Late last spring, I took my 15-year-old niece, Hannah, to an event at the Winspear Opera House, just one of the splendid venues in the AT&TPerformingArtsCenter. We left her home in Far North Dallas early enough to have dinner at OneArtsPlaza. After I paid the bill, we strolled across the campus of Booker T. Washington.
We passed a grubby young man dramatically stroking a wooden wand in the air. His head tossed back and forth, then side-to-side like a mad man as he practiced conducting an orchestra. A group of thespians sat under a tree and listened as a young man read from a script. The afternoon sun lit his face like a peach-colored spotlight. He only managed to recite, “To be or not to be” before a bearded student with a saxophone snuck up behind him and blasted a faintly discernible jazz riff. They wrapped tattooed arms around the disheveled Hamlet and pulled him to the ground and collapsed in laughter. My niece was spellbound.
“I want to live here,” Hannah said. “Downtown Dallas is amazing.” Check out the rest here.