Theatre audiences will get their first peek at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre’s new Vancity Culture Lab studio theatre when Blackbird Theatre brings its production of Pinter’s Briefs to the venue December 3 to 6. But the official unveiling of the renovated venue is still months away.
Crews are putting the finishing touches this week on the three-storey addition to the site, which houses the new studio theatre, washrooms, and administrative offices. But work on the original theatre, to be renamed the historic theatre, continues.
The 99-year-old venue has been under renovation since August 2007, and executive director Heather Redfern admitted the completion date of the project has been slipping.
“I’m not going to give a completion date because it seems to be a moving target,” she said. “It seems like every time they tell us it’s going to be ready for this time, something happens and they say no, it’s going to be a month later. I’m not even going to guess. We are crossing our fingers and hoping that we’ll be able to do our shows in May in there, but we just don’t know.”
A number of shows scheduled to run in the historic theatre in the new year have been moved. Ronnie Burkett’s Billy Twinkle, Requiem for a Golden Boy and the French Theatre of the National Arts Centre collaboration with Théâtre de la Vieille 17 and Théâtre de Sable Maïta will be at the Waterfront Theatre in January and February; Montréal Danse will perform at the Michael J. Fox Theatre in March; and the Theatre Conspiracy/Rumble Productions coproduction Blackbird will now have an extra-long run in the much smaller Vancity Culture Lab in March.
“We are all over town,” said Redfern, who insisted the Cultch’s finances are secure, despite the added cost of hall rentals.
“We do have a contingency for the project and so this is part of that,” she said. “Our operating budget is horrible because we have no revenue from rental or anything, but we knew that was going to happen and we were able to plan for that.”
Source: Straight
