In three years as artistic director at Dallas Theater Center, Kevin Moriarty has experienced the high of moving his company into the shiny new Wyly Theatre downtown, and the low of a box office bomb like the Bible-themed In the Beginning (which he directed). But nobody faults the guy for taking big chances. Moriarty, an Indiana native who came to Dallas after working at major theaters on the East Coast, is a bold director of classics and new work and a major champion of local talent. All of the actors in his stagings of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and of Neil LaBute's Fat Pig (part of DTC's three-month long trilogy of The Beauty Plays) were hometowners, a blend of veterans of DFW stages, SMU drama students and kids from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where Moriarty also teaches. In Moriarty's biggest production to date as a director, this summer's $800,000 "revisal" of the 1966 Strouse-Adams musical It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman!, he provided plum roles for lots of thesps who'd paid their dues at Kitchen Dog Theater, WaterTower, Contemporary Theatre of Dallas and other houses. Being in a Moriarty show has become the new benchmark for what it means to be a Dallas actor. We can't wait to see what he does next and who gets to be in it.