The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts is a theater in Houston, Texas, USA. Opened to the public in 2002, the theater is located downtown on the edge of the Houston Theater District. Hobby Center features 60-foot-high glass walls with views of Houston's skyscrapers, Tranquility Park and Houston City Hall. The Hobby Center is named for former Texas lieutenant governor and Houston businessman, William P. Hobby, Jr., whose family foundation donated the naming gift for the center. The center replaced the former Houston Music Hall and Sam Houston Coliseum.
Built by the general contractor Lyda Swinerton, it was designed by architects Robert A. M. Stern and Morris Architects. Stern was inspired by legendary theatre designers Herts & Tallant, who practiced in Manhattan during the early twentieth century. The major building materials are limestone, brick, painted steel columns, glazed curtain wall and standing seam metal roof. Two theaters in the center were constructed specifically for theater and musical performances.
- Sarofim Hall, a 2,650-seat theater acoustically designed for touring Broadway productions, is home to "Theatre Under the Stars." Golden latticework surrounds the hall, while multi-storied, gold-leaf columns contrast with midnight blue walls. The Joe and Lee Jamail Celestial Dome Ceiling features twinkling fiber optic stars that replicate the Texas night sky. The theatre has three tiers: orchestra, mezzanine, and upper gallery.
- Zilkha Hall, jewel box 500-seat hall showcases the ensembles of the Uniquely Houston program, the only performing arts series of its kind in the country. The series fosters artistic and administrative growth for smaller and mid sized performing arts groups in the Houston metropolitan area. They include the Psophonia Dance Company, the Maggini String Orchestra, and Ars Lyrica Houston, to name but three.
Two significant works of art were commissioned for the center. American painter Sol LeWitt's mural "Wall Drawing 2002" serves as the focal point of the Grand Lobby. British-born sculptor Tony Cragg's two-part bronze "In Minds" mimics human profiles outside at Hines Plaza.
Famous quotes containing the words performing arts, hobby, center, performing and/or arts:
“More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.”
—Uta Hagen (b. 1919)
“My hobby more and more is likely to be common school education, or universal education.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I am the center of the world, but the control panel seems to be somewhere else.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Bottom. What is Pyramus? A lover or a tyrant?
Quince. A lover that kills himself, most gallant, for love.
Bottom. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)