REX/OMA's AT&T Performing Arts Center's Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre Opens

Redefining the traditional theater -- from top to bottom

DALLAS, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- During the AT&T Performing Arts Center's Dee
and Charles Wyly Theatre's grand opening this week, audiences are discovering
a 575-seat, "multi-form" theater that gives one of the country's most
innovative performing arts companies an unprecedented reconfiguration of both
house and stage.

Unlike a typical theater, the Wyly positions back-of-house and front-of-house
facilities above and beneath the auditorium instead of encircling it. Designed
by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus (Partner in Charge) and Rem Koolhaas, the new
home of the Dallas Theater Center is thereby transformed into one large fly
tower that provides an infinite variety of stage configurations, and liberates
the performance chamber's perimeter to allow fantasy and reality to mix when
and where desired. The Wyly Theatre's design was begun in 2004 by OMA New
York, a firm owned equally by Prince-Ramus and Koolhaas. In 2006, Prince-Ramus
bought Koolhaas out of the company and renamed the existing entity REX.

Prince-Ramus, who will give a lecture in the Wyly Theatre, October 16 at 2
p.m., comments, "The Wyly is a 'theater machine' that grants freedom to
determine the entire artistic experience, from audience arrival to performance
configuration to departure."

The Dallas Theater Center's previous accommodation, a makeshift residence
located in a galvanized metal shed, liberated its users from the limitations
imposed by a fixed-stage configuration and the need to avoid harming expensive
interior finishes. The Wyly Theatre's unprecedented "stacked" design meets two
distinct challenges -- it retains and refines the same freedoms that made the
DTC's original building a successful theater space and creates a new
theatrical structure that combines flexibility with affordability.

The theater can be altered into a wide array of configurations -- including
proscenium, thrust and flat floor -- empowering directors and scenic designers
to choose the stage-audience configuration that fulfills their artistic
desires, or to invent one of their own. Directors can incorporate the Dallas
skyline and streetscape into performances at will, as the auditorium is
enclosed by an acoustic glass facade with optional black-out blinds and panels
that can be opened to allow patrons or performers to enter the auditorium
directly from outside. The performance chamber is intentionally made of
materials that are not precious to encourage alterations; the stage and
auditorium surfaces can be cut, drilled, painted, welded, sawed, nailed, glued
and stitched at limited cost.

On a Friday night, patrons can share Lear's sorrow in a dark and quiet
theater. Then Saturday evening, against the dramatic backdrop of the Dallas
cityscape, the audience can join Vladimir and Estragon in their vigil for
Godot, in an auditorium now stripped of its comforting cocoon.

About REX

REX is an internationally renowned architecture and design firm based in New
York. In addition to the AT&T Performing Arts Center's Dee and Charles Wyly
Theatre, other cultural projects by REX include Museum Plaza, a 62-story
mixed-use skyscraper housing a contemporary art center in Louisville,
Kentucky, and the new Central Library and Music Conservatory for the city of
Kortrijk, Belgium. Current projects also include the Istanbul headquarters for
Vakko and Power Media, Turkey's preeminent fashion and media companies; the
University of Louisville's College of Business campus in Kentucky, and a line
of public furniture for Belgian furniture company Quinze & Milan. REX recently
placed second in both the international competition for the new Edvard Munch
Museum in Oslo, Norway, and the Finnish Innovation Fund's Low2No sustainable
development competition in Helsinki, Finland.

Joshua Prince-Ramus is President of REX and Principal in Charge of all
projects. Prince-Ramus was the founding partner of OMA New York -- the
American affiliate of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) -- and
served as its Principal until he renamed the firm REX in 2006. While REX was
still known as OMA New York, Prince-Ramus was Partner in Charge of the
Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas and the Seattle Central Library,
hailed as Time magazine's 2004 Building of the Year and by Herbert Muschamp in
TheNew York Times as "the most exciting new building it has been my honor to
review in more than 30 years of writing about architecture." In 2005, the
Seattle Central Library was awarded the top honors bestowed by the American
Institute of Architects.

www.rex-ny.com

SOURCE REX

Laura Galloway, Galloway Media Group, +1-213-948-3100,
laura@gallowaymediagroup.com