The Forest Theater lit up South Dallas again Sunday night, reopening with a gospel performance by Tamela Mann, a surprise appearance from Erykah Badu and the first relighting of its tower and marquee in more than 50 years.
The celebration, billed as the Grand Return, marked the end of a $75 million restoration led by the nonprofit Forest Forward, theGrio reported. The theater sits at 1918 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and had not hosted an event in nearly 20 years, according to CultureMap Dallas.
From segregated movie house to Black cultural anchor
The Forest opened in 1949 as a whites-only venue and began serving Black audiences by 1956 as the neighborhood changed. Its stage later hosted Prince, B.B. King, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Ike & Tina Turner and Wilson Pickett. Badu ran it as the Black Forest Theater in the early 2000s, helping revive it before it closed in 2008. The building faced possible demolition in 2015 before preservationists pushed for its protection, and it was gifted to Forest Forward in 2017.
The rebuilt campus now spans 66,000 square feet, with a 1,000-person concert hall, a 200-seat black box theater, a creative education lab, recording and podcast studios, artist classrooms and community spaces. The City of Dallas approved an $8 million grant for the project in 2024, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported.
Mann, a Grammy winner and Dallas-Fort Worth native, sang "God Provides" at the request of Forest Forward CEO Elizabeth Wattley, a song that carried Wattley through years of fundraising. Mann told theGrio the theater had been "put back together by our people" for all people. Local artists on hand included rapper Big Tuck, who grew up around the corner, and singer Daraja Superstar.
Historic Black venues have often been lost to neglect or redevelopment, and South Dallas carries the scars of redlining and highway construction that split its neighborhoods. A working theater with studios and classrooms gives the next generation of Dallas artists a place to create close to home. The test now, as theGrio noted, is whether those programs take root in a community that still faces economic challenges.
