Our Story
We are a theater with a rich history that has put our community first for over 40 years. As we grow as an orginzation and look toward the future, we like to look back at where we started and were we are now.
How We Started
Dallas Children's Theater was founded in 1984 by Robyn Flatt and Dennis Vincent, in response to the growing need for professional family theater. A 501(c) 3 non-profit organization, we are a forum for artistic collaboration, a vital educational resource for metropolitan schools, and a vehicle of enrichment for the greater Dallas community. With a multi-million-dollar budget and a national audience, Dallas Children's Theater is the largest professional family theater in the Southwest. We offer a season of five productions in our beautiful Rosewood Center for Family Arts, as well as a theater academy and arts-in-education programs for local schools.
Today, Dallas Children's Theater has become an outstanding venue for collaboration with local artists, designers, playwrights, and educators. Our directors and administrators are proud to contribute to the growing body of theater for youth with the commission and development of new plays. Familiar stories, literary works, histories, and biographies are also a part of our programming. Each season is thoughtfully chosen to produce plays that are engaging, enriching, and educational.
Who We Serve
We serve a metropolitan area rich in cultural diversity. In producing arts and education for a varied population, our theater is a burgeoning asset to the community. Families from every socio-economic and cultural background are now afforded access to the arts. Because our programming is quite extensive, Dallas Children's Theater brings theater to surrounding communities in more rural areas with limited resources.ing of the world in which they live. To this end, Dallas Children's Theater aims to engage and inspire children, to produce theater that reaches beyond the stage.
How We Serve
Productions
Our productions promote social values, moral integrity, and reflect the cultural diversity of our community through casting and themes. In 2014, Dallas Children's Theater was honored to be a participant in the Audience (R)Evolution Program, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for professional not-for-profit American theater. Autism Speaks provided a grant to DCT to document our pilot year of sensory-friendly performances. As a result of the first-year results, we were further honored with a three-year grant from The Crystal Charity Ball to continue this work.
Arts-in-Education Programs
Our pioneering efforts to develop innovative arts-in-education programs have equipped Dallas-area schools with a powerful resource. The Student Matinee Performance Series offers excellent materials for teachers and students. To supplement the performance, we offer study guides and other educational materials through our website, as well as drama workshops in the theater. Curtains Up on Reading brings artists and educators together in the classroom, integrating drama, dance, music, and art into grade-level curriculum. Our After School Drama Classes have been developed on twenty campuses.
Community Outreach
Our continued excellence in community outreach and theater arts has earned Dallas Children's Theater national acclaim. Both American Theater magazine and TIME magazine recognize Dallas Children's Theater as one of the leading professional family theaters in the United States. And our unparalleled leadership and vision have garnered the endorsement and support nationally of National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, Hearst Foundation, and Kresge Foundation. We believe theater provides a unique learning opportunity, which allows children exposure to ideas and imagery that reflect their own experiences and challenge their own understanding of the world in which they live. To this end, Dallas Children's Theater aims to engage and inspire children, to produce theater that reaches beyond the stage.
We envision a world where young people, having been astonished, delighted and challenged by the transformational experience of theater, are inspired to creatively contribute to the vibrancy of their communities.
The mission of Dallas Children's Theater is to inspire young people to creative and productive lives through the art of theater.
To give rise to theater that is inspiring, Dallas Children's Theater:
- Creates and produces innovative professional theater for a multi-generational audience through original works, world premieres, literary classics, folk and fairy tales and contemporary drama;
- Employs and collaborates with acclaimed professional artists;
- Develops dynamic programs that integrate arts into curricula ... enriching language skills, learning processes, and promoting an early appreciation for the arts by bringing literature to life;
- Builds bridges of understanding between generations and cultures through the timeless and universal voice and language of theater's multisensory approach.
- Offers performing arts classes and experiences on a year round basis.
Theatrical Passion: By providing a home base for artists, Dallas Children’s Theater creates powerful live theater to expose children, families, educators and community members to both classic and contemporary works. Dallas Children’s Theater dedicates its resources to elevating the field on a local as well as national level.
Commitment to Staff: Dallas Children’s Theater is committed to providing staff with wages and benefits that recognize their contribution to the organization’s overall success and regularly evaluates these decisions equally alongside other budgetary priorities.
Inspiring Creativity: Dallas Children’s Theater believes every child is unique and has something valuable to contribute to society. We help them embrace creativity as an intrinsic part of life, inspiring them to imaginative and rewarding lives.
Innovative Leadership: Dallas Children’s Theater uses its art form to present issues facing today’s youth and supplements dramatic performances with workshops and events featuring leading experts in education, arts and health to ignite enlightening and powerful conversation.
Reaching Out: Dallas Children’s Theater believes all children, families and members in the education community deserve the opportunity to experience live theater and its powerful effects; especially those who might consider cost a barrier.
Arts and Community: Dallas Children’s Theater believes that the collective arts are a critical part of where we all live, work and play and is therefore committed to taking on new challenges and collaborating with our peers to use the arts to make a positive impact in our community—both today and in the future.
Equity, Diversity, Justice, and Inclusion: DCT is committed to the kind of excellence in theater arts programming that challenges and inspires young people from every race, culture, gender, social class, ability and sexual orientation to develop their unique creative talents and individual perspectives in order to contribute to a more pluralistic and peaceful world. DCT promotes equity, diversity, and inclusion in all areas of the institution, including its programming, board and staff. To read more about our commitment, download our Strategic Anti-Racism, Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, Access and Accountability Action Plan here.
While in our building or at a DCT-sponsored event, should you ever witness or experience a behavior that is counter to our commitment, please tell us about it by submitting this incident report.