East Texas Hot Links

by Eugene Lee
Directed by Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson

Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, East Texas Hot Links is simultaneously a gripping character study, a lyrical masterpiece, and a juggernaut of suspense. It is 1955 in the piney woods of East Texas and racial tensions are high, yet the Top o’ the Hill Café remains a haven. There, regulars share stories, joke, unwind, and trade friendly barbs. The café is a refuge that keeps the outside world at bay, until a mysterious omen forces the outside in.

Court’s 2024/25 season opener is a tribute to Resident Artist and Director Ron OJ Parson’s (Two Trains Running) first production in Chicago, his deep collaboration with playwright Eugene Lee, and the founding of Onyx Theatre Ensemble, the storied theatre company that first produced East Texas Hot Links in Chicago thirty years ago. By returning to Top o’ the Hill Café decades later, Parson asserts East Texas’s place in the modern theatrical canon and honors the legacy of Onyx.

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