By Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: Dallas Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Raphael Parry is getting Hamlet ready for summer. But he's rehearsing his players in a new space - the red brick basement of the old Sears Catalog fulfillment building. Now called Southside on Lamar, it's more than a million square feet of renovated loft apartments, retail space, artist residences, and Project X Theater.
Raphael Parry, Project X Theater: I've always wanted a longer season. I'm passionate about a winter season because there's so much you can't do at a park for a thousand people lying on picnic blankets.
Zeeble: Works, Parry says, like "A Winter's Tale," which doesn't exactly fit a hot, mid-summer night's stage. Parry and colleague Deanna Deck, Project X artistic director, are working to turn 14-thousand cavernous square feet of bi-level concrete and brick into a pair of permanent theaters - the smaller one on the upper level, and the main stage below.
Parry: It's cathedral-like. The ceiling's like 30 feet high. Width is about 40 feet wide, another 100 feet long. There's a center playing space. A lot of people see this, they think Greek tragedy. Of course they said, "How can you make this a theater?" I said, "Don't worry, we'll figure it out. This is so perfect!!!"
Deanna Deck, Project X Theater's Artistic Director: Exactly.
Zeeble: And, says Deanna Deck, the acoustics are incredible.
Parry: The sheer glory of being able to use Shakespeare's language in all that resonance I think will be astonishing to people.
Zeeble: Here's something else that may seem astonishing: it's free.
Jack Matthews, Matthews Southwest, president and developer: Their deal is they build the theater, and for building the theater they get a number of years at zero rent.
Zeeble: Jack Matthews is the developer who renovated Southside on Lamar.
Matthews: And then we'll do a test to see how much money they can produce, and set some nominal rent to keep us alive and them alive.
Zeeble: Matthews was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, and followed in the family construction and development business. He moved his wife, children, and company to Argyle, in Denton County, nine years ago. He says he's used to bucking accepted business behavior
Matthews: I grew up respecting old buildings - where if you could take an old building, and this is less than a shell, because you had to take out asbestos, take out lead paint, take out every window and fix it - you actually had less than a shell. But you had the building, its soul, and its history. It made it worth doing.
Zeeble: Matthews says his older actress sister gave him an appreciation of the energy and intelligence artists offer. So in addition to free rent for Project X, he also provides free and discounted gallery and living space to a small number of artists.
Matthews: You just can't have people living in little boxes. The arts side brought life into the building. Wherever you walk here, you run into art or artists. The people in the building have such a mix - backgrounds, what they do - you really can't have an uninteresting conversation in the elevator.
Zeeble: It works for photographer Roger Moore, who retired early from the world of business and occupies one of the gallery and workspaces in the building.
Roger Moore, professional art photographer: It's a community feeling where new ideas and experimental cross-fertilization is encouraged. Performing arts, musicians, poets, photographers, painters, sculptors - they're all here
Zeeble: Grammy winner and Dallasite Erykah Badu, who schedules monthly events at Southside, is here too. As the artist community grows, Matthews says he wants to avoid what's ruined other creative neighborhoods - rising property values that force the artists out. He plans to set up a non-profit organization to manage the free and rent-controlled creative spaces.
Matthews: So it doesn't become a temptation for us down the road to say, "Hey, we can get $20 a foot instead of $10." Artists, here for this to be what it is, need to have part of this area. You allow the soul to die if you screw with the formula.
Zeeble: For KERA 90.1, I'm Bill Zeeble.
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