Stage photo by Mark Thompson for Unsplash

Earlier this month, one of Adrian Hall’s friends announced on social media that Hall died at age 95. The deceased was a force in Dallas’ theater community. He was so influential, not only in our city but also in local theater scenes across the country, that the New York Times dedicated space for his obituary in its Feb. 23 print edition, calling him “a visionary devoted to regional theaters.”

According to the Times, Hall helped to solidify a regional theater movement started under Dallas’ famous Margo Jones, the revolutionary stage director for whom an experimental theater at SMU is named.

Hall led the Dallas Theater Center from 1983 to 1989.

Here’s how KERA, which profiled Hall in 2016, describes his tenure:

“During his time at the helm in Dallas, Hall had the Kalita Humphreys Theater re-configured, established a professional acting company with 15 artists, pulled the Dallas Theater Center out of its commercial touring series at the Majestic Theater and built its Arts District Theater (designed by Saturday Night Live scenic artist Eugene Lee). Standing where the Winspear Opera House now is, the metal warehouse (the ‘tin shed’) planted the Theater Center in the then-still-unformed, downtown Arts District. It was Hall’s aim for the future.”

He said then that the theater district should be where the people are. And now, his vision is a reality, as that area serves as Dallas’ artistic hub.

Theater reporters describe Hall’s time in Dallas as tumultuous.

His outsized personality sometimes led to clashes with theater boards.

According to the Times, his reluctance to set his full season in advance was one source of friction in Rhode Island, where he ran the Trinity Repertory Company at the same time he was overseeing the Dallas Theater Center (he was the first to lead two theater conglomerates at one time, KERA reported).

His resistance was making it hard to sell subscriptions. The tiff with the Trinity board led him to leave Providence and devote his time to Dallas, only to have the DTC relationship end when he clashed with the board there the same year, 1989.

“Every once in a while,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1989, “an Adrian Hall will meet an unmovable object such as the Dallas Theater Center board.”

After all that, he became a freelance director.

A 1983 study of Hall’s life and career by Jeannie Marlin Woods is called “Theatre to Change Men’s Souls.”

Hall died in a Tyler hospital on Feb. 4.