Matthew Posey

Matthew Devon Posey was born on July 31, 1958, in Houston, Texas, the youngest of five children of Marvin R. Posey and Mary Louise Wrba Posey. In a 2017 interview he said his play Dr. Bobaganush drew on stories he had heard about his Romani relatives in his great-grandparents' native Czechoslovakia.

According to his family, the first sign of his talent came at the age of four with his "vegetable interviews," most notably the "Carrot" series. As a teenager he attended Coronado High School in Lubbock, where as a sophomore he played Click Dark, the emcee of a class play based on American Graffiti.

Posey earned a bachelor's degree in theater at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he studied under George Sorenson. After graduating he interned at the Alley Theatre in Houston. During roughly 12 years in Los Angeles he also earned a master's degree in film from the American Film Institute.

Deep Ellum Theatre Garage. In the 1980s Posey built and founded the Deep Ellum Theatre Garage in Dallas, part of a small group of experimental venues that helped define the Deep Ellum arts scene. It hosted boundary-pushing work such as Sexual Mythology Part 1: The Underworld, made with Fred Curchack. He also worked in the experimental group On the Edge.

Film and television. Posey spent about 12 years in Los Angeles working in film, ghostwriting and studying at the American Film Institute. Over more than 35 years he appeared in more than 60 film and television productions, including Places in the Heart, Lonesome Dove, JFK, No Country for Old Men, The Final, The Magnificent Seven (2016), Rectify, AMC's The Son, HBO's Love and Death and the series Brothers. Late in his career he appeared in the independent film El Tonto Por Cristo.

Ochre House Theater. After returning to Dallas as a company member at Undermain Theatre, he founded Ochre House Theater in 2008 in a 45-seat storefront at 825 Exposition Avenue in Exposition Park, near Fair Park. The company, which billed itself as the "Pioneers of the Suavant-Garde," produced only original work, combining live music, magic-realist design and Bunraku-inspired puppetry. Posey wrote, directed and produced more than 40 plays there, among them Mrs. Haggardly, Bill, Original Man, Soft Noodle Map, Moving Creatures, Opera Box, Kaput: The Show and Dr. Bobaganush, as well as works about real figures such as Picasso and Charles Manson. Ochre House also gave its ensemble of actors, designers and musicians the chance to write and direct their own shows; longtime collaborators included managing director Carla Parker, operations director Kevin Grammer and artist in residence Justin Locklear.

Flamenco collaborations. For 15 years Posey partnered with the Dallas-based Flame Foundation on original full-length plays incorporating authentic flamenco, bringing international and local artists to stages in Dallas and New York.

Dr. Bobaganush, a Holocaust-era play Posey wrote, directed and starred in, opened at Ochre House on January 28, 2017. Two days later he was leaving Cold Beer Company at 3600 Main Street in Deep Ellum with a friend when a young man with a gun opened fire, hitting him in the face and leg. The bullets nearly severed his tongue, which an oral surgeon on duty reattached, and knocked out all but six of his teeth. No arrest had been made by March 2017, and Posey said he did not know what motivated the attack.

His theater family started a GoFundMe page and held a benefit at Club Dada that raised about $40,000 toward the dental work his insurance would not cover. Pierce Brosnan, his co-star in The Son, sent him a bottle of whiskey. Five weeks after the shooting, wearing platform boots that lifted his 6-foot-4 frame to 7 feet, he returned to the stage as Dr. Bobaganush for a run from March 8 to 25, 2017.

The critic Jerome Weeks later recalled that he had sent flowers to the hospital with an unsigned note reading "This is what you get for introducing me to my wife," and briefly became a police suspect as a result. Posey, he said, told him years later that it was "absolutely the only laugh I had that day."

Posey was divorced, and in 2017 he said he had lived in the theater before moving into a house with his dog, Walter, his companion of 14 years. The Dallas Morning News remembered him as a gentle giant of a man and an imposing figure on stage. His life partner in later years was Suzanne Thomas. He also shared his home with his cats, Chet and Etta. Colleagues remembered him as generous to the artists around him, paying them well, buying lunch and giving roles and jobs to people starting or restarting their careers.

Posey believed in raw, original, grassroots theater made quickly and in direct conversation with its moment. Ochre House never produced a play it had not written itself, and under his direction it often staged work that reflected political and social events almost as they unfolded, such as Moving Creatures, a satire about an oligarch's tyrannical rise to power. After he was shot in 2017 he refused to see himself as a victim, saying the attacker "was not going to rob me of my life," and quoted Anne Frank: "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Posey was described as a founding father of Dallas experimental theater. Through the Deep Ellum Theatre Garage in the 1980s and Ochre House from 2008, he created spaces where unconventional work and unconventional performers could find an audience. Tributes after his death credited him as both inspiration and benefactor. Actor Drew Wall called him "one of the most insane, unshakeable, inspiring, combative and wild-ass theater makers in this town," and costume designer Ryan Matthieu Smith wrote a poem about the unfinished costume Posey had been making for a future show. Ochre House managing director Carla Parker said the remaining leaders hoped to keep the theater going.

Selected plays at Ochre House: Dr. Bobaganush (2017), Mrs. Haggardly, Bill, Original Man, Soft Noodle Map, Moving Creatures, Opera Box, Kaput: The Show, Ghost in the Kitchen, the flamenco-inspired Picasso: Matador de Malaga (2018) and the unstaged Bathtub Full of Milk (planned for November 2026).

Selected screen credits: Places in the Heart (1984), Lonesome Dove (1989), JFK (1991), No Country for Old Men (2007), The Final (2010), The Magnificent Seven (2016), The Son (AMC, 2017), Rectify, Love and Death (HBO), Brothers and El Tonto Por Cristo (2025).

Matthew Posey died at his home on October 2, 2026, at the age of 68. Ochre House Theater announced his death in an obituary posted online and on social media. No official cause was released; Carla Parker told The Dallas Morning News the family believes he had a heart attack. He had been preparing to stage Bathtub Full of Milk, which was due to open on November 4, 2026, and was canceled. A celebration of life is being planned, and his family asked that donations be made to Ochre House Theater instead of flowers.