It's a Saturday night in October and a small crowd presses into the cozy bar area at Rec Room Arts on the edge of downtown Houston. It's an eclectic bunch: seasoned arts patrons, theater kids, 20- and 30-somethings out on what could be date night, and some older folk, too. They’re drinking wine, catching up, exchanging small talk with each other before heading in to see Put Your House in Order, Ike Holter’s romantic comedy/horror/thriller that starts out as a first date and becomes something very, very different. The show tackles issues of intimacy, race, honesty and, well, something close to zombies. It’s one you’re unlikely to see elsewhere in Houston.

This sort of gathering is exactly what Rec Room's artistic director Matt Hune loves to see. When he and cofounder Stephanie Wittels Wachs launched the company in 2015, they were determined to make it a space that was as much come-as-you-are as it was killer theater. And theatergoers looking for shows that provoke discussion, push the envelope, and give voice to new writers know the tiny space is a go-to for compelling stories.

“I like to think of our work at Rec Room as a dare to Houstonians, or a challenge to the idea of what theater is or is not,” Hune says. “We are the city’s smallest professional theater, and I believe it is the most unique experience.”

Houstonians have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the mainstream local theater scene. From Broadway tours to Agatha Christie mysteries to beloved classics and everything in between, the city is alive with artists sharing a variety of works. But audiences who venture out of the Theater District are well-rewarded with great work by smaller companies.

“Our goal is to get people off of their devices, out of their houses, and into our theater to experience live performance and ultimately real human connection,” Hune adds. “Our work is for everyone, despite any prior relationship with theater. People come to Rec Room to experience great reckonings.”

Great reckonings are also something theatergoers will find at Catastrophic Theatre Company, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in July. For the past three decades, the company has traded in the bizarre, the nonlinear, the just plain odd.

“Often, our audiences leave with more questions than answers,” says Tamarie Cooper, the company’s co-artistic director, who every summer offers a showcase of the strange with an original musical revue. Variations over the years have included Tamarie for President and this summer’s Tamarie Coopers TOTALLY TRUE Revue (Plus Lies, Too)! “We are definitely champions of new work, and we do seek out lesser-known, avant-garde shows,” she continues. “I mean, the ability to start the year with Beckett’s Happy Days and end with my own ridiculousness, that’s incredible.”

Regular attendees of Catastrophic shows, which take place at Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH), know they’re in for something different. Cooper loves that the company is in a place where it can take artistic risks. She credits that to an audience who has championed its work over the decades. “All art is subjective,” Cooper says. “And I know there really are a few more people out there with their freak flag flying that want to come and see what we do. And we still have stories to tell.”

At 4th Wall Theatre Company in Spring Street Studios, cofounders Kim Tobin-Lehl and Philip Lehl’s mission is to create exceptional theater while raising awareness of the actual cost of theater, specifically when it comes to paying artists. Their passion is reflected in shows like Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, an unflinching look at race, stereotypes, and biases, which closed the 2022–2023 season, and Jesus Hopped the A-Train, featuring an electric performance by Joseph “Joe P” Palmore as a convicted serial killer who embraces God behind bars.

Nurturing artists and new works is essential to keeping live theater, well, alive. In that sense, Houston is a theatergoer’s delight, a place where you can see a performer you love turn up on stages all over town. Raven Justine Troup performed as Sister Mary Robert in Theatre Under the Stars’ (TUTS) Sister Act in 2021, and was in 4th Wall’s Sanctuary City earlier this year. Joel Sandel was the oily von Trapp butler Franz in A.D. Players Theater’s The Sound of Music in 2022, and he just finished performing Present Laughter at Main Street Theater. Then there’s Briana J. Resa, who I first saw in the Mildred’s Umbrella production of The Hunchback of Seville in 2019; she’s gone on to do incredible work in Stages’ Roe and 4th Wall’s Between Riverside and Crazy, and she brought her A-game to the Alley Theatre last December in What-a-Christmas, a solo retelling of A Christmas Carol. I’ve loved Luis Galindo since seeing him in Stages’ 2013 production of Wittenberg, and followed him through Stages’ The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Marie Antoinette, Stage Kiss at 4th Wall, and Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue at Main Street Theater. If you told me he was on stage reading a shopping list, I’d turn up, so the news that he’s back at 4th Wall this September in The Pavilion was welcome. They’re among a whole list of performers who work around Houston, giving audiences the chance to see their reach, talent, and evolution.

And in a diverse city like Houston, it’s only appropriate that we have a diverse theater scene. At the Ensemble Theatre, artistic director Eileen J. Morris carries on the legacy of the theater’s founder—and her mentor—George Hawkins, who started the company from the trunk of his car before moving into a former used car dealership. His mission, which endures today, is to tell the story of the African American experience with plays written and performed by African American artists.

Attending a performance at the Ensemble invites an entirely different level of audience engagement. It’s not unusual to hear a chorus of “Mmmm-hmmm” or “That’s right” in commentary to action on the stage. The audience was particularly vocal during the 2022–2023 season’s Clyde’s, about a group of formerly incarcerated workers of a truck stop with a mean-spirited manager. The catcalls and comments demonstrated a connection the audience had with the material, one they felt welcome to share.

A.D. Players at the George Theater began its life as the vision of founder Jeannette Clift George, who launched the company in 1967 as a place to perform shows that uphold human dignity. As A.D. has evolved over the past 46 years, it’s embraced its mission as a Christian theater company, with an eye to producing plays that “move our spirits toward something greater than ourselves,” according to the vision statement. Doing that in an inclusive way is a terrific feat. The company’s world premiere of Miss Maude last fall tackled the real-life story of a white Life photographer and a Black Southern midwife with pathos and empathy. And The Hiding Place, from the 2019–2020 season, a play based on Corrie ten Boom’s memoir about a Dutch family hiding Jews from the Nazis during World War II, showcased the best of people during the worst of times.

“Artists and audiences rightly want to see themselves reflected in the stories we were telling,” says Shannon Emerick, director of marketing and communications at Main Street Theater, a mainstay in Rice Village for nearly 50 years. “We are becoming more intentional in the choice of plays we select in an effort to engage more artists and audiences from Houston's many diverse communities.”

That was evident with last season’s Permanent Collection at Main Street, a story where ego, art, and intent collided as a Black director is named to a predominately white art institution. As he starts making changes in the collection, he runs into resistance from board members and staff. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, a 2022 production of a Peruvian novel, served as the play’s English language premiere. Main Street also features a plethora of works by women.

Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company at the DeLuxe Theater is Houston’s driving force in championing plays by female artists and playwrights, telling stories about women’s experiences throughout history since 2001. Founder and director Jennifer Decker launched the long-running Museum of Dysfunction series, a showcase for new works. The company has presented world premieres, like 2016’s Dollface, a new take on the Medusa myth, and this spring’s Tooth and Tail, by Houston playwright and author Elizabeth A. M. Keel, an adventure story of princesses, pirates, and how girls save the world. The company also produced the Houston premiere of Dead Man’s Cell Phone, about a chance encounter when a woman answers a cell phone that won’t stop ringing. Mildred’s premiered the show in 2012; the Alley Theatre did it in 2022.

In a gleaming new building a few blocks off Allen Parkway, the Gordy is a three-theater space that Stages calls home. For 45 years, the company has offered seasons that are made up of everything from raucous comedies to musicals and, along the way, created a Latinx Theater Festival. Stages has pushed envelopes, mounting plays that are heartwarming and thought-provoking—I still think about the little piece of amazing that was Sexy Laundry, a two-person show from the 2013–2014 season with Josh Morrison and Susan Koozin, who I will now see in literally anything. Stages will produce Off-Broadway’s beloved The Fantasticks, then give you a bit of camp in The Great American Trailer Park Musical, then offer up a Panto Christmas show. They have the entire realm of something-for-everyone covered. Consider the current season, which includes Always….Patsy Cline, a honky-tonk-esque good time about the iconic country singer and a friendship she struck up with a Houston housewife; POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a laugh-out-loud feminist farce about women and power and misogyny; and Othello the Remix, a hip-hop reimagining of the Shakespeare classic.

And that is the truth of being a theatergoer in Houston. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s out there. A story for you. A story to tell you something you never knew about. A story to make you feel alive—so alive you want to tell the world what you just saw. That story is out there, waiting for you to see it.

Other Small Theater Companies

Classical Theatre Company, performing plays at least 100 years old, at the DeLuxe Theater

Dirt Dogs Theatre Co., performing at MATCH

The Garden Theatre, offering performances at MATCH