Tag Archives: play

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

Posted on by Bill Chance

The Wyly Theater in the Dallas Arts District

When the Wyly theater was constructed I remember being excited about the building and its architecture, even more than the other venues in the Arts District. Its unique design and resemblance to a Borg Cube made it fascinating in my eyes.

But one thought I had was, “This is a cool place – but once it’s finished I’ll never be able to afford to see a play in such an expensive and opulent venue.”

Kids Splashing in front of the Wyly Theater. An HDR image I took on the opening day of the theater.

I was wrong. Sure, there are plenty of expensive seats at the shows at the Wyly, but if you play your cards right you can get in inexpensively. You can get in cheaper than a 3-D movie. We saw The Tempest there a while back for only a few measly bucks. Today, we saw a play that I had never heard of, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, for… well, for whatever I felt like paying.

The operators of the Wyly, The Dallas Theater Center, have these Pay What You Can Nights – so I logged in and bought a couple tickets. I thought for a minute about how much to pay… and ended up paying less than I should have but more than I could have. There is a thin line between cheap and poor.

At any rate, we took the DART train down to the Arts District. There was a lot going on – the Friday night late night music, food trucks, crowds, and a preview (A Glimpse) of the upcoming Aurora light and sound installation/exhibition (which I do not want to miss again this year).

We walked past the giant floating red/orange jellyfish writhing in the air outside the theater and went in to take our seats.

The play is about wrestling. I have never been a big fan of the “sport” (though it is in my blood, I guess, I’ll post something about that this weekend). The play was a blast, though.

The Wyly can best be described as a theater machine. The entire interior of the building is infinitely reconfigurable. For this play it was set up as seats surrounding a real wrestling ring, and one side would open up, the seats sliding sideways, to allow the wrestlers to enter through a cloud of smoke. High above were four giant video screens showing the wrestler’s publicity films or the output from handheld cameras showing the action in the ring or the announcing outside.

The narrator of the story is the wrestler Macedonio Guerra, known as Mace, who is a professional loser. He is so skilled that he makes the headline wrestler look good, even when he’s lousy. Wrestling has been Mace’s lifelong dream, and although he has a lot of complaints, he is quiet about them. He doesn’t want to upset the apple cart and lose whatever sliver of his dreams he is allowed to keep.

The first half of the play is a colorful, funny exposé of the funhouse mirror world of professional wresting – where money is king, and the performers are a brotherhood dedicated not to winning, but to entertaining, telling a story, and making sure nobody gets hurt.

After the intermission things get more confused and serious and Mace is inevitably faced with the need to make a choice and decide whether he will have to abandon the moral neutral ground he has been hiding in and take some sort of stand. There also is some real wrestling, which is rousing, fast, and exciting, even if it isn’t a real sport.

Every body in the hall had a hell of a good time, learned a little, and left smiling.

The cast of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety

What shocked me was the number of empty seats. The performance was on a pleasant Friday evening, in the midst of an Arts District full of fun things to do, and cost, potentially, pennies. Why wasn’t every seat taken? I never understand why more folks don’t go to live theater. They pay more money than this to go to a crowded suburban googleplex to see the newest remake of some scumsucking hollywood slimebucket and eat stale popcorn while listening to teenagers’ phones going off.

Grow a pair, do something different, go see some live entertainers. You will be glad you did.

Aluminum Tube Skin on the Wyly Theater

Aluminum Tube Skin on the Wyly Theater

We are such stuff as dreams are made on

Posted on by Bill Chance

I remember when each and every building in the Dallas Arts District went up – starting decades ago when I worked downtown and they built the Art Museum and I’d sit in the sculpture garden and eat my paper sack sandwich lunch (it was free back then, believe it or not). Then the Symphony hall, and the Nasher. Finally, the completion of the district with the Opera House and the Wyly theater (there is still one more theater under construction).

I love the area and hope that Dallas can make it into the vibrant urban spot they want. So far, it’s a beautiful but usually desolate destination. It hasn’t reached the tipping point where the vast population out in the suburbs think of downtown as a place to go – but the city is working on it.

One fact that I was definitely wrong on is that, as much as I loved the Wyly as architecture, I was afraid I’d never be able to actually go to the thing. It felt like a gift to the wealthy, a plaything for the rich, and the poor proles like myself, the workin stiffs, would never be able to afford to visit.

I was mistaken. I read that the Dallas Theater Center was producing The Tempest at the Wyly and I surfed over to check out the price. It cost about what a 3D movie is going for. Well, I love me some Shakespeare, so I clicked on to a Tuesday night and bought a couple tickets. I was as interested in the theater itself as the play, so I bought the cheapest seats – up in the nosebleed section.

The Wyly Theater.

The Wyly is a magnificent and unique piece of architecture. It is a theater of a revolutionary “Stacked” design – the the boxoffice and lounge, performance space, rehearsal and ancillary spaces are piled up on top of each other to give tremendous flexibility and endless possibilities for unique performances. I looks like a Borg Cube has landed in downtown Dallas and it operates like a theater “machine.”

I was excited to actually see the thing in action. Oh, and I love “The Tempest” too.

We rode the DART train downtown to the Pearl Station and walked over to the Wyly. You descend down a ramp to the main entrance which is beneath the building itself. Then you ride an elevator up to the seats. We were in the cheap seats – but they were still great. We were looking down onto the stage from a short distance away – I can’t say these were any worse than the premium seats (only a few dollars more, actually) below us.

Kids Splashing in front of the Wyly Theater. An HDR image I took on the opening day of the theater.

This was a pared-down version of The Tempest which let the skills of the actors shine through. Still, there was plenty of clever stagecraft – a terrifying plane crash in the beginning (with the rows of seats tumbling down through a hole in the floor) – a character emerging from beneath the earth through a crack in the chalky island soil, and a terrifying spirit descending from above to deliver the message of doom.

The production was gorgeous to look at.

One nice touch was that the lighting would subtly change whenever a character would deliver a soliloquy or aside. It was an effective way of signaling what was going on.

All modern Shakespeare productions, especially The Tempest, are modified to some extent. At first, I thought they had simplified the language, because I understood it so much better than I usually did. After a while, I realised that the text was the same, it was simply that the acoustics are so good in the Wyly that I could hear the actors like crystal. Greatness! Oh brave new world that has such people in’t.

In my opinion, a production of The Tempest rises or falls on Ariel. Can the Actor/Actress (I’ve seen both… about 50/50) make a believable sprite? Can they be light as a breeze when needed while as powerful and terrifying as a storm? This production had a local actor that has made it on Broadway, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka … and he did a great job. They were able to use his singing voice as a powerful tool to move the drama along – too often I’ve seen the songs in The Tempest be more of a distraction than an effective part of the play.

Reviews:

So, I went down there to see the theater, and I was not disappointed. And I came away impressed with the production, I really enjoyed it… and after all, the play’s the thing (oops, wrong Shakespeare play).

Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be reliev’d by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Aluminum Tube Skin on the Wyly Theater

Aluminum Tube Skin on the Wyly Theater