Dallas Theater Center Names Joel Ferrell Associate Artistic Director

Dallas Theater Center Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty announced today that DTC Associate Artist Joel Ferrell has been promoted to Associate Artistic Director. In his new position, Ferrell will continue to direct and choreograph plays and musicals at DTC, while also expanding his role as the lead producer of DTC's mainstage productions. Ferrell will work closely with guest directors and designers to oversee productions from the initial creative process, including design and casting, through the productions' rehearsals and performances. Ferrell began working for DTC on a freelance basis in the late 1990s and joined the artistic staff on a full time basis in 2009.

"I believe people search for an artistic home, a place where one's strengths and an organization's needs meet,” says Ferrell. “I have found that at DTC. I have been afforded great opportunities with DTC for many years now, but with Kevin's arrival, it became clear the organization was moving in artistic directions that compel and inspire me. I am grateful to be part of DTC and excited to take on the responsibilities of my new title."

Ferrell is again directing back-to-back productions for DTC this season. The first, God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, is currently in rehearsals and will open to audiences with previews on Friday, May 11. Following the opening of God of Carnage at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, Ferrell will shift back to the Wyly Theatre to direct and choreograph Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat, DTC’s family-friendly summer musical.

“Joel Ferrell’s contribution to Dallas Theater Center has been invaluable for many years, dating back to his initial collaborations with my predecessor, Richard Hamburger,” says Moriarty. “During my tenure at DTC, Joel has been a valued collaborator and colleague, with the breadth and depth of his directing work ranging from last year’s Dividing the Estate and Cabaret to his upcoming work this season directing the hilarious comedy, God of Carnage, and the joyful family musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat. I am thrilled to announce Joel’s promotion to the role of Associate Artistic Director, and for DTC to continue to provide him with an artistic home.”

Tickets for Ferrell’s next productions - God of Carnage and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat – are available for as little as $15 and can be purchased online at www.DallasTheaterCenter.org or by phone at (214) 880-0202.

Dallas Theater Center (DTC) performs to an audience of more than 90,000 North Texas residents annually. Founded in 1959, DTC is now a resident company of the AT&T Performing Arts Center and presents its Mainstage season at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus and Rem Koolhaas and at its original home, the Kalita Humphreys Theater, the only freestanding theater designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty and Managing Director Heather M. Kitchen, DTC produces a seven-play subscription series of classics, musicals and new plays and an annual production of A Christmas Carol; extensive education programs, including Project Discovery, SummerStage and partnerships with Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts; and community outreach efforts including leading the DFW Foote Festival and recent collaborations with the Dallas Public Library, Dallas Holocaust Museum, North Texas Food Bank, Dallas Opera, and Dallas Black Dance Theater.

Throughout its history, DTC has produced many new works, including The Texas Trilogy by Preston Jones in 1978, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men (directed by Adrian Hall) in 1986, and recent premieres of Giant by Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson, The Trinity River Plays by ReGina Taylor, the revised It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, Give It Up! (now titled Lysistrata Jones and recently on Broadway) by Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn, Sarah, Plain and Tall by Julia Jordan, Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin and The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson.

JOEL FERRELL is the Associate Artistic Director at DTC where his credits include: director of Cabaret, Dividing the Estate, reasons to be pretty and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later; A Christmas Carol (2005-2009) andCotton Patch Gospel (starring its creator Tom Key); choreographer of It’s a Bird... It’s a Plane... It’s Superman; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Who’s Tommy and My Fair Lady. DFW credits include: Proof (Plano Rep); Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Baltimore Waltz (Stage West); Pygmalion (Fort Worth Shakespeare); the premiere of Huck Finn (Classical Acting Company). Mr. Ferrell is the former Artistic Director of Casa Mañana Musicals Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas. He served for two years on the selection committee for the National Alliance of Musical Theatre’s New Works Festival in New York City and has worked extensively around the country for Portland Center Stage, Papermill Playhouse, Ford’s Theatre and North Shore Music Theatre among others.

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