The Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre

 The Dee and Charles Wyly Theater, the home of the Dallas Theater Center, Dallas Black Dance Theatre and Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico is a 12-story industrial cube wrapped in a series of straight steel rods on top of a glass box situated on the southeast side of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts’ Grand Plaza.  Designed by deconstructivist Dutch architect, philosopher and Pritzker Prize Winner REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus (partner in charge) and Rem Koolhaas, the Wyly is hailed in some circles as the most flexible theater in America.

Magic happens inside the 80,300 square foot box.  The 575-seat “multi-form” theater is a mechanized transformer, of sorts.  It has the unique ability to easily change the type of stage each production requires.  At the push of a button - a proscenium, thrust, arena, traverse, studio, and flat floor stage appears in just a few hours.  And, like it’s sister venue across the ATT Performance Park - the Winspear, the Wyly has the ability to bring the outdoors inside, and to open the performance space to its urban surroundings, opening a window on the stage allowing the cityscape to be a part of the theater experience. 
 

The rehearsal halls, dressing and make-up rooms, costume space and business behind the scenes that usually are in back of a theater are stacked on top and below the theater – hence the Wyly’s “box” design.

 
The industrial feel on the outside is carried on inside the theater.  The theater’s bones are showing – the balcony seats are hung like window boxes on brackets attached to the girders.  The seats themselves are large, covered in a sturdy woven lime green material.

 
The Wyly was designed in 2005.   Construction began the next year and the theater opened in the fall of 2009.

HelloDallas tip:

If you plan to park in the attached underground lot, and you want to park on the first floor, bring or borrow a Lexus.  

- by Constance Hannon, Dallas Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Constance Hannon

Connie Hannon is a freelance writer living in Dallas, Texas. She is a native Texan and has lived in Dallas and Washington, D.C. for the majority of her life. Connie graduated from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and received her masters in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University. She was a staffer on Capitol Hill and worked in CNN’s Washington Bureau, and with most of the television stations in the Dallas market.