Matt Lyle

A young man dances a dance of joy. Then his family comes in and is flat out disgusted.

A statue of Robert E. Lee. A small-town lawyer doing the right thing. A fumbled football. A Daughter of the Confederacy and her idiot husband, the Mayor. Some Oxycontin. A fair and balanced television news personality. A crippling existential crisis. Two Satanists. And one Texas Devil.

An older white couple from the country unknowingly move to the gayborhood to be closer to their granddaughter. What begins as polite dinner conversation with their gay, multi-ethnic neighbors careens out of control. A hilarious collision of race, sex, guns and sports, BIG, SCARY ANIMALS examines shifting generational beliefs and just how hard it is to raise a child regardless of who you are and where you live. (Formerly titled CEDAR SPRINGS OR BIG, SCARY ANIMALS)

Three couples gather on the back deck of a very modest suburban home for a mid-summer barbecue where, the hosts, Mike and Deb, struggle with feelings of inadequacy about their home decor, their clothes, their careers, their culinary skills, and pretty much everything else. Ash is a successful yuppy with impeccable taste but annoys the hell out of his wife, Lulu, who likes to get very drunk, very quickly. Win mistakes his obnoxious confidence for charm and his new girlfriend, Glory, is just too young and beautiful to be tolerated by other women.
Throughout the first act feelings are hurt over the difference between "Organic" and "All Natural" beef, who’s pregnant and who’s just put on a little weight, and a nearly crippling I-Phone addiction. The superficial, neuroses laden interpersonal squabbles bubble over to a flash of inept violence when Win makes what we learn is just one in a series of passes at Deb. As the act closes, the group discovers that the rest of the world has been literally falling apart during their little, terrible barbecue.
Act Two takes place on the same deck for another barbecue to celebrate their one year post-apocalypsiversary. In a year where the only way to measure success is survival, roles have reversed and we explore how each characters' basic nature has allowed them to adapt and thrive or has pushed them to the brink of extinction. Though the drawing-room comedy style persists, their troubles are now very real and a mysterious visitor incites another flash of violence.

In 1692, as the Salem Witch Trials rage in nearby Salem, the residents of Peabody, Massachusetts are going through their own crucible and they are just, like, really sick of crucibles. The surprising election of the boorish lout, Dunning Kruger, to be the local reverend has thrown the town into turmoil and pitted the townsfolk against each other like never before in the history of the New World and that's saying something because the history of the New World is REALLY messed up. Ezekiel Farmer and his wife Verity must reconcile their differences (she voted for Kruger, he for the more experienced female challenger, Goody Constant Bending) and somehow find a way to resist the ugly tide that threatens them all. TOO MANY CRUCIBLES is an extremely unsanctioned companion piece to Miller's classic THE CRUCIBLE that proves some witch hunts turn up witches.

The End Times are upon us! It's about time. The congregants of the Third Baptist Church of Uncertain, Texas are only certain about two things; the rapture is DEFINITELY happening sometime in the next two hours (the Bible Math checks out), and two hours is not enough time to squeeze every single drop of life from this wicked, wonderful world. But some of them will try. RAPTURED is a fresh farce—part Boeing, Boeing, and oddly enough, part The Last Picture Show—full of love triangles, mistaken identities, a puckish youth pastor, a Preacher on a dubious mission, lots of doors, and, of course, deeply irrevocable existential longing. When the clock is ticking, sometimes who you are and what you really want is the greatest revelation of all. -- A New Play Commissioned by Theatre Three and Co-Written by Matt Coleman (World Premiere, April 2019 - Dallas, TX)

A small theater company's next ill advised production, a modern vaudeville, goes off the rails the night before opening. The cast rebels against Doc, the writer/director/star/producer, and chooses a midnight showing of the newest Star Wars movie over ironing out the show's kinks. Then, of course, they're sucked into a vortex and spit out into a world that resembles some of our most beloved films. It's up to Doc and his trusty sidekick, Boof, to go on a 3D Adventure to rescue the cast and the show AND the entire theatrical art form. Part vaudeville, part Hope/Crosby Road Show, A 3D Adventure... is an inventive love letter to both the theater and the movies.

An odd and whimsical tale about a 37 year old virgin, an evil scientist, his patchwork henchman, and the message that being full of love, kindness and understanding can make up for literally not having a brain.

The mean streets. Turn of the Century. It's nearly impossible for a body to feed himself and if you are a herself, forget it. A woman can't make a living and keep her virtue (if you know what we mean). So the heroine becomes a hero (dresses like a man) to put bread in her belly. As chance would have it, she happens upon a big man beating a little man senseless. She intervenes and knocks the big man loopy. Big mistake! The little man is the titular Boxer and the big man was his trainer. Who will train The Boxer and his glass jaw for the "Big Fight" against the Bavarian Beast now that the big man has the brain damage? Hm? Smitten, Velma insists that she's just the wom-er-man for the job. Will The Boxer win the "Big Fight"? Will love bloom in the ring?