Fifteen months after the Dallas Theater Center hired him as its new artistic director and a year after his arrival in Texas, Kevin Moriarty is finally staging his first Dallas show.

MELANIE BURFORD/DMN

Kevin Moriarty, artistic director of Dallas Theater Center, has spent the past year getting to know the local theater community.

The Who's Tommy, the world's first rock opera, seems an unlikely choice for the traditionally staid company. But it deliberately heralds a fresh start for our largest resident theater. The 2007-08 season was already set when Mr. Moriarty, 42, came onboard, so he has used the last 12 months to get to know the Dallas theatrical community – something his predecessor, Richard Hamburger, never really did. Now that he's geared up for action, a lot of local artists are learning close up how he operates. And Dallas audiences will at last be able to assess his skills.

"He's been hanging around, hanging around, hanging around," quips friendly competitor Jac Alder, Theatre Three's executive producer-director. "We're finally giving the kid a chance to work."

Over the last year, you could hardly attend a local theater production without running into Mr. Moriarty checking out the local talent. He has frequently met with Dallas artists and civic leaders, even made a pilgrimage to Theater Center founder Paul Baker's Central Texas ranch to pay homage and heal the rift in the local theater community that Mr. Baker's ouster created decades ago.

All this has earned the new artistic boss a lot of good will. But now he is putting his money where his mouth has been. For the first time in many years, for instance, a Theater Center season opener has several Dallas actors in the largest roles.

"Really I'm very excited to see what Kevin will do and to see so many people who have done leading roles for us in this show," Mr. Alder says. "I feel very close to him already, after such a short time."

Mr. Moriarty's debut is especially crucial for the Theater Center because in little more than a year it moves into its high-tech new downtown digs, the Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. The company needs to build a solid audience base for the new, larger quarters.

With Tommy, which opens on Tuesday after a week of previews, Mr. Moriarty is making a stand, and not just about exploring local talent. Since he arrived in Dallas, Mr. Moriarty has been telling anyone who would listen that he wants to make the Theater Center the city's living room – to bring together people all ages and backgrounds, from all parts of town.

This rock 'n' roll classic is designed to grab people, especially a younger audience, that the Theater Center has not been able to attract before.

"Tommy is absolutely relentless, like cutting-edge contemporary drama or Greek tragedy," Mr. Moriarty says. "The members of the Who were 24 years old when they wrote it, full of yearning and intense anger and the desire to be free."

The actors he has cast are racially diverse, beginning with Oak Cliff native Cedric Neal in the title role. Mr. Moriarty has also hired a top-echelon local band, Oso Closo, to play the music, as well as two extraordinary local artists for his chief collaborators, Joel Ferrell as choreographer and Lindy Heath Cabe as musical director.

One reason The Who's Tommy seemed a strange choice for a splashy debut was that the director of the Broadway version, Des McAnuff, put a sanitized, showbiz spin on it. That version toured through Dallas more than a decade ago, and a smaller Dallas company, Uptown Players, revived it only a couple of seasons ago.

Mr. Moriarty, however, has his own original take on the material.

"Yes, it's high-concept," he says. "And I would say that every other production of Tommy has been as well. Certainly the Ken Russell movie was, and even the Who's own concert version from the early '70s had a very individual viewpoint. It's a narrative piece in which the story is never directly stated, so there are all kinds of possibilities."

Mr. Moriarty is focusing on two important things the Broadway version more or less ignored: the show's hard-rock origins and what he feels is its deeply spiritual component.

For inspiration, he went back to the original 1969 concept album and a series of live performances by the band. He emphasizes that a lot of critics believe the Who was the greatest live rock band ever, and he wants his production to reflect that.

He expects the show to rock – and to be loud.

"This piece is filled with instrumental breaks," Mr. Moriarty says. "Every time we hit one of these, we say to the band, 'Go to town.' "

His collaborators are onboard with the concept.

"My No. 1 rule is that it can't look like Broadway choreography, ever," Mr. Ferrell says. "It's much more modern, rougher, with a lot of hip-hop and a lot of street."

The director has also spent a lot of time researching composer Pete Townshend's devotion to Indian mystic and spiritual leader Meher Baba. Many elements in this story of a "deaf, dumb and blind boy" who becomes a Messianic figure derive from the master's teaching. Mr. Baba, for instance, simply stopped speaking for the last 44 years of his life.

Mr. Moriarty has tried to reflect these concerns in the actors' performances, as well as in the production elements. The set that seems to float above a pool of water filling the Theater Center stage is a symbol for the "infinite, shoreless ocean" of the divine consciousness in Meher Baba's system.

"Kevin's right and left brains are really in sync," Mr. Ferrell says, "He takes big ideas and then works them out in detail."

Mr. Moriarty is more modest about himself.

"In some ways, I'm just a traffic cop," he says. "The real truth is that directing is just talking to people and trying to get them to do what I say."

As rehearsals have progressed, Mr. Moriarty's personality and ways of working have begun to come into focus for the artists working with him.

"He's just a ball of energy," says Betsy Wolfe, a New York-based cast member with Broadway experience. "He's definitely the most enthusiastic person I've ever acted for."

Mr. Neal stresses the director's intensity and decisiveness.

"You know from the first words out of his mouth he knows what he wants from the first note of the overture to the last note of the show," he says.

But what if the sometimes-staid Dallas Theater Center audiences are disturbed by the new artistic director's rock 'n' roll debut?

"They can respond in one of two ways," Mr. Neal says. "They can say, 'This is different, this is fun and cool,' or they'll get up and walk out."

The Theater Center is hoping that for anyone who might walk out, a crowd of new people will be clamoring to get in.Plan your life

The Who's Tommy runs through Sept. 28 at the Dallas Theater Center's Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd. $6 to $60. 214-522-8499, www.dallastheatercenter.org.