Dallas Center for Performing Arts tops out the Dallas Arts District’s Wyly Theatre

by Laura Seewoester

City officials and representatives from the Dallas Center for Performing Arts gathered below the construction site of the Dee and Charles Wyly Theater Thursday morning to celebrate the structure's topping off ceremony. (You may recall the ceremony from the Winspear Opera House a while back) The Wyly Theatre is one of the three venues that is a part of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts in the Dallas Arts District downtown. The building (designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus and Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas) transcends a traditional theater building with a vertical, "stacked" design. The building will also have a fancy schmancy (or, as the DCPA words it, "superfly") pulley system that can pull scenery and seating up and down very quickly, allowing art directors a lot of freedom to work with many different and quickly changing sets (Hello, avant-garde theater). The Wyly Theater also boasts a performance chamber called Potter Rose Performance Hall that will be encased entirely in glass so pedestrians can view the operation of the theater.

A topping out ceremony is a tradition in construction where the highest beam of the building is typically signed by key players and a little reception is thrown to watch the beam be craned into place. In this case, the beam is very green. I'd call it an ecto-cooler green. It's supposed to match the color of the chairs that will be installed in the theater. You can see the beam (at least for now) driving along Ross Street right by 75.