‘Incarnate’ @ Second Thought Theatre

Photography by Evan Michael Woods

—Rickey Wax

Second Thought Theatre closes its season with Incarnate, a chilling and thought-provoking new play from Dallas playwright Parker Davis Gray. It’s a world premiere that feels both intimate and unnerving, a story about grief, control, and what happens when belief pushes too far. Gray, whose previous short works have appeared in local new play festivals, reportedly began Incarnate during the early pandemic, when isolation and mortality were part of everyone’s daily vocabulary. (You can feel that in the script’s marrow—this is horror born from being trapped with your own thoughts.)

Director Jenna Burnett, joined by assistant director Rodrigo Caraveo, shapes the piece with quiet dread. Together they turn Gray’s script into a slow-building psychological horror that feels at home in the fall season—dark corners, flickering light, and the quiet question of who’s really haunting whom.

The play opens in total darkness. We hear waves, laughter, and then chaos. When the lights finally rise, Rosamund (Kristen Lazarchick) is locked in a basement cell. Her opening monologue is funny, sharp, and a little unsettling—she’s recalling childhood car rides and the invisible people she imagined passing by. The thoughts get darker until the door slams, and we realize this isn’t a memory but a beginning.

From there, she’s greeted by a voice in the shadows. It belongs to Peter (Jeffrey Schmidt), who brings her food, books, and maddeningly vague explanations. At first, it seems like your standard abduction story, but Incarnate keeps twisting. Peter isn’t the sadistic villain we expect. He’s polite, almost tender, which somehow makes things worse. Through the bars, their dialogue crackles with dark humor. (“The chicken is spicy,” he says, like this is Saturday brunch with the girls.) The tension builds through a series of ritualistic visits. As the days pile up (numbers projected on the floor, a brilliant touch by lighting designer Aaron Johansen), the play’s pace mirrors captivity itself—slow, repetitive, suffocating.

Each scene shifts slightly in tone. A catalog appears so Rosamund can “pick out furniture.” Then art supplies. Then books about reincarnation and Celtic rituals . (Not creepy at all.) By the midpoint, Incarnate shifts from psychological thriller to something closer to spiritual horror, as Peter becomes convinced that Rosamund carries the reincarnated soul of his dead father. (Yes, you read that right.). What follows is a battle between belief and sanity. Their exchanges are tense, strange, sometimes darkly funny: “Do you prefer ‘Pal’?” (Rosamund snaps after calling him “Champ.”)

By the final act, the terror turns inward: Rosamund begins to sleepwalk, hears waves that aren’t there, and paints images she can’t explain. The question stops being whether Peter has lost his mind and becomes whether something unseen has started to believe him.

Kristen Lazarchick gives a powerful, grounded performance. She’s witty and defiant but lets moments of fear slip out, in the quietest ways, through her voice. You can see her sanity wearing thin. Jeffrey Schmidt plays Peter with unnerving calm. His grief feels real enough to almost make you pity him—almost. Their chemistry makes the play work.

Leah Mazur’s set turns the intimate Second Thought space into a damp purgatory. The walls feel as if they’re closing in with each scene. Both Aaron Johansen’s lighting and Claudia Jenkins Martinez’s sound design are key here. The steady sound of ocean waves becomes its own form of torture. Each flicker of light tells us time is passing, even if the characters no longer believe it.

Burnett’s direction avoids cheap scares. She builds atmosphere through pacing and silence. Even the smallest gesture—a door unlocking, the jukebox skipping—adds just the perfect amount of tension.

Incarnate explores how far grief will stretch to make sense of loss. Peter’s obsession with bringing his father back mirrors a very human desire: to make meaning from pain. Rosamund, meanwhile, fights for her right to exist beyond someone else’s story. Creation becomes her rebellion. She paints to reclaim her body, her identity, her soul. Both characters, in their own way, are trapped—Peter by his faith in the impossible, Rosamund by the nightmare of being its vessel.

Incarnate is a smart, unsettling way to end “Play Local,” the company’s season of new plays written by Dallas-based playwrights. Its horror lands because it’s rooted in emotion; its story asks what grief can make of us—and what we’ll do to escape it.

WHEN: October 17-November 1, 2025
WHERE: 3400 Blackburn St., Dallas (beside Kalita Humphreys)
WEB: secondthoughttheatre.com