SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
It’s almost time for Varscona Theatre’s glorious fifth act
The story has never lacked for drama or conflict or motivation. Setbacks? Suspense? Check.
Admittedly, there were some slow spots in Act III that could have used a rewrite. That’s the trouble with dream plays involving fundraising and bureaucracies. But now, almost exactly a year after a big action scene with a wrecking ball last June — and 12 years after the Varscona Theatre’s consortium of companies began to dream the dream — we have the Act V resolution for The Varscona Story: A jubilant ensemble finale.
For the first time in a dozen years in this theatre town, a new theatre — built from the brick walls, memories and spirit of an old one, and on the same footprint — opens its doors Saturday night in Old Strathcona — on time and on budget (unlike some bridges we could mention).
Next week, the new Varscona gets its first full-run production, the premiere of Teatro La Quindicina’s new comedy For the Love of Cynthia.
The new $7.5-million Varscona is an intimate theatre, designed for and devoted exclusively to — wait for it — theatre. In a chamber lined with three brick walls from the old theatre and wooden beams, a rake of 205 cushioned seats hugs an elegant curvilinear stage with a traditional red velvet curtain.
It’s not a convertible, multi-use black box; you can’t take out the seats to have corporate conventions, or wedding receptions.
“It’s a true classical theatre,” says Group2’s Allan Partridge, the wry and soulful Scots-born architect who had just come off the Capitol Theatre restoration when he first met his demanding, mouthy, cash-strapped artist clients in 2012.
The Varscona’s closest relatives are cosy little Broadway and West End theatres where you instinctively lean into the stage. As Partridge says, “it’s all about connectivity between performer and patron.”
“They challenged us every step of the way,” Partridge says appreciatively of the artists from the Varscona’s resident companies.
Actors, directors, artistic directors and a playwright who weren’t shy about spelling out what they wanted, in terms both practical and poetic.
“It took three years of changing design options, creative solutions to budget woes. But I got to know their DNA,” Partridge says. “And I like to think their DNA is expressed in the solution, that the theatre speaks to their vision.”
If “architecture is frozen music” as the writer Goethe famously said, Partridge considers himself the conductor, not the composer. His artist clients told him “it’s not about splash. Here’s what we live with now. Don’t lose the feeling of it; lose the problems.”
That feeling, cherished by actors and audiences, was all about “warmth and intimacy,” as Teatro artistic director Jeff Haslam, puts it.
“That’s what people loved in the old (176-seat, seven-row) Varscona.
“Allan was so clever about finding ways to ensure that in a new configuration. We wanted the experience of people in the last three rows to be the same as for people in the first three rows.”
John Hudson, Shadow Theatre artistic director and Varscona executive director, echoes the thought: “We’re in a bubble together with the audience; we’re creating a world that the audience will share.”
Government funding — $2 million from the city (the first to commit, under former mayor Stephen Mandel), $2 million from the province plus $1.9 million from the federal heritage department — took years to assemble. Production costs went up; the Canadian dollar went down. A 60-seat balcony was relegated to the archive of might-have-beens. The exterior lost some of its glass and gloss accoutrements.
“Things got scaled back. But we never once compromised the notion of an intimate theatre chamber,” Partridge says. “That was untouchable. Sacrosanct — one dollar more on the exterior would have meant one dollar less for the chamber.”
The final construction budget was adamantine, “$4,965,000, not a penny more!”
Demolition of the undistinguished 1956 ex-firehall, repurposed as a theatre in 1982, was a leap into the unknown.
“There were no blueprints,” Partridge says. “We had no idea of what was under the floor, in the walls, behind the ceilings. And the unforeseen drives up the costs.”
Nothing, from some turn-of-thecentury dungeon to a buried fire truck, would have surprised him.
“It’s easy to do a $14-million theatre; it’s a lot more challenging to do a $7.5-million theatre.”
A satisfying real-life irony emerged.
“Financial constraints became advantages,” Haslam says, applauding both the architect and the building company PCL for their unflagging creativity. “We couldn’t grow as high, so using wood instead of steel became possible. And that opened up a beautiful rehearsal hall under the seats that can double as a lobby.”
A point of pride with Partridge, the warm-hued wooden beams of the theatre infrastructure — esthetically pleasing in tandem with old bricks discovered under rotting drywall — are from B.C., reclaimed from pine-beetle damage.
Shadow, Teatro, Die-Nasty, That’s Terrific!, Grindstone and the rest have spent this past year across the street at the Backstage Theatre, the storage space they outfitted for $350,000 at the north end of the ATB Financial Arts Barns. All the while, they’ve been dreaming. And those dreams weren’t grandiose.
“A chamber with comfortable seats,” Shadow leading lady Coralie Cairns says, identifying a few of her favourite things.
“A roof that doesn’t leak. Bathrooms that don’t stink. A lobby big enough for a full-house audience so you don’t have to go outside at intermission or stand on the stage.”
The thought of a box office that isn’t, literally, a hole cut in a wall warms her heart. So does the jaunty angle of the new front door.
“It’s welcoming; I love that it’s on the corner,” Cairns says of the entrance to the lobby that now extends to the street.
Nostalgia, and making do, have limits. The Varscona artists have had two decades — they took over the flimsy crumbling city-owned structure in 1996 — to be troopers vis-a-vis freezing in winter, broiling in summer, toxic vapours from the plumbing, iffy electrics.
By 2009, Hudson estimates they had spent more than $300,000 on stop-gap repairs, including the perpetual roof leak over the stage.
Suckers for tradition, like all theatre people, the Varscona artists are delighted by the coexistence of old and new in their new wood-scented home. The signature translucent blue tower, where fire hoses once hung, is still there. The outline stain of the old seats is still visible stage right on one of the brick walls. Many of the bricks are stamped Medicine Hat, from its old brickworks. Downstairs in the green room, PCL fought to save the signature mural, with autographs by everyone from Fiona Reid to Mike Myers.
“It looks like a great old building,” Teatro playwright Stewart Lemoine said. “A new building — with enormous character already.”
Haslam, whose first pro gig out of theatre school was on the old stage in 1986 loves that “you can put your hand on a wall that was there before, something you were a part of 25 years ago. … You look down the hallway from the stage door to the dressing rooms, the exposed brick, and it feels like an old Broadway house then.”
Hudson gets choked up whenever he’s in the lobby, in natural light from the front windows.
“A real place!” he marvels. “A real place that’s gonna come alive! I’ve spent 12 years of my life working toward this.”
Haslam sighs happily, “we’re certainly poster children for commitment.”
Davina Stewart, a Teatro and Die-Nasty star who works in Shadow administration — these are all multitaskers — is charmed by the nose-prints on the outside windows.
“It’s inviting! People are drawn to the theatre.”
As for the chamber, “it feels really warm, really close; you feel very connected with the audience.”
They always had that, an audience; the Varscona was never a case of “build it and see who comes.”
Since 1996, it has become one of the busiest venues in the country, 300-plus performances a year. It was that kind of success that inspired a mid-’90s question: “Is there any way we could make the lobby bigger?”
Full houses of 176 regularly squeezed out at intermission into a lobby that held 50. As Lemoine remembers, the fateful next thought followed: “We should get a new theatre to go with the lobby.”
Years have elapsed, hundreds of meetings, thousands of volunteer hours by the persistent visionaries of the Varscona. But finally it’s happened. “Everybody built it together,” says Haslam. “And it’s everyone’s to enjoy.”