The Wyly Theatre, part of the city’s new AT&T Performing Arts Center, is designed by Dutch architectural practice, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and New York-based international architecture and design firm REX.
The AIA jury has commended that Wyly is a totally ‘new way to investigate the potential of performative experimentation’, which has ‘completely re-choreographed the way in which one experiences a theatre’.
The Wyly features two unique innovations: an auditorium visible from street, enabled by the tall box-like structure of the building, in which supporting services are stacked above and below the auditorium, rather than encircling it as in a standard theatre configuration. Secondly, the auditorium itself is designed for maximum flexibilty wherein stage, seating and balconies can be quickly reconfigured depending on the needs of the performance on the night.
Unlike a typical theatre, the compact, vertical orientation of the 12-storey Wyly Theatre accommodates back-of-house and front-of-house areas above and beneath the auditorium rather than wrapped around it, liberating its perimeter. The perimeter forms a glass facade with optional blackout blinds. This is integrated for direct contact with the urban surroundings. This unprecedented stacked design transforms the building into a ‘theatre machine’ that extends the technologies of the fly tower and stage into the auditorium to provide an almost infinite variety of stage-audience configurations, liberating the performance hall’s perimetre to allow fantasy and reality to mix when and where desired; and manifesting a strong presence in the Dallas Arts District despite its relatively modest size.
No longer shielded by transitional and technical areas such as foyer, ticket counters and backstage facilities, this reimagining of the theatre typology exposes the auditorium to the city on all sides. The building spans 7,500 square meter and includes a cocktail bar, offices, costume shop, and a multipurpose rooftop space.
The tallness and simplicity of the box form, together with the unique visibility of the activities in the theatre, gives the building prominence in the large new complex of the AT&T Performing Arts Center. The form also facilitates innovation in the theatre’s mechanics: the conventional fly tower above the stage has been extended vertically, and can pull up both scenery and seating. This allows artistic directors to rapidly change the venue into a wide array of configurations that push the limits of the ‘multi-form’ theatre: proscenium, thrust, traverse, arena, studio, and flat floor – in which the seating, and the balconies, can be removed entirely.
The stage and the floor of the auditorium are deliberately made of non-precious materials – the floor can be drilled, nailed into, and painted at will. In this way, together with the easily customised seating and stage configuration, the Wyly Theatre seeks to preserve and elaborate the flexible, improvisatory nature of the Dallas Theatre Center’s original home.
