Cast members of the Dallas Theater Center’s annual staging of an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic tale “A Christmas Carol” during a preview performance at the Kalita Humphreys Theater in 2011. Performing arts leaders Kevin Moriarty and Warren Tranquada explain why an Arts District merger is good for Dallas theater.
Staff Photographer
Anyone who has ever worked in the theater knows the moment. The house lights dim, the audience settles into a hush and somewhere backstage a stage manager leans into a headset and speaks two quiet words: “Places, please.” It is the signal that months of work by hundreds of people — actors and directors, designers and technicians, teachers and ushers — are about to converge into a single shared experience. Nothing about that moment belongs to any one person. Theater is, and always has been, an ensemble art. The finest work happens when talented people stop performing side by side and start performing together.
That is exactly what our two organizations are doing. Dallas Theater Center and the AT&T Performing Arts Center — two of this city’s most beloved cultural institutions — have chosen to merge to build a stronger, more sustainable future for the performing arts in Dallas. This is a proactive, forward-looking decision: two strong organizations choosing each other to create something better than either could achieve alone.
The strengths we bring to this partnership are genuinely complementary. Dallas Theater Center is one of the nation’s leading regional theaters, with a Tony Award-winning legacy of artistic excellence built over more than six decades. The AT&T Performing Arts Center is a premier presenter of artists and concerts and the operator of some of the most iconic cultural venues in North Texas. One produces world-class theater, the other presents world-class performances and provides the stages, services and operational expertise that allow great art to reach great audiences. Together, we can do more of what each of us does best.
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What does that mean for our audiences? First, a better experience. Combining our programming gives Dallas audiences a richer, more cohesive and more ambitious season across our venues — a shared artistic vision and the ability to mount work neither organization could attempt on its own.
Second, more of your support goes where you can see it. Today our two organizations maintain a number of duplicate departments and functions. By bringing those functions together, we can direct more resources to audience impact: productions, artists, education and community programs. A more efficient operating model also makes the combined institution more sustainable for generations to come.
Third — and closest to both of our hearts — expanded arts education. Education is a defining strength of both organizations, and together we can serve more students, schools, families and learners of every age, in every corner of Dallas and every district in the city. We can offer something rare in American arts education: a complete pathway from the classroom and community programs all the way to the professional stage.
We are also candid about the moment our field is in. Performing arts organizations across the country face headwinds: shifting audience habits, rising costs, increased competition for philanthropic support and shrinking government funding. Cities everywhere are rethinking how their cultural institutions operate. Dallas is choosing to get ahead of that shift and lead the conversation rather than wait. We believe this partnership can become a national model for how great institutions accomplish more by working together.
Let us also be clear about what is not changing. Dallas Theater Center will continue producing exceptional theater under the artistic leadership of Jaime Castañeda. It will continue creating work at both the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre and the Kalita Humphreys Theater. Its artistic identity, resident artists and creative ambition remain central to everything we do.
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The AT&T Performing Arts Center will continue bringing some of the best performing artists from around the world to perform in Dallas and will continue supporting local artists and cultural organizations across our community.
For our patrons: Your tickets, subscriptions and memberships remain fully valid. And artists remain at the heart of it all: the actors, directors, designers, technicians and stage managers whose work is the reason any of this matters.
In the theater, “places, please” is not an ending. It is the most hopeful phrase in the building and a promise that something wonderful is about to begin. Our two organizations have taken our places, together. The house lights are dimming, the overture is starting, and Dallas, our next act is about to begin. The best seats in the house are yours.
Kevin Moriarty is executive director of Dallas Theater Center. Warren Tranquada is president and CEO of the AT&T Performing Arts Center.
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