Curtain is rising on The Rep’s new space
$14.2M project transforms former bakery into theater
Capital Repertory Theatre’s first-ever home of its own sits just four blocks north of where the company performed for 40 years, but it is miles into the future.
The sound and lighting system cost $1.2 million. The 30 color-changing lights in the rigging are all LED, meaning they’re markedly cooler for actors. There are 14 public toilets in restrooms on the lobby level and more upstairs, where a VIP lounge and offices are located, as well as actor common areas so spacious that they boast six private dressing rooms. Never in The Rep’s history has it ever been able to offer even one dedicated private dressing room.
The HVAC system can completely purge and refresh the air in the 28,000-squarefoot building within 15 minutes. A setup in
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I’d say we got 95 percent of what we wanted. You only do this once every half-century, so you need to do it right.” Philip Morris, Proctors CEO
the basement will keep the sidewalk free of snow and ice. The wooden ceilings in the lobby were blasted with walnut shells.
“Walnut shells!” said Philip Morris, CEO of Proctors in Schenectady, The Rep’s parent company, during a tour Tuesday of the new Capital Repertory Theatre, accompanied by the company’s producing artistic director, Maggie Mancinellicahill.
Significant effort went into maintaining as much of the historic character as possible of the new home, at 251 N. Pearl St. Partly it was an aesthetic choice in favor of a rustic and industrial look, partly a requirement of being awarded the millions of dollars of historic tax credits that made the $14.2 million project financially feasible. Among the concessions: leaving intact in the basement remnants of the brick ovens from the building ’s original use as a Nabisco bakery. (It was more recently a warehouse for an electrical company.) To restore the original wooden ceilings and remove lead paint and a century of grime from what is now The Rep’s main lobby, contractors tried a variety of abrasives. Crushed walnut shells were found the most effective and least damaging, Morris said.
About four years after The Rep formally identified the prospective new home it intended to buy — the culmination of a long search that took Morris and Mancinelli-cahill to two dozen or so properties around the region — and eight months after the theater was originally projected to open, the new Capital Repertory Theatre will be formally introduced to the media and select supporters on Wednesday morning.
“I still sometimes can’t believe this is really here, that it’s ours and it’s finished,” said Mancinelli-cahill. She has run
The Rep, the only member of the national League of Resident Theatres between Manhattan and Syracuse, since 1995, when she was named successor to co-founder Bruce Bouchard. In the 25 years since, Mancinellicahill has produced, and often herself directed, award-winning shows at 111 N. Pearl St., The Rep’s base since after its first season in 1981.
Located in a former grocery store beneath a concrete parking deck, 111 N. Pearl had charm but vastly more problems. Structural columns stood at the edges of its stage, giving obstructed views to about 25 seats. The ventilation system inside the theater was loud, meaning it was not uncommon for Mancinelli-cahill to ask a patron sitting in the back row to flip the switch to shut it off during performances. Only one public restroom was on the main level, the rest down a curving concrete staircase. The basement, where costumes were made and stored, was prone to flooding. The bill for renovations and repairs was at least $4 million,
but The Rep didn’t want to put that kind of money into a building it didn’t own, and the landlord wouldn’t sell it except as part a package that included other of his downtown properties.
The new building addresses all of those problems and offers additional amenities. Among them is a second theater. The black-box space, on the second
floor, will be both rehearsal room and flexible theater for performances. With a capacity of about 100 people, the room is envisioned by Mancinelli-cahill as a venue for adventurous theatrical productions. “We really want to be able to push the envelope with what we can do in here,” she said as she surveyed the room during Tuesday’s tour.
Though the main theater at 251 N. Pearl has 303 fixed seats, barely more than at 111 N. Pearl, it feels much more open and commodious, and yet it’s also deceptively more intimate: The distance from the last row of seats to the front of the stage is only 24 feet, or 8 feet closer than in the old home, Mancinelli-cahill said. The new stage is the same depth as the old but 10 feet wider. A garage door from the street to backstage will allow full-sized pieces of sets to be rolled in; for The Rep’s 40 years at 111 N. Pearl, designers were limited to creating sets that could be taken apart sufficiently to fit through the same front entrance as audiences used.
When those first 300 people, or even 100 people, will be allowed to experience live entertainment is uncertain.
“We have to follow the science, and we have to follow Equity,” Mancinelli-cahill said, referring to the union representing most actors in The Rep’s productions. Equity has strict rules about pandemic-related actor safety. Still unclear are future state rules allowing the return of live entertainment in indoor venues and audience willingness to return to theaters.
Given that uncertainty, the new facility was outfitted with capabilities not originally envisioned, including a state-of-theart digital projector that will allow for movie screenings and areas for cameras to be set up to shoot productions to be streamed online.
Morris said that of the long wish list Mancinelli-cahill and he had for the new Capital Repertory Theatre, “I’d say we got 95 percent of what we wanted.” Morris added, “You only do this once every half-century, so you need to do it right.”