Lawson Taitte

The Dallas Theater Center takes a leap into new and uncharted waters with the 2008-09 season announced on Monday.

FILE 2007/Staff photo

Kevin Moriarty, the new artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, will emphasize new works.

New artistic director Kevin Moriarty has spent nearly eight months sizing up Dallas and its needs. His response includes two world premieres, another play almost as new and a fresh collection of medieval mystery plays he will compile himself."This is the beginning of who we hope to be," Mr. Moriarty says.

These shows include two musicals, three if you include the nonsubscription perennial A Christmas Carol. The one familiar name on the schedule is a show most observers would never have expected to see on the Theater Center stage: Mr. Moriarty's own first production at the company he runs will be the season opener, The Who's Tommy.

His later medieval Bible stories will also introduce another Moriarty innovation: The cast will include the Theater Center's new local company of nine actors, the first such formal group the Theater Center has hired in 15 years.

"There's a strategy behind all this," Mr. Moriarty says. "This is not a list of Kevin's favorite plays. It's not even the season I thought we were going to do."

The choices are a far cry from the famous classics and recent Pulitzer Prize winners with which the Theater Center has sold its seasons in recent years. Mr. Moriarty is taking the risk that his focus on fresh work will bring in fresh audiences.

From Mr. Moriarty's history at previous jobs in Providence, R.I., and Ithaca, N.Y., one might have predicted the new plays and the large proportion of musicals. But it would have been a fair bet that the season would include some Shakespeare – another Moriarty staple – to balance them out.

"I always anticipated it would include a Shakespeare play," Mr. Moriarty admits. "It would certainly be strange if we went two years without one."

So we can expect the 2009-10 season, when the Theater Center will move to the new Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in the downtown Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, to include the Bard.

That and future seasons, however, will continue to show off plenty of new work. The Theater Center will embark on an ambitious campaign of commissioning plays. With a relatively short time to plan this year, Mr. Moriarty had to bring in work that was already in development.

The two new works already announced for next season boast stellar credentials. The first premiere, Tracey Scott Wilson's The Good Negro, is a co-production with the prestigious Public Theatre that will debut here before going on to New York. The second is a musical yet to be announced, but Mr. Moriarty promises that some well-known names will be attached.

Also, Back Back Back, a play about cheating in baseball, is by Itamar Moses, a hot young playwright whose work Mr. Moriarty has debuted in the past. The Theater Center will mount its own spring production after the piece premieres elsewhere in the fall.

Mr. Moriarty has selected plays about topical themes – race, religion, sports, the impulse to do anything to succeed – that he expects new audiences will be able to connect with. The theater will capitalize by hosting a discussion after every performance.

"We're making a real commitment that the play is not the end product," he says. "The play is the catalyst for the conversation that happens – about where we are in Dallas, Texas, today."Theater Center lineup

• The Who's Tommy, Aug. 27-Sept. 21

• The Good Negro, Oct. 15-Nov. 9

• A Christmas Carol, Nov. 22-Dec. 28 (nonsubscription)

• In the Beginning, Jan. 21-Feb. 15, 2009

• Back Back Back, March 11-April 5, 2009

• World premiere musical TBA, May 2009

All performances at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd. Subscriptions $29 to $270, with discounts. 214-522-8499, www.dallastheatercenter.org.

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