Moody Performance Hall is located in the Dallas Arts District, where it serves as a central performance venue for emerging and mid-sized arts groups across the city. Serving as the “gateway to the Arts District,” this is the newest building in a district whose first building – Dallas Museum of Art – opened in 1984. The Arts District is the ultimate destination for visual and performing arts in Dallas, and the architecture of each building within the District adds to that art.

The 59,250 SF building features a 750-seat proscenium theatre, a multilevel lobby, function space, backstage support spaces, and offices. This is the first phase of a multi-phase project which will eventually include two flexible theatres, an art gallery, a café, and rehearsal and classroom space.

Schuler Shook provided theatre consulting and architectural lighting design services.

Within the auditorium, LED color-changing wash lights illuminate the upper ceiling with color. Dimmable LED wall-grazers add warmth to the room. Dimmable fluorescent coves provide under-balcony illumination. Between the lobby and the auditorium, two light wells allow daylight into the auditorium when desired. LED color-changing fixtures at the bottom of the wells allow the addition of color. In both the lobby and auditorium, the balcony edge railings include color-changing LED marker lights that allow further customization in the appearance of the room.

Schuler Shook partnered with a team led by architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Corgan Associates to create an architectural program for the “third performance venue” that was part of Dallas’s Arts District Master Plan. Schuler Shook’s theatre planners developed technical criteria for each space within the program and actively assisted in the design of the stage, seating plan and section, integration of technical levels, and back of house support spaces.

Moody Performance Hall is the first newly constructed theatre to achieve LEED Platinum certification.