Next Thursday, Theatre 3 holds a 50th anniversary luncheon — with special guests writer-actor Camilla Carr (All About Bette), Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey (A Woman of Independent Means) and Ronnie Claire Edwards (best known for The Waltons).

For the occasion, we invited Jac Alder to spread some wisdom about surviving — and succeeding — in the area theater scene. Alder, of course, is the theater’s executive producer director, he’s the longest-lasting theater head in North Texas and he may well be the longest-lasting arts manager in the area, period. Theatre 3 has been around long enough that it’s now North Texas’ chief example of in-the-round staging — a theater configuration first championed by Dallas theater pioneer Margo Jones in the late ’40s-early ’50s.

We talk with Jac about why he and his late wife Norma Young ever started a theater in a hotel ballroom in the first place, how working together as a married couple may be a secret to success in Dallas theater, how Theatre 3 became one of the very few North Texas arts organizations to own its facility and why asking for the right help is crucial.