Dallas, who had pancreatic cancer, was a playwright, musician, teacher, and, most notably, a director. He led Philadelphia’s Freedom Theater, one of the nation’s pre-eminent African American theatres, for 16 years, and worked at New York’s Public Theater and Negro Company, among others, as he directed 25 world premieres. An actress who worked with him for three decades: “For him, joy was serious business, especially as a black man who had grown up in the segregated South. … An actor would start a passage and break into tears, and he would say: ‘There is power in sorrow and trauma, but there’s so much more power in digging deep and asking what brings you joy. Then the tears and the angst will come.’'” – The New York Times