa, Florida. When she returns home with a new boyfriend, her friends and family don’t quite know whether to befriend this fish out of water—or fry him. Moonshine has had several well-received workshops in New York, but Dallas gets the world premiere.
It’s lighter, more fun-loving fare than 2012’s Giant, the DTC’s co-production with the Public Theater in New York. And with commercial producers already attached, the lights on Broadway may prove big and bright indeed.
A version of this article appears in the September issue of D Magazine.
