Dallas Innovates reported that the Dallas Theater Center (DTC) recently received two large grants, both supporting its Public Works Dallas project. According to the DTC website, Public Works Dallas is a groundbreaking community engagement and participatory theater project designed to deliberately blur the line between professional artists and Dallas community members. DTC is working in collaboration with Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts and Ignite/Arts Dallas, and in affiliation with New York City-based The Public Theater’s Public Works and AT&T Performing Arts Center on the project.
The gifts included a $90,000 Creativity Connects grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and $50,000 from Theatre Forward through its inaugural Advancing Strong Theater grant program. The NEA grant is the largest that the DTC has ever received, Dallas Innovates reported, and was given to DTC for its “groundbreaking community engagement and participatory theater project.” The Theatre Forward grant is part of a program which seeks to enrich programs’ ability to serve those under-represented in theater.
The Public Works Dallas project’s first production was Shakespeare’s The Tempest and took place during the spring of 2017. The project’s next production will begin Labor Day 2018 and will include 200 participants, of which only 5 will be professional actors.
ABOUT DALLAS THEATER CENTER
One of the leading regional theaters in the country, Dallas Theater Center (DTC) performs to an audience of more than 90,000 North Texas residents annually. Founded in 1959, DTC is now a resident company of the AT&T Performing Arts Center and presents its mainstage season at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Arts District. DTC also presents at its original home, the Kalita Humphreys Theater, the only freestanding theater designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright. DTC engages, entertains and inspires a diverse community by creating experiences that stimulate new ways of thinking and living by consistently producing plays, educational programs and community initiatives that are of the highest quality and reach the broadest possible constituency. Find out more on the organization’s website.
