The Deep Dish Theater Company is committed to the presentation of compelling, provocative, human-centered dramatic work in an intimate setting. We develop that work through the collaboration of artists, striving always to create productions that cannot be contained within a single imagination. We celebrate the communal nature of creating and experiencing a theatrical work, and we are determined to include and reach out to the surrounding community in all its diversity.

Since its inception, the Deep Dish Theater Company has produced in Chapel Hill’s University Mall. Our presentations aim to challenge theatergoers, to explore issues and concerns of our community and the world-at-large, and to introduce new and rarely seen plays to our audience. Our current location in University Mall is evidence of our intention to reach across demographic borders to impact and educate the community as a whole; it does not indicate that our productions will be of a solely commercial nature, as our choices so far amply prove.

We currently produce four shows a year in our space at the University Mall, supplemented by "Side Dish" events like our Short Story evenings and our Singer/Songwriter series. In our second season we inaugurated the Deep Dish Book Club, in which we read and discuss a book related thematically to the production at hand. We also follow two performances per production with discussions featuring actors, production personnel, and a scholar or expert in a field related to the play’s subject matter. We regularly offer acting and playwriting classes for those anxious to further explore the theatrical experience.

We are very proud of the accomplishments to date of the Deep Dish Theater Company, and look forward to contributing to the cultural richness of the Triangle for many years to come.

See what's cooking at Deep Dish Theater Company now!

About the Artistic Director
Paul Frellick is the founding Artistic Director of the Deep Dish Theater Company, where he has staged Endgame, Cat's-Paw, Ancestral Voices, Arms and the Man, A Lesson Before Dying, The Price, Lobby Hero, Hedda Gabler, The Misanthrope, Quilters, The Good Person of Setzuan, and the southeast premieres of Polish Joke, Via Dolorosa, and Permanent Collection. He also conceived and directed the company's Cancer Chronicles presentations, and staged Adam Sobsey’s Hang Town Fry in a co-production with A Southern Season.

Paul grew up in Evansville, Indiana, where his first experience in the theater was playing the title character in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. He graduated cum laude from Yale University and subsequently free-lanced for several years as an actor/director, working for such theaters as the Denver Center Theatre Company; the Indiana Repertory Theater; the Idaho Shakespeare Festival; the Seacoast Repertory Theatre in New Hampshire; the American Stage Company in St. Petersburg, Florida; and San Diego's Old Globe Theatre. Among his favorite projects were productions of All's Well That Ends Well, Loot, Too Marvelous for Words, Macbeth, Quilters, Biloxi Blues, and Billy Bishop Goes to War.

He lived for eight years in Chicago, where he served as Artistic Director of the Organic Theater and directed at several of the city's other Off-Loop stages. Among his projects were the world premieres of Of Grapes and Nuts, Role Play, and I Was Really Very Hungry (both on stage and, with Anne Archer, for a Chicago Theater on the Air radio broadcast), as well as work developing new scripts with Chicago Dramatists Theater. He remains a die-hard Cubs fan.

Since coming to Chapel Hill with his wife, Dr. Grace Baranek, in 1996, he has directed for many of the Triangle's theater companies. His credits include The Monogamist for Manbites Dog Theater; A Walk in the Woods and the American premiere of Rainshark for the GlobalArts Initiative; A Question of Mercy for the Burning Coal Theatre Company; Private Eyes for the Flying Machine Theatre Company; and Dark Rapture for the UNC-CH Professional Actors Training Program. He conceived and directed the revue, Politically Bent, for the ArtsCenter of Carrboro, and his writing projects include adapting Tim O'Brien's novel, In the Lake of the Woods, for the stage and co-authoring the play, Of Trailers and Trenches, about the plight of first-year teachers.