Meet the Pop-Ups for May and June
Announcing Our Newest Pop-Up Grant Recipients
TACA is thrilled to spotlight three exceptional Pop-Up Grant recipients! These dynamic productions celebrate a wide range of artistic expression, inviting us to rediscover familiar stories through fresh perspectives and immerse ourselves in the creativity of the Dallas arts community.
Plague Mask Players & AT&T Performing Arts Center
Alice: A Variation on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
Unrestricted Grant: $2,500 Pop-Up Grant
Artist Bonus Funds: $5,000 Artist Bonus Funding
Alice: A Variation on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a new take on Carroll’s classic tales, crafting a story of a young girl named Alice Pleasance Liddell. Overcoming her parents’ stifling indifference, Alice discovers her creativity through adventures on the other side of the looking glass alongside an ensemble of emotionally complicated storytellers.
Plague Mask Players was founded as an inclusive outlet for professional performers to share their craft while disregarding gender, age, and race in the virtual world of 2020. In 2025, they have built a strong community founded on the values of empowering, supporting, and developing theatre artists in Dallas. Plague Mask Players was created to love and support a diverse community of artists and foster their growth through theatrical productions, educational opportunities, and innovative programming. Keep in touch with Plague Mask Players on Facebook and Instagram.
The Elevator Project is a series of performances by Dallas-based arts groups, presented on the AT&T Performing Arts Center campus. The series provides performance space in the Dallas Arts District to local talent, while giving audiences exposure to the vibrant arts scene around them. Drawing from all genres of performing arts, the projects are chosen through an annual submission process and curated by an independent panel of arts professionals. The Elevator Project was created in 2014 by the AT&T Performing Arts Center and is presented with generous support from the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture.
There is no better place to explore and experience live performing arts than the AT&T Performing Arts Center in the Dallas Arts District. On its vibrant 10-acre downtown campus, the nonprofit Center operates three of the nation’s finest performance venues: the Winspear Opera House (the best stage for Broadway in North Texas), Wyly Theatre, Strauss Square and the welcoming public green space, Sammons Park. Keep in touch with AT&T Performing Arts Center on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.
Soul Rep Theatre Company
Pretty Fire
Unrestricted Grant: $2,500 Pop-Up Grant
Artist Bonus Funds: $5,000 Artist Bonus Funding
Pretty Fire is a one-woman show that explores beautiful, funny, dark, and exhilarating vignettes tracing Woodard’s life from a premature birth to a joyous maturity at eleven years old. This play is a “rare autobiographical tour de fource” painting one of the most positive pictures of the Black experience on stage. It is a powerful exploration of three generations of family love, struggle and triumph.
Soul Rep Theatre Company exists to protect and progress the Black Theatre experience through enlightening entertainment. Their vision is to cultivate the next generation of theatre artists and patrons by establishing an institution committed to quality theatre and arts education. Keep in touch with Soul Rep Theatre Company on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Temple Emanu-El & Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Defiant Requiem – Verdi at Terezin
Unrestricted Grant: $2,500 Pop-Up Grant
Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin tells the true story of courageous Jewish prisoners who performed the Verdi Requiem at Theresienstadt Concentration Camp during World War II, affirming humanity amid utter degradation. The concert drama, created by Maestro Murry Sidlin, included the performance of the magnificent Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi and video and narrated testimony by Theresienstadt choir members and conductor Raphael Schachter (1905-1945). Learn more about Temple Emanu-El Choir.
Guided by internationally renowned Music Director Fabio Luisi, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra delivers uplifting, entertaining musical experiences and innovative, enriching educational opportunities—both within the inspiring Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center and across the community. Keep in touch with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
WHAT’S A POP-UP GRANT?
We started our Pop-Up Grant program to shine a light on arts organizations creating programming that demonstrates exceptional quality, innovation, and accessibility safely, without skimping on the creative impact.
HOW DO YOU PICK THE RECIPIENTS?
Grant recipients are meticulously selected via a nomination process that incorporates over 60 anonymous volunteers. Nominations are made each month and a selection committee meets afterward to determine grantees based on our criteria above.