Theatre Three (Dallas)

Theatre Three (sometimes styled Theatre3) is a Dallas theatrical company established in 1961 by Norma Young, Jac Alder, Esther Ragland, and Roy Dracup.

Originally working from the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel,[1] the theater moved to a location at 2211 Main Street in the Deep Ellum area,[2] eventually settling in The Quadrangle in 1969.

And she convinced three others to join her: Esther Ragland, Robert Dracup and Jac Alder, who had met Young when she cast him in a community theater production of Pirandello’s Six Characters In Search of an Author.

Theatre Three’s name was chosen because of Young’s belief that for theater to succeed, it required three essential elements: author, actors and audience.

Van Kaplan — then the head of Fort Worth’s Casa Manana, now the executive producer of the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera — advised Alder not to pull the plug.

Jac Alder remained with the theatre and continued to serve as the Executive Producer-Director in charge of both artistic and administrative affairs until his death, due to respiratory failure, on May 22, 2015.

As of that date, Alder had been the longest-serving artistic director of an American resident theater company in history and in July 2011, he was awarded AEA Life Membership card by Actors’ Equity.