It’s always encouraging to see a memorial fund do what it promises: seed art that might not otherwise bloom. The Donald Fowler Theater Arts Memorial Fund, now in its fifth year, has named writer Lauren LeBlanc and composer Ian Ferguson as the 2025 grant recipients for their original musical The Penumbra: a moody, supernatural thriller based on LeBlanc’s young adult novel. This $5,000 grant, modest by institutional standards, carries with it a kind of weight money alone can’t quantify: a legacy of local theater made personal.
Fowler, a beloved figure in Dallas’ theater community, was known for his generosity, intelligence, and the singularity of his creative vision. The fund in his name reflects that ethos, favoring early-stage works that might otherwise get stuck in the liminal zone between idea and execution. In this year’s case, The Penumbra is already pulling on threads both emotional and archetypal.
Structured as a triptych, the musical navigates the overlapping lives of a teenage girl, a town plagued by disappearances, and an ancient myth unraveling in tandem. It’s hard not to think of The Penumbra as an heir to other interwoven narrative works—think Next to Normal with a gothic twist or The Secret Garden gone feral. But what distinguishes this project is its unambiguous emotional center: connection. LeBlanc and Ferguson, longtime friends and collaborators, are working from a place of shared trust and instinct, and it shows in the way they describe the work.
LeBlanc calls the Dallas arts scene “a city that was saving me a seat,” and Ferguson speaks of the piece as a tribute to family, both the ones we’re born into and the ones we find. These are familiar themes, yes, but The Penumbra appears to approach them with specificity and sharpness, grounded in lived experience rather than abstraction. The musical grapples with grief and identity without the gauze of metaphor: this is trauma before adolescence fully forms, where monsters might be real and even the grownups are afraid.
There’s a certain poetic justice in this particular project being funded in Fowler’s name. Much like The Penumbra, Fowler’s own creative legacy blended the elegant and the eerie. Past recipients of the fund—Holly Doubet (38 Minutes), Adam Wright (A Night at the Crescent), Catherine D. DuBord (The Last Flapper), and Janelle Gray (Under the Bridge)—have each brought forward works that feel timely without pandering, imaginative without losing their grip on emotional stakes.
As new musicals continue to battle uphill for production support, grants like this one remain crucial. They are less about polishing finished things than about betting on instinct, atmosphere, and voice. And if The Penumbra lives up to the resonance of its premise; or the sincerity of its creators’ statements, then this isn’t just a worthy addition to the fund’s history. It’s a necessary one.
More information about The Penumbra can be found at whatisthepenumbra.com or on Instagram at @penumbramusical. And for those inclined to support what might be the next great homegrown musical, contributions to the Donald Fowler Theater Arts Memorial Fund can be made at www.donaldfowlerartsfund.com.