The Dallas Theater Center recently received $140,000 in grants to support its Public Works Dallas project.

National Endowment for the Arts gave DTC $90,000 for its “groundbreaking community engagement and participatory theater project.” The Creativity Connects grant is the largest NEA grant DTC has ever received, the Dallas theater said. 

The other grant came from Theatre Forward through its inaugural Advancing Strong Theater grant program, which seeks to enrich programs’ ability to serve those under-represented in theater. 

The New York-based nonprofit chose DTC, along with three other regional theaters in the U.S., to receive $50,000 grants toward their theater projects that further equity, diversity, and inclusion. Recipients were selected from 19 eligible members of Theatre Forward. 

Public Works Dallas launched last year as a collaboration of DTC, Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts, AT&T Performing Arts Center, and Ignite/Arts Dallas. It’s affiliated with the New York City-based The Public Theater’s Public Works project.

The unique initiative allows nonactors to perform in renditions of Shakespearean plays bringing theater spectators into the performance creation. The program also allows SMU Meadows students to interact with artists established in the field as well as giving the community more access to the arts program.

Public Works Dallas’ next production begins at the end of August and will be a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” directed by New York-based Kent Gash. Only five of the 200 participants in the play will be professional actors.

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