Dallas Theater Center's new artistic director directs first show of the season

The world premiere production of "Reykjavik86" marks the beginning of Enloe/Rose Artistic Director Jaime Castañeda’s tenure at Dallas Theater Center.

Jaime Castañeda is ambitious. The new Enloe/Rose Artistic Director at the Dallas Theater Center is beginning his tenure at the Tony Award-winning theater company with a world premiere production about a high-stakes Cold War summit set in Iceland. Reykjavik86 is now playing through Sept. 27 at the Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Arts District.

Castañeda has been working with playwright Gabe McKinley on Reykjavik86 since the pandemic, workshopping the show and looking for the right stage for this big American play with a cast of 12.

“Theaters coming out of the pandemic were not really being so ambitious in terms of the kind of work that they could be programming and also the scale in terms of both cast size, but also this kind of big, meaty subject,” Castañeda said. “And so immediately when I got the call on Dallas Theater Center, I knew it was a play that could cast our lovely resident acting company. And I also knew it was a play that also resonates with today.”

The show is a Cold War thriller, based on the October 1986 nuclear summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. The world premiere debuts weeks before the fortieth anniversary of a summit that laid the groundwork for the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States of America and the Soviet Union.

McKinley, who worked at The New York Times and wrote CQ/CX, a play about the 2003 Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal at the esteemed publication, approaches the historic subject from the perspective of a journalist.

“Gabe's superpower really is that he could actually kind of take that, blow it apart, and make it really specific for a stage and a live audience. So, this isn't really intended to be a historical, accurate piece of theater. It's a work of fiction as well. These characters are composites. Sure, we have Gorbachev and Reagan but it's really about a company of actors in 2026 telling the story of what it was like in the mid-80s and throughout the Cold War, what the stakes were and what the kind of moment in history was,” Castañeda said.

Castañeda appreciates the humor McKinley infused into the script.

“I think humor brings out the humanity of people, for sure. I mean we jokingly, lovingly say that it's the funniest play about nuclear disarmament that there is in the American theater,” Castañeda said.

There are no Ronald Reagan impersonations in this show.

“Although Reagan and Gorbachev and Nancy Reagan are characters in it, we've taken liberties across the board with how we portray those people,” Castañeda said. “It’s all about a character kind of assuming a skin, taking off a hat, dumping a jacket, and then they become another character in another scene. So, it really also embraced the Brierley Acting Company as the center core component to the theater in terms of programming and in terms of what the event of the play is.”

As he studies transcripts of conversations from the summit woven into the script, Castañeda is nostalgic for the decorum of the era.

“The climax of the play is really them negotiating and trying to get to a yes. And so, the event really is how can we kind of come together and see one another a little differently. Maybe have a little bit more empathy and be able to get to a compromise,” Castañeda said. “As we see conflicts around the world, my hope would be more people would gather in a room and try to work it out.”

As Castañeda’s tenure begins, Dallas Theater Center and AT&T Performing Arts Center announced a proposed merger. It’s a move Castañeda hopes will enhance the Dallas Arts District.

“I'm continuing to learn about what this is. I think we all are. We're all having meetings with the AT&T Performing Arts Center. We're touring our theaters, our spaces. We're learning about union agreements. We're learning about how big their departments are, what we do in our departments, and where there's overlap. And so, we're kind of in a listening phase of this. I think it'll also go really quite fast after this listening phase,” Castañeda said. “I hope that once we get into a post-merger world, that the opportunities for Dallas Theater Center will increase both in terms of the opportunities with additional spaces and additional places to perform. I think gathering resources and boards is smart for the city of Dallas. Merging our audiences hopefully will make for a better audience experience.”

Reykjavik86 is the first of many new works Castañeda has planned for Dallas Theater Center.

“I want to be a part of projects that will then run around the country and that I see have other lives internationally and in cities like Chicago or D.C. or San Diego. We're giving birth to a lot of projects. We're helping projects along their development,” Castañeda said. “It's certainly a bat signal that we're throwing up into the air, saying that we're going to make something here in Dallas. And we want people and artists to come be a part of that. And we want the audiences here to see it first before you see it in New York, you see it in LA, you see it in Chicago, you see it in London. And this is the first step in that.”

Learn more: Dallas Theater Center