Adapted & Directed by Savannah Lloyd
Based on the works of William Shakespeare & Nahum Tate

Coming July 2027

What if King Lear wasn't a king, but a trailblazing Black American woman who built an oil empire from the ground up?

Set in 1973 at the end of the Permian Basin oil boom, LEAR transforms Shakespeare's tragedy into a distinctly Texan story of family legacy, oil wealth, labor unrest, and generational change. Lear is the fierce founder of King Oil, preparing to hand her empire to her three daughters. When she mistakes flattery for loyalty and casts out the one daughter who truly loves her, the family, and the company, begins to collapse.

What makes this adaptation different isn't just the setting. It asks questions that feel deeply familiar in Texas today:

• Who inherits the future when a founding generation steps aside?

• What happens when profit and power outweigh family and community?

• How do rural workers, land, and industry shape identity?

• What does leadership look like when the old rules stop working?

Against a backdrop of pumpjacks, dust storms, ranchland, and worker uprisings, classic Shakespearean characters become Texans: oil executives, heirs, laborers, and survivors. The adaptation retains Lear's descent into madness while offering a more hopeful ending rooted in redemption, reconciliation, and renewal.

For audiences who know King Lear, the surprise is seeing how naturally the story fits West Texas. The oil boom-and-bust cycle replaces the collapse of a kingdom, and the struggle over an inheritance becomes a fight over the future of the Basin itself. LEAR is both Shakespeare and something entirely its own: a Texas epic about legacy, loyalty, and who gets to lead when the dust settles.

Audition information coming late 2026/early 2027.