It’s pretty fair to say that Theatre Three is, after Uptown Players, the gayest theater in Dallas. T3’s seasons always include a healthy amount of musicals and camp, and the company has proven to be staunch in its diverse and inclusive casting and creative teams.
Now, all that could go away.
This morning (Tuesday, May 13), Theatre Three dropped a bomb with an appeal letter on its socials that the 64 year-old company needs to raise $200,000 or it will shut down.
“The ongoing erosion of support for the arts has dealt a devastating blow to our funding. Simply put: without immediate and substantial help from our community, we will be forced to close our doors,” Theatre Three stated in its appeal this morning. “Our goal is $200,000. This is not the news we want to share, but it is news that we believe you all would want to know.”
While other theaters have been struggling with grant withdrawals by the National Endowment for the Arts, T3’s issues are far closer to home: “We didn’t receive an NEA grant, but we’ve been struggling and trying to figure out what to do,” T3 Associate Artistic Director Christie Vela said.
While support for the arts has dwindled and crowds have still not fully returned post-COVID, a big struggle for T3 comes from its own house. The late T3 founder Jac Alder arranged for the company to remain in its Uptown location at The Quadrangle. T3 owns the building, but not the land.
The property has changed hands and has been rebranding and rebuilding into what is now The Quad, which T3 anchored with the neighboring restaurant Crushcraft as other businesses and restaurants moved in.
“We get charged a monthly fee, like an HOA fee, and they are exorbitant,” Vela said. “It’s been catching up with us, and we try to contest these fees — but nothing. People think we renovated our building but that was the property. It may look that we can afford that, but this renovation was forced upon us, and, yes, we benefit, but the fees are high.”
T3 has gone to Stream Realty Partners, The Quad property owners, for any kind of partnership but Vela mentioned that the benefit of the theater’s location hasn’t quite been acknowledged.
“We bring people to The Quad, and they are going to the restaurants here before or after a show. But there seems to be no interest in that,” she said. “But really, we just need help.”
While a deadline hasn’t been declared, the sooner the company raises its money, the sooner it can be assured to stay open and honor its current subscriptions and ticket holders. Tuesday night is the first rehearsal for T3’s upcoming show Xanadu: The Musical directed by Joel Ferrell.
“Right now, the plan is to go forward with Xanadu,” Vela said. “At least until we can’t. That’s how desperate the situation is right now.”
The theater offers full seasons in both its Norma Young mainstage and its smaller space,Theatre Too, in the basement. Beyond that, they’ve hosted other theater companies such as Uptown Players and Shakespeare Dallas as well as the Festival of Independent Theatres.
T3 has a Fight Night series, improv classes, Monday Night Playwrights series and the naked burlesque Bare Book Club.
T3 also partners with Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts, giving students free access to theater and teaching advanced acting classes as well as hosting a student showcase. The company also has the oldest apprentice program for those pursuing theater as a career.
“We have two just out of college, and they get paid. They don’t pay us. With that, they get to go off with that experience,” Vela said.
Through its long legacy, T3 has helped introduce a number of names to the bigger theater world. Just a few recent name drops by Vela included Jonathan Norton, now interim artistic director at Dallas Theater Center; Broadway actor Major Attaway and Olivier Award nominee Cedric Neal as all having ties to Theatre Three.
“So many people have come through our doors here,” she said.
Now it’s a matter of keeping those doors open. Read Theatre Three’s emailed letter of appeal below or on its socials at @TheatreThree on IG and FB.
