DALLAS (April 15, 2009) – The Dallas Theater Center, one of the resident companies of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, announced its 2009-2010 season to be presented in the innovative new Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre at the Center. The Dallas Theater Center season will include two musicals, three comedies, two classics, two world premieres and three contemporary plays, adding to the diverse theatrical programming at the Center, which also include the recently announced Lexus Broadway Series.
“The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is going to become the home for great theatre in our community,” said Mark Nerenhausen, president/CEO of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. “The Dallas Theater Center season, together with our Lexus Broadway Season, will create a full theatrical season in the heart of downtown Dallas, making the Arts District a vibrant neighborhood for people from across the city and for the thousands of residents who live downtown.”
The 2009-10 season lineup is as follows: In the Potter Rose Performance Hall: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oct. 24 – Nov. 22); Give It Up! (Jan. 15 – Feb. 14); Death of a Salesman (April 16 – May 16); It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman (June 18 – July 25). In the Studio Theatre: The Beauty Plays (Feb. 23 – May 23). In the Kalita Humphreys Theater: A Christmas Carol (Dec. 1 – 27).
“DTC and the city of Dallas have so much to celebrate with the monumental opening of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts in October,” said Kevin Moriarty, artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center. “Continuing our commitment to fresh and entertaining theater that engages and reflects our diverse community, DTC will deliver a season nothing short of spectacular.”
Presented in the intimate Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, the Dallas Theater Center productions will take full advantage of the revolutionary multi-form design by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus and Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas. Five of the productions will be produced in the Wyly Theatre’s Potter Rose Performance Hall, a flexible space with a variety of configurations. The Beauty Plays will be staged in the Wyly’s intimate Studio Theatre, and the 31st production of the perennial holiday classic A Christmas Carol will return to the Kalita Humphreys stage for the last time before it is re-imagined in the Wyly Theatre in December 2010.
Traditionally opening on Tuesday nights in the past, DTC’s productions in the Wyly Theatre will now open on Friday evenings, with patrons kicking off the weekend in style by celebrating with the cast in the enlivened Dallas Arts District.
In the 2009-10 season, DTC will expand its popular Pay What You Can program to include a dedicated preview performance for each production allowing patrons to purchase tickets for the amount of a donation they choose.
“Theater is one of the most accessible and relatable art forms,” says DTC Managing Director Mark Hadley. “We want to give every person who wants to come to the theater the opportunity to do so without price being a barrier.”
2009-2010 Season Lineup
A Midsummer Night's Dream Oct. 24 – Nov. 22
By William Shakespeare
directed by Kevin Moriarty
Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre
Featuring Company Members*: Hassan El-Amin, Chamblee Ferguson, Liz Mikel, Cedric Neal, Lee Trull and Sally Nystuen Vahle
This fresh, fun-filled new staging of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedy will provide enough high-energy to open both Dallas Theater Center’s new season and its new building. Follow Shakespeare’s lovers headlong into a mysterious forest where they fall under the spell of passions and potions and meet the playful Puck, seductive Titania, and the asinine Bottom. A celebration of love, community and the power of theater, A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be an unforgettable event in Dallas theater history.
A Christmas Carol Dec. 1 – 27
by Charles Dickens, adapted by Richard Hellesen, music by David de Berry
Directed by Joel Ferrell
Kalita Humphreys Theater
Featuring Company Members*: Chamblee Ferguson, Matthew Gray, Sean Hennigan and Christina Vela
No holiday story compares with A Christmas Carol, and no production has more humor and humanity than our staging of Richard Hellesen’s heart-warming adaptation. Filled with traditional and original songs of the season, A Christmas Carol has become a wonderful addition to the Dallas holiday calendar.
Give It Up! Jan. 15 – Feb. 14
World Premiere Musical
Book and lyrics by Douglas Carter Bean, music by Lewis Flynn
Directed and Choreographed by Dan Knechtges
Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre
It’s Lysistrata meets High School Musical as Give it Up! gives Aristophanes’ 2000-year-old groundbreaker a hilarious contemporary spin. Playwright Douglas Carter Beane (The Little Dog Laughed, As Bees in Honey Drown), composer/lyricist Lewis Flynn, and director/choreographer Dan Knechtges (Xanadu, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) update the classic Greek comedy to an American college gym where the cheerleaders teach the basketball team their real power to ‘Just say no!’ It’s a raucous twist on the student body that turns tunics to gym shorts, a vanquished army into the Varsity squad, and the Greek chorus into coeds. It’s the major new musical comedy event of this American theater season.
The Beauty Plays Feb. 23 – May 23
by Neil LaBute
directed by Matthew Gray, Kevin Moriarty, Joel Ferrell
Studio Theatre, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre
Featuring Company Members*: Lee Trull and Christina Vela
No one holds a mirror up to human nature like Neil LaBute, the brutally honest, brilliantly hilarious writer behind such films as The Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors and Nurse Betty. While his scripts and screenplays have been redefining the dialogue of contemporary America, our sharpest observer of sexual relations has paid special attention to our obsession with physical beauty in a trilogy that includes The Shape of Things, Fat Pig and a third play to be announced in September. It promises to be a rousing, razor-sharp look at ourselves.
Death of a Salesman April 16 – May 16
by Arthur Miller
Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre
Featuring Company Members*: Hassan El-Amin, Chamblee Ferguson, Matthew Gray, Sean Hennigan, Liz Mikel, Cedric Neal and Sally Nystuen Vahle
Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman is a masterpiece; one of the greatest achievements of 20th Century drama. Its central character, Willy Loman, a little man with modest dreams, towers over American dramatic literature. The finest actors on either side of the Atlantic consider the role a monumental achievement – an American Lear. The new production will bring a master actor to Dallas to collaborate with DTC's own Resident Acting Company to create an unforgettable production worthy of this seminal classic.
It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman June 18 – July 25
World Premiere Musical (new book)
Music By Charles Strouse, Lyrics by Lee Adams, Original Book By David Newman and Robert Benton with additional new material by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Directed by Kevin Moriarty, choreographed by Joel Ferrell
Potter Rose Performance Hall, Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre
Featuring Company Members*: Hassan El-Amin, Sean Hennigan and Cedric Neal
America’s greatest superhero was also the star of one of Broadway’s lost musical treasures. Now, this mid-‘60s musical, with great songs by the legendary Charles Strouse (Annie) and Lee Adams (Bye Bye Birdie) is part of the Wyly’s historic first season. In this major "revisal," the comic book-based musical has a hip new script by the ingenious young playwright and comic book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. There will be nothing mild-mannered about this high-voltage revival, when Superman flies in to help Clark Kent and Lois Lane face off against a team of super villains. With singing, dancing, colorful sets and costumes, and a tuneful Broadway score, Superman will be an uplifting end to DTC’s 51st season.
*Casting subject to change
About the Dallas Theater Center:
One of the leading regional theaters in the country, DTC produces new, contemporary and classic plays and musicals to an audience of more than 90,000 patrons annually. DTC’s Mainstage season is presented at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, one of only three existing theaters designed and built by the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In 2009, DTC will move into and become one of the resident companies of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, a multi-form space designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince Ramus (partner in charge) and Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas.
The mission of DTC is to engage, entertain and inspire our diverse community by creating experiences that stimulate new ways of thinking and living. DTC is committed to consistently producing plays, educational programs and other initiatives that are of the highest quality and reach the broadest possible constituency.
About the AT&T Performing Arts Center:
The AT&T Performing Arts Center, a new multi-venue Center for music, opera, theatre and dance will open in October 2009, completing the 25-year vision of the Dallas Arts District. The Center will provide multi-state-of-the-art facilities woven together by an urban park covering more than ten acres to create a dynamic cultural destination that will be unparalleled in the world. The Center will feature the following:
- The Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, designed in a modern horseshoe configuration, will seat 2,200 (with capacity up to 2,300), designed by Foster + Partners.
- The Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre will serve as a gateway to the Dallas Arts District from the downtown Dallas business center and will seat 600, designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus (partner in charge) and Rem Koolhaas.
- The completely new Annette Strauss Artist Square will be the Center’s outdoor entertainment venue, designed by Foster + Partners.
- The City Performance Hall will provide main stage production space for many of Dallas’ smaller performing arts organizations, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
- The Elaine D. and Charles A. Sammons Park will unify the venues within a lush urban oasis and will create a dynamic cultural destination in downtown Dallas, designed by Michel Desvigne.
- Two underground parking areas that will accommodate more than 850 vehicles.
The Dallas Fort Worth Lexus Dealer Association is the title sponsor of the Center’s Lexus Broadway Series, the official vehicle of the Center and its resident companies, the official valet sponsor and the naming rights holder for the Center’s two underground parking areas. More information on the AT&T Performing Arts Center is available at www.attpac.org.
Contact:
Maria May
AT&T Performing Arts Center
214.978.2834
maria.may@attpac.org