Six floors up in the Wyly Theatre, there is a black box theater that has been sorely underused; Nine floors up there is a rehearsal space that rarely sees an audience. Both the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly will enter year five this fall, which makes them ripe for reinvention. After letting the Dallas Theater Center settle in and determine how they want to use the big, silver box of a space, the AT&T Performing Arts Center is ready to flex some programming muscles. To fill the sixth floor performing space, this fall the center launches "The Elevator Project."
They've invited six local companies to perform a show in one of the spaces on either the sixth or ninth floor. The long-absent Upstart Productions will kick off the series with Year of the Rooster, which opens August 22. The other companies are Second Thought Theatre, DGDG: the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group, Cara Mía Theatre Co., African American Repertory Theater and Dallas Actor's Lab.
Beyond keeping the Arts District filled with artists -- something the area has struggled with -- these are all companies that don't have consistent performance spaces, which can often make it difficult to produce work, or build an audience. The center will sell $100 passes to the entire six-show series at attpac.org.
