Guided tour inside Dallas' new Wyly Theatre, recipient of 2011 AIA Honor Award for Architecture, included on our Dallas Arts District Day Trip on 01/28/11

We're taking a guided tour inside the Wyly Theatre on our Dallas Arts District Day Trip on Friday, January 28th. The Wyly Theatre recently received the 2011 AIA Institute Honor Award for Architecture, and is the home of the Dallas Theatre Center.  Join us!     Reservation deadline: 01/20/11.  Reservations may be made online at www.snobbytours.com/TXDayandOvernightTrips.html

The following "Notes of Interest" were published by The American Institute of Architects:

"The AT&T Performing Arts Center is an 80,300 square-foot, 575-seat 'multi-form' theater with the ability to transform between proscenium, thrust, traverse, and flat floor configurations with only a small crew in a few hours and opens the performance chamber to its urban surroundings. Additional program elements include a lobby, large rehearsal room, small rehearsal room/black box theater, patron’s lounge/black box lobby, dressing rooms, green room, costume shop, scene assembly, theater equipment storage, administrative offices, meeting/education spaces, staff lounge, and two terraces.

"The Dallas Theater Center (DTC) is known for its innovative work, the result of its leadership’s constant experimentation and the provisional nature of its former, long-time home. The DTC’s previous accommodation—a makeshift metal shed—freed its users from the limitations imposed by a fixed-stage configuration and the need to protect expensive interior finishes.

Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre
(reprinted with permission)

"The Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre overcame these challenges by positioning back-of-house and front-of-house facilities above and beneath the auditorium, instead of encircling it. This unprecedented stacked design transforms the building into a "theater machine" that extends the technologies of the fly tower and stage into the auditorium to provide an almost infinite variety of stage-audience configurations; liberates the performance hall's perimeter to allow fantasy and reality to mix when and where desired; and manifests a strong presence in the Dallas Arts District despite its relatively modest size."

Comments from the 2011 AIA Honor Awards for Architecture Jury:

"This building is an expression of a totally new way to investigate the potential of performance experimentation – completely re-choreographed the way in which one experiences a theater."

"The flexibility of this building redefines theater in a way that is unique – curtains open, light comes in."