When she meets people who are visiting the Rio Grande Valley for the first time, Mollie Wallace—a 31-year-old occupational therapist in McAllen—usually asks whether they’ve gone to the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge yet.

The refuge is a point of pride for Wallace, who was raised in the Valley. She’s come there through multiple phases of her life, calling the 2,000-plus acres of riparian forest and thornscrub on the southern edge of Alamo a formative place for her and generations of local kids.

“I’ve grown older through here, and it’s a fun reference for anyone who’s from the Valley,” she told the Texas Observer on an early September morning, walking toward the refuge’s observation tower. “I love showing it to people who say, ‘There’s nothing to do in the Valley,’ or ‘We don’t have any green spaces.’”

It’s the first time Wallace has visited since surveyors thrust thin wooden stakes, some painted orange, others pink, into the earth along the levee road from east to west, marking where sections of 30-foot-tall steel bollards atop concrete wall will create a physical barrier miles from the Rio Grande, Texas’ border with Mexico. At some point in the future, Santa Ana’s visitors will see the wall before they get to the refuge’s trailheads, which will then only be accessible through a locked gate. Though the wall will not run through the heart of the refuge, it will trap much of it beyond steel. 

Mollie Wallace at Santa Ana on September 15 (Gaige Davila)

The construction—which started in June this year and paused in mid-July because of a lawsuit from the Hidalgo County Irrigation District—is nearly a decade in the making. President Donald Trump’s first administration quietly prepared to build a wall through Santa Ana in 2017, which was condemned by Valley’s congressional leadership, local residents, and beyond. The plan then was for an 18-foot-tall wall to go through the refuge, essentially destroying its function as a wildlife corridor. 

Saving the refuge from wall construction became a coalescing issue in the Rio Grande Valley and across the state. During one protest in August 2017, hundreds of people formed a human chain along the levee road. By the end of that year, CBP was intent on Santa Ana being the start of a 60-mile stretch of new barrier. 

Then, thanks to an effort led by U.S. House Representative Henry Cuellar, language was added to 2018 appropriations legislation shielding Santa Ana—called the “crown jewel” of a federal refuge system belonging to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that runs along the Rio Grande—from wall construction. The following year, additional Valley sites were added to this exemption list. Despite a brief scare when Trump declared a national emergency to shift Defense Department funds into wall building, Santa Ana survived that administration unscathed.

That state of affairs lasted until this past summer, when Congress passed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. As the nation’s attention fixated on the healthcare implications, the act pumped an unprecedented $46.6 billion into border barrier construction, drawing little outcry at the time. This bill—what’s called a reconciliation measure that doesn’t pass through the typical appropriations process—did not reiterate the protections for Santa Ana and other sites including the La Lomita chapel and National Butterfly Center, creating a green light for Trump to ignore the will of Congress as expressed in at least six prior funding measures. 

Contractors erected two short sections of wall in June and July on the western edge of Santa Ana, using what appear to be older bollards. Those bollards, weathered likely from years in storage, end a dozen or so yards from the black-painted bollards built during the first Trump administration. That section of older wall is the same that Trump spoke in front of, and signed, in 2021, in what was his first public appearance after the January 6 insurrection and former President Joe Biden’s election. CBP did not respond to the Observer’s emailed questions on when the bollards were made.

Steel bollards installed in July at Santa Ana (Gaige Davila)

Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, is now trying to get the Rio Grande Valley sites exempted again through the next bill outlining the Homeland Security budget, he told the Observer in a phone call. This time, he said, neither appropriations nor reconciliation money could be used for border fencing through Santa Ana, La Lomita, or the other sites. He’s hopeful that Congress can get the bill passed before the end of the year.

“They’re trying to beat the clock, in my opinion,” Cuellar said, referring to the GOP. “And the more time the local folks can give us through lawsuits or whatever way to delay it—so we can at least get into December and hopefully have a shot at trying to pass the appropriation bill with this appropriate language—that will pretty much stop them [in] their tracks.”

Santa Ana is not in Cuellar’s current district but rather in Republican Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz’s, which stretches north all the way to Seguin.

“The border construction pause is up to the courts,” her office told the Observer in a statement. “Congresswoman De La Cruz has supported exemptions specifically for the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, and she continues to consult closely with community leaders regarding ongoing construction plans.”

During the Biden administration, De La Cruz voted for the government funding bill for fiscal year 2024 that included the Rio Grande Valley site exemptions. She also voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill, which did not include these protections. (Her electoral opponent, Bobby Pulido, told the Observer in his first public comment on the Santa Ana wall in late July: “I haven’t said anything about it, but I obviously oppose it.”

The last protest over Santa Ana to get any news coverage was in February, as attention to wall building has instead concentrated at Big Bend, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is clearing portions of the West Texas national park for patrol roads and vehicle barriers.  Nearby residents sued the federal government last week to prevent further construction, following months of bipartisan befuddlement over the Trump administration’s border wall plans.

Wallace remembers the greater level of public resistance nearly a decade ago, when she was a student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

“It just kind of felt like what we did mattered,” Wallace said while reminiscing about those protests, which she attended. “I don’t speak for everyone, but I definitely feel like everything I do is like a drop in the bucket. I feel very powerless. But it’s not a good excuse to not show up.”

From atop the refuge’s observation tower, the new wall can be seen. Once the fence is finished, it will make an imposing scar through the north side of this 360-degree view that today shows what this region looked like long before it was called the Rio Grande Valley, filled with hardy, drought-tolerant trees, thorny plants, and tropical flowers.

“I think it represents us so well,” Wallace said of Santa Ana. “So to put a wall through it is just metaphorically and physically and literally such a stab to our entire home.”

Spencer Construction and Royal Concrete, the contractors building the wall through Santa Ana, stopped working in July after the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 filed a lawsuit against them, alleging that they were building on irrigation district property; had put debris in the irrigation district’s canal, which abuts the levee; and were trespassing. The canal supplies water from the Rio Grande to several thousand acres of farms and homes, including being the sole provider of water for Pharr, San Juan, and Alamo, according to the lawsuit. 

Two weeks later, in August, the Department of Justice (DOJ) moved the lawsuit into a federal court and requested the case be dismissed, arguing that state trespassing laws did not apply. Federal District Judge Arthur Jones, in McAllen, has yet to rule on the case but has ordered construction paused until October 15.

Scott Nicol, an art professor at South Texas College, has spent years advocating against the government building border wall anywhere in the Rio Grande Valley.

“The Trump administration goes on and on and on and on and on about how there were all these huge number of crossings during the Biden administration,” Nicol said while walking around the Santa Ana fence sections in early September. “That’s after Trump had already built hundreds and hundreds of miles of border walls. You had this huge spike in crossings, but the walls are there, so what the hell did those walls do?” 

Nicol was active in a coalition whose pressure helped push the site exemptions during the first Trump administration. About 12 miles west of Santa Ana, the historic La Lomita chapel will reportedly see the wall run south off of the levee—atop which almost all border fencing in Hidalgo County runs, part of a compromise approach stretching back to the W. Bush administration—and toward the river to accommodate the aged house of worship. Another few miles upriver, the National Butterfly Center, which the levee bisects, presently shows no signs of construction. However, there are placemarker buoys in the bend of the Rio Grande that creates the southern border of the center’s land, signaling that large, orange “waterborne barrier system”—sometimes known by critics as razor buoys—will soon arrive. Significant stretches of Hidalgo County already host finished wall.

“I think it was a lot easier to get people concerned when it was coming, and there was a chance of stopping it,” Nicol said. “I think it becomes difficult, very difficult now, because it’s like, ‘Well, shit, it’s already happened.’”

Birders along the trails of Santa Ana (Gaige Davila)

That’s the fight at hand in Big Bend: trying to stop the bulldozers before a sense of inevitability kicks in. In August, crews and heavy machinery arrived to start constructing what CBP now says are going to be patrol roads and vehicle barriers. But earlier this year, Big Bend was also set to get the same steel bollards making their way through Santa Ana. Bipartisan resistance from Texas congressional and legislative officials, and even Texas Governor Greg Abbott, made CBP change plans. Though CBP assured the public it was not yet constructing its planned vehicle barriers or patrol roads in the area, a New York Times investigation using satellite imagery found that it was.

CBP can legally tear through Big Bend and Santa Ana, protected public lands, in part thanks to the Trump administration’s waiving environmental laws to accelerate barrier construction along the southern border. That legal mechanism was created in 2005 by the Real ID Act, allowing the Department of Homeland Security secretary to waive dozens of environmental laws to “ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads” that make up the southern border.  

On September 14, the Hidalgo County drainage district named the United States as a defendant in its lawsuit against Spencer Construction and Royal Concrete, the wall builders. It’s seeking a permanent injunction, hoping to stop wall construction in the area completely. 

“The harm Plaintiff will suffer is irreparable because damage to irrigation infrastructure, interference with public water management operations, and unauthorized alteration of Plaintiff’s Property cannot be adequately compensated solely through monetary damages,” the filing reads. “Furthermore, the potential disruption or loss of water service to Plaintiff’s customers also cannot be fully compensated by damages. Plaintiff’s customers [sic] loss of water would be catastrophic and cannot be remedied.” 

During the early, muggy mornings of September, a month ahead of when wall construction might resume, birders, hikers, and bikers continued passing through this once-protected wildlife corridor. No one on the levee road paid much attention to the thin wooden stakes, some of which were already broken or taken out of the ground and thrown yards away from their points of origin. 

The levee road is supposedly closed, according to the refuge. Maps for visitors now highlight the road in red to signify this. But people, Border Patrol agents and Alamo Police officers included, quietly pedaled down the caliche and into the trails on their bikes as dawn faded, using the road as if it was not a construction site. Because, for now, it’s not. 

The post Santa Ana’s Last Stand appeared first on The Texas Observer.

It’s late June, more than two hours into the 2,518th episode of his mega-popular podcast, and Joe Rogan is critiquing part of James Talarico’s anatomy.

With his guest, the conservative-leaning comedian Tim Dillon, Rogan was riffing on possible 2028 presidential contenders. Dillon offered up Jon Ossoff, the well-known senior U.S. Senator from Georgia, prompting a “Who’s that guy?” from Rogan. The show’s producer having pulled up a photo of Ossoff, Rogan began to assess.

“That looks like a president. … His neck is medium. It’s not too thin; it’s not too thick,” he said. “Like Talarico’s neck is a little too small, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” replied Dillon.

This bit of neck-related commentary wasn’t turned into viral social media clips or fodder for quick-turn news writeups. But, frequently, Rogan’s off-handed political claims made deep in the woods of his meandering “longform” conversations are indeed treated as newsworthy—part of a long, hard turnaround over the last five years or so.

Gone are the days when presidential contender Bernie Sanders was ostracized for having appeared on the transphobic Rogan’s show and when liberals mounted a campaign for Spotify to deplatform the host over COVID-19 misinformation. Instead, presidential flameout Kamala Harris’ failure to appear on Rogan’s podcast was treated as a major hinge-point in her 2024 collapse. 

And, a little over a year ago, Talarico’s appearance on the show was among the biggest stepping stones in his rise from relatively obscure state rep to hot-shot U.S. Senate nominee. That July 2025 conversation began with Rogan not knowing which elected office Talarico held and ended, 133 minutes later, with the former telling the latter to run for president. “A Joe Rogan-Blessed Democrat? James Talarico Draws Eyes of a Party Desperate For New Leaders,” swiftly blared Time—and even this month GQ described Talarico as “a progressive, Christian state legislator who managed to hang with Joe Rogan.” The out-of-state money and support flowed like Black Rifle coffee during a Rogan podcast.

Joe Rogan laughs as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office on April 18. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

A month and a half after that episode, Talarico officially declared for Senate. But, over the following year, it’s been unclear whether Rogan supports this bid by the man he told to run for the White House—or even to what extent the Austin-based host is aware of the race that’s unfolding around him. 

Using three separate sites that compile transcripts of Rogan podcast episodes, the Texas Observer identified 20 episodes in which Talarico or his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, were mentioned. A few clear trends emerge. Rogan often brings up Talarico when discussing possible ’28 presidential candidates—and particularly after bashing California Governor Gavin Newsom—rather than anything having to do with the 2026 midterms, in which the Austin state legislator is actually running. And Rogan tends to talk exclusively about Talarico’s position on the Ten Commandments being posted in public schools. As for Paxton, the state’s current attorney general, Rogan largely mentions him as the man who foolishly sued Texas cities for decriminalizing marijuana. 

Despite the largely positive comments on one hand and primarily negative on the other, Rogan usually talks all the way around the fact that the two men are engaged in a high-profile race that one will win and the other lose. Whether through studious avoidance or simple ignorance, he leaves the question open: Does he care who wins the Texas Senate race?

In the episode released on July 18, 2025, Joe Rogan opened by explaining to James Talarico that he’d discovered Talarico when Austin comedian Brian Simpson showed him a video of “some lecture … not a lecture, a speech you were giving about the Ten Commandments in schools.” 

Indeed, Talarico had recently gone viral on social media with a clip from a House floor exchange about Senate Bill 10, which requires public schools to display those principles of Mosaic law.

A few minutes in, perhaps detecting a certain vagueness in Rogan’s introduction and questions, Talarico specified: “I serve here in Austin at the state Capitol,” prompting the question “What is your position?”—to which Talarico responded by explaining the bicameral nature of the state’s legislative branch. 

Talarico, also a Presbyterian seminarian, elaborated his position that forcing Christianity on public school students would turn kids away from religion, and he explained to Rogan the role of big-money Christian nationalists Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks in Texas politics. He also made a biblical case for abortion access, arguing that the Virgin Mary chose to receive Jesus in her womb.

It was then in the middle of a late-episode tangent on government secrecy around Jeffrey Epstein that Rogan somewhat suddenly said, “You need to run for president,” setting in motion the wheels of history. 

Since then, Talarico has come up in at least 10 of Rogan’s podcast shows. There was a September 2025 Matthew McConaughey episode, in which the Texas actor responded skeptically to Rogan’s summation of Talarico’s view on the Ten Commandments issue. “When you look at the commandments, is there anything that anyone out there is going like, ‘I disagree with that one,’” said McConaughey.

Replied Rogan to his producer: “Let’s pull up the Ten Commandments, Jamie”—words that listeners of the show will hear ring in their minds clearer than a bell.

A month later, there was another exchange with National Geographic correspondent Mariana van Zeller, who had heard the Talarico interview and was so enthused that she compared the lawmaker to Martin Luther King Jr., which Rogan seemed to think was a tad much. Then, an episode released that New Year’s Eve with Australian comedian James McCann, in which Rogan called Talarico’s abortion argument “bizarre” and said it “doesn’t jive with how most people view Christianity.” And a February conversation in which another comedian, Matt McCusker, informed Rogan of the then-recent primary spat involving Colin Allred, Talarico, and Jasmine Crockett—producing great confusion on Rogan’s part. 

In general, however, Rogan stuck across these episodes to his script of bringing up Talarico as a favorable contrast to Newsom or to recite the Ten Commandments issue. Among the second category, Rogan engaged Vice President JD Vance in a lengthy July back-and-forth that led to Vance tapping out with a “We can agree to disagree.” 

As for Paxton, the scandal-laden Texas attorney general who defeated incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn in a bruising May GOP runoff, the podcast trail extends back a bit further. 

In January 2022, about a year and a half after he moved to Austin from California, Rogan learned who Paxton was from James Lindsay, a Tennessee man who runs the right-wing Twitter account “@ConceptualJames.” (Dialogue: “Who’s that?” “Your attorney general.” “Texas attorney general?” “Yeah.”) Then, two years later, Rogan told comedian Jeff Dye the following about marijuana’s legal status in the Lone Star State: “Apparently it’s decriminalized here in Austin, praise Jesus, but then I heard that Ken Paxton is trying to sue the City of Austin—who I’ve met. He’s a very nice gentleman. Ken, how dare you? … This is stupid, Ken.” 

Across at least eight additional episodes, Rogan generally acknowledged the AG’s existence only to criticize the latter’s stance toward legal weed, other than a passing defense in August 2024 of Paxton’s efforts to root out supposed voter fraud.

Based on this evidentiary record as maintained by Spotify and YouTube, it is possible that Rogan’s political awareness simply begins and ends at the bounds of his own recorded conversations; thus, to him, Talarico and Paxton also start and finish at the edges of his niche interests. It is also possible that—while Rogan explicitly endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2024—he’s intentionally limiting his engagement with this race to avoid blowback from part of his audience. Some of his apparent ignorance, too, could be feigned—a means to stand in for a poorly informed listener. 

It’s hard to guess based on the publicly available material, and his stray comments about politics more generally do little to clarify.

In both late July and mid-August, Rogan made remarks to the effect that Democrats taking over Texas would be deleterious. “The liberals that want to turn Texas blue, like, don’t. You’re going to ruin it. You’re going to ruin it for you, too. … Balance is important,” he said in the earlier instance. “[Austin is] a liberal city surrounded by like hardcore Republicans with guns and tigers. And it works. … It makes for nice people.” (Talarico responded to this, saying he agreed with the idea and thinks “the best color for Texas is purple.”)

One thing that’s clear: Rogan is haunted by what he sees as the liberal excesses of his former West Coast home state. But what does “balance” look like in a particular race for U.S. Senate, in which the candidates are opposed on issues including, to name one, marijuana legalization? We don’t know, because he won’t let his conversations become specific enough to find out.

Requests for comment sent to an email address and multiple social media accounts associated with Rogan or the podcast went unacknowledged.

This ambiguity came to something of a head in mid-September, when Ron White, the stand-up comic who is sometimes known as Tater Salad and became famous in his days touring with Larry the Cable guy et al., put the question rather plainly: “So what we gonna do about the Texas Senate—you met Talarico, you liked the guy, right?” 

“I did like him. I liked his thoughts on the Ten Commandments in schools,” answered Rogan, launching into his well-worn spiel.

Then, like a thunderbolt of contextual knowledge, the surprisingly erudite Tater Salad, who hails from a small town in the Texas Panhandle, said that he’d first noticed Talarico when the rep was opposing school vouchers in the Legislature. Apparently unfamiliar, Rogan requested an explanation of the extremely high-profile school privatization scheme, which White provided before concluding: “You really can’t put Ken Paxton back in office in the state of Texas. That guy’s just too corrupt; he’s just a bad egg and we don’t need him around here.” 

Without missing a beat: “There’s a lot of shenanigans with weed in this state right now,” Rogan said, redirecting to his pet Paxton-related topic. 

An hour later, though, White managed to steer the ship back to Talarico, saying the Democrat could be an unusually ethical leader.

“I would hope so,” responded Rogan, before expressing a reservation: “He’s said some things that I think are questionable,” with the subsequent conversation roughly revealing that the “things” are trans participation in competitive sports and gender-affirming treatment for minors. 

White tried to put Rogan’s objection in relative context, summarizing the various scandals that have gotten Paxton sued and impeached over the years. “He’s a criminal, just a piece of shit.”

“I don’t know enough about him,” Rogan replied.

Well, at least there are still a few weeks left to brush up.

The post Does Joe Rogan Care Who Wins the Texas Senate Race? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On a sizzling Friday night in late May, Houstonians from all over the city flock to the Ensemble Theatre’s lobby. Under fluorescent lights, they greet one another before the show starts. The sound of various generations fills the lobby—a couple with season tickets, a group of millennials enjoying a girls’ night out, lovebirds on a date. 

Once the curtains rise at the city’s oldest Black theater, the noise from the audience quiets as the soulful “In a Sentimental Mood” by Duke Ellington swells. The two leads of Who All Over There?, a spin on the classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner that explores interracial relationships, saunter onstage inside the set of an art museum. 

For the past 50 years, the Ensemble Theatre has brought Houstonians together to laugh, cry, and talk back to plays representing all aspects of African-American life. Whether they’re watching August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson or the contemporary Akeelah and the Bee come to life onstage, the familial community, the crowd participation, the colorful sets, and the talented actors are what make up the theater’s rich legacy.

“People coming together and being on the same page for just a minute is so important,” said Rachel Hemphill Dickson, an actress with the Ensemble since the ’90s and the current associate artistic director. “There are fewer and fewer spaces where that happens. Art is important because it interrogates the questions that go undiscussed and elevates the challenges that deserve room.”

A performance of Detroit ’67 in 2016 (Courtesy/Ensemble Theatre)

Back in the mid-1970s, the late George Hawkins, founder of the Ensemble Theatre, imagined a place where Black actors could find work and perform plays that mattered. Even after he passed away, in 1990, his legacy and that dream continue to grow as the Ensemble prepares for its 50th-anniversary season starting this fall.

“George was a driving force that kept us encouraged, understanding that we were Black and we were doing Black plays,” said Eileen J. Morris, artistic director at the theater. “These plays were speaking to the experiences that we had … and yet it was a universal story that was being told. There were stories that dealt with families, communities, human beings, and all of the dynamics that are rolled into who we are.”

More than four decades later, Morris remembers the first time she met Hawkins. A Chicago native, she’d recently graduated with a theater degree and was looking for her big break. Her sister’s husband worked across the street from the Ensemble Theatre, and her sister watched as Hawkins worked to transform an old pet store into a theater for the community. Hawkins had a dream to showcase the diverse experiences of Black life. At other theaters, he noticed that Black artists were often relegated to playing maid and butler roles.

During one of her visits to Houston, Morris stopped in and met Hawkins.

“There’s a certain charm and spirituality that oozed from him,” Morris said. “I just loved watching him walk in the room. He had such an essence and a presence.”

About a year later, in 1982, she made her big move to the Bayou City and began working as a volunteer at the Ensemble. She volunteered as the house manager, helped out in the box office, swept the floors, and made phone calls. She and Hawkins quickly became an inseparable team. Within six months, Hawkins promoted her to managing director. 

The original Ensemble at 1010 Tuam was tiny. The less-than-1,000-square-foot space could seat only 60 to 75 people. The actors would do their makeup in the bathroom before going onstage. Despite the crowded space, Black Houstonians were vying to get a seat and see a show. The actors were performing plays hot off the press from New York City’s theater scene.

Inside the Ensemble, Houstonians watched plays that brought the African-American experience to life, like A Raisin in the Sun, a play originally inspired by Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” and No Place to Be Somebody, which explores racial tensions in the civil rights era. 

As Morris watched plays at the theater, she felt herself transforming too. 

“My heart was changed. It was like something washed over me,” she said. “I just became totally affected by what I was seeing onstage because it related to me. I felt like my voice was being heard. I was seeing my family up there.”

As more and more Houstonians gathered at the Ensemble, Hawkins realized they needed to find a bigger space to hold the growing audience. He began to drive around Midtown searching for a larger home for the theater. During one of his trips around the city, he spotted an old car dealership. He persuaded the landlord to let them take over the space. 

The one hiccup? The rent was $3,000. 

“We could not afford $3,000 a month,” Morris said. “I was like, Are you kidding me? How are we going to do this?”

At their previous space on Tuam, the rent was only $300 per month. However, Hawkins, a tried-and-true dreamer, believed they could come up with enough money to cover the tenfold increase. So they moved to the new space on Main Street in 1985. 

As the buzz around the Ensemble grew, the theater saw more support from the community. Pastor William A. Lawson and his wife, Audrey Lawson, founders of the historic Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston’s Third Ward, became huge advocates for the theater. Lawson and two other women became part of the Ensemble Theatre management team, where they worked to obtain grants, find board members, and help drum up financial support. At the larger space, they began performing in two different parts of the venue and hosting seven to eight shows per year. 

Paradise Blue in 2023 (Courtesy/Ensemble Theatre)

Five years later, in 1990, a monumental loss shook up the theater when Hawkins passed away at 43. The Lawsons were by his hospital bed. Later that evening, the theater planned to perform For Colored Girls to a sold-out audience. Before the show started, Morris returned to the theater to break the news to the cast. She brought along Pastor Lawson for ministerial support. 

“When I told the actors, they were just hollering and screaming and crying,” Morris recalled. “They said, ‘Well we’re not going on.’”

But when Pastor Lawson walked in, a hush fell over the room. He began to speak about Martin Luther King Jr. and related his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. He shared how Hawkins also had a dream, which led to the creation of the Ensemble Theatre. By the time Lawson finished his speech, the actors were eager to get onstage. 

“It was one of the most memorable performances that I remember. It came out of pain, fear, love, passion, hope, faith, and joy,” Morris said. 

Visiting Houston in the 1990s was the cool thing for Steven J. Scott, a student at Prairie View A&M University, to do on the weekends. When he made a pit stop at the Ensemble Theatre for the first time, he was captivated by the play The River Niger, which follows a son returning home from the Air Force to his family in Harlem. Back in high school, Scott had performed a poem from the show. 

“To see Black men in charge of producing and directing and being stars of a show, it was really cool to see that,” Scott said. “It made me want to go back to school and work harder.”

After graduating from college and doing theater elsewhere, he returned to audition for the Ensemble in 2002. He recalls taking a risk and singing a song from a Greek classic in his audition because he wanted directors to recognize him as a singer too. His bold decision paid off and he was cast in the Christmas production of They Sing Christmas Up in Harlem.

Two decades later, the Ensemble has remained home for Scott. Over the years, he’s performed plays that have transformed him as an actor and a person. He remembers auditioning in the back parking lot of the Ensemble for a play called He Man Ball, which follows three friends airing out their personal issues as they play basketball. Then, in 2014, he cut his beloved locks of 17 years to perform in a two-person show, Plenty of Time, alongside Dickson. 

“My goal was to always make the Ensemble my home because the Ensemble raised me as an artist,” Scott said. “As they grew, I grew. That’s a really beautiful thing in my story.”

Dickson’s character in Plenty of Time also stays etched in her memory, as the role required acting out the same woman’s life onstage from age 18 to 68. Dickson remembers weeping every time she got offstage from a performance of The Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae, in which a woman files a lawsuit about stereotypical images depicting Black women. 

“I believe every time, being onstage, it’s such a responsibility,” Dickson said. “It’s not a job. It’s a calling. It’s my responsibility to invest every time I get to engage.”

Besides acting, both Scott and Dickson have moved into other roles at the Ensemble. As the youth education and community outreach coordinator, Scott oversees the Young Performers Program that trains up the next generation. Earlier this year, he directed Who All Over There?

During the closing weekend, Scott milled around the Ensemble lobby. Still lock-free after all these years, he shook hands and smiled with those coming to see the show. 

“My hope is that this institution continues to live on for another 100 years,” Scott said. “If it’s not here, then you don’t have that special place in Texas, right here in Houston, that really strives to speak to America about who Black people are, how complex we are, how diverse we are, and how a part of American culture we are.”

Morris also wants the Ensemble’s legacy to stretch for decades more in Houston. Since the pandemic, however, some Black-owned theaters in Texas have struggled to maintain consistent programming or keep a permanent performance space. For example, San Antonio’s Renaissance Guild and Dallas’ African American Repertory have not had active programming since COVID. 

Still, other Black-owned theaters are continuing to persevere. Jubilee Theater in Fort Worth has remained in the same location in Sundance Square since 1993 and is now in its 45th season. Dallas’ Soul Rep Theater Company has put on productions for 30 years that celebrate African-American culture. 

Morris is hopeful for the Ensemble’s future, but the theater has also endured challenges since 2020. In the pandemic’s wake, the number of Ensemble subscribers dropped from 2,500 to a little less than 1,000. Subscriber packages range in price. For example, someone interested can get four tickets to any of the season’s main-stage shows for $200. Morris hopes that the theater can reach 3,000 subscribers during its 50th season. 

The Tap Dance Kid in 2025 (Courtesy/Ensemble Theatre)

Houston’s theater scene also continues to expand rapidly, and some of these theaters have begun to embrace works popular with African-American audiences. This can be a challenge for the Ensemble because it has to compete with institutions that have larger budgets. 

The theater also relies heavily on funding from donors. Morris said the Ensemble has a reliable pool of individual donors, but it’s looking for new ways for the community to invest, whether that’s through buying group tickets, becoming a subscriber, volunteering, or donating. 

For the 50th season, the Ensemble plans to debut new performances and revive popular productions. Audiences can expect to see a revival of A Motown Christmas and the classic A Raisin in the Sun. At the start of 2027, the Ensemble will premiere The Wash, inspired by the historic Atlanta washerwomen strike of 1881. Meanwhile, Dickson will direct The Colored Museum, a play that explores stereotypes of Black life in America. 

“I am ready for love.” 

India Arie’s voice croons over the speakers in the back room of the Ensemble’s building. On a Thursday night in June, a group of actors stretch their bodies and groove to the soulful singer. The cast is preparing for an upcoming performance of Get Ready, a musical following a fictional group of African-American musicians preparing to make a comeback. 

After they finish stretching, they line up on the opposite side of the room. Director Patdro Harris instructs them to evoke different emotions as they cross the floor. What makes them feel strong? What makes them feel small? What makes them feel classy? A man struts across the room and shows off his muscles in the mirror to display strength. Shortly after, a woman displays all the different emotions as she crosses the floor and dances to finish off the exercise. She wiggles her body, and the rest of the cast hypes her up from the corner, shouting and raising their arms as the music swells. Harris tells the cast that he wants the same community spirit to come across onstage during their performances.

After all these years being a part of the Ensemble, it’s the same feeling Morris also wants to stay with audiences. It’s based around a quote—“Art does not change the world; art changes people, and people change the world”—from Wilson, one of her favorite playwrights.

“I want people to have an experience like none other,” Morris said. “I want them to know that when they have that experience, it’s going to be one that they’re going to want to share with someone else. You yourself go out and do something to make the world a better place. That’s why we are here.” 

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