The Forest Theater, the South Dallas venue where Prince, B.B. King and Erykah Badu once played, will reopen on Sunday, Nov. 1, with a neighborhood celebration that ends with its tower and marquee lit for the first time in more than 50 years.
Forest Forward, the organization behind the restoration, announced the event, called the Grand Return, in a release published Monday. It runs from 5:30 to 9 p.m. and is planned to include live music, food trucks, a row of local vendors it calls Vendor Village and a chance to see inside the restored building.
"For generations, the Forest Theater was a place where South Dallas gathered, celebrated and saw itself reflected," Elizabeth Wattley, Forest Forward's CEO, said in the release.
From 1949 to 2008
The theater opened in 1949 and became one of the city's main live entertainment stops, according to the release, hosting Gladys Knight, Ike & Tina Turner and Wilson Pickett among others before it closed in 2008.
The expanded campus is planned to hold a 1,000-person concert hall, a 200-seat black box theater, a 13,000-square-foot creative education lab, recording and podcast studios, a rooftop gathering space, artist classrooms and community meeting rooms. Forest Forward describes the theater as the anchor of a wider effort in the neighborhood that also involves education, housing and job programs.
