Part 1: The shows will go on with renovated stages

By Mike Desmond
(Image above: The view from Queen Street. Artist Rendering – Unity Design Studio)

(Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories by Mike Desmond on changes at the Shaw Festival. Part 2 tomorrow will look at the changing audience for live theater).

Theater will stay on stage in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 2026, although on different stages in different buildings.

• Remember the Court House Theatre? It’s back.
  
• Enjoyed the Royal George? There’s a handicapped accessible replacement on the way.
  
• Remember the Spiegeltent? It’s back in Belgium.
  
• Thinking about seeing a play in Toronto next winter? The Shaw will be there to offer a show for the next few seasons.
  
• Remember the health problems of the pandemic. The festival is dealing with costs from cast members more willing to prioritize their health.

They’re all parts of the big changes underway in the Niagara Region theater center, as times change and theater changes.

In fact, the Shaw Festival is inviting patrons, neighbours, artists, staff and friends to drop in for one final visit before the current Royal George closes its doors and renovations begin. On Jan. 31 between 1 and 4 p.m., there will be a free community drop-in during which visitors will be able to explore the lobby, auditorium, bar and box office and sign a farewell guest book that will be displayed in the new theater.

For Shaw Executive Director and CEO Tim Jennings, this is all the continuing recovery from the  COVID shutdown and dealing with the rising number of customers coming into a town which is a tourist destination on the way to Niagara Falls.

That includes the $150 million fund drive, with $35 million of that coming from the Province of Ontario for the new Royal George.

When it’s all done, the Shaw will be very different, from the new Royal George to the new production and residential complex adjacent to the Festival Theatre.

If you have ever attended a show in the Royal George, you may have wondered about the small building next to it, and that’s part of Jennings’ problems in the Shaw complex.

It’s one of four buildings around Niagara-on-the-Lake in which costumes are built and maintained and shuttled around.

The new complex next to the Festival will solve that.

“This area will have all these specialty shops, craft rooms for boots and shoes. We use something like 800 pairs of shoes a year. So, there’s one person whose whole job is just fitting and taking care or shoes,” Jennings said.

Now, all will be in what was the Upper Canada Lodge seniors complex, along with performance space, residential space and teaching space.

Jennings says the residential space is important because of the cost savings to the festival.

For many years, the Shaw has rented space for performers and production workers and then sublet to the workers who must decamp to the tourist town from wherever they live.

“We can’t afford to keep subletting houses from people for $7 or $8-thousand a month and then giving them to the artists for $200 week,” he said.

Instead, Jennings said those artists will be moving to the new complex.

“We’ve converted the first two buildings on the left into 30 apartments and they’re all self-contained units, studios, one-bedroom, two-bedrooms, some accessible, really fantastic range of modern, really cool. They feel very New York apartment, very cool spaces for artists to hang out.”

There will be places for young people to stay when they come and see how a theater company operates, a continuing space problem.

On occasion, he says the festival has reached across the border and rented short-term dorm space from Niagara University for young, visiting theater aspirants.

Jennings says there is another aspect to the new costume shops, basically tied with the problems of the Royal George: accessibility, this time, for the workers.

“Many of them gave been with the company for years and so they’re starting to find climbing stairs to the second floor a little harder. Some of them actually have real mobility issues. And this building is all one floor and it’s all designed with all of the things that will make it much easier for our teams to stay longer in their jobs.”

Clearly, that also means their skills won’t roll out the door and away.

Accessibility is the major issue with the Royal George and with the Court House.

Both are elderly, with the Court House going back to Pre-Confederation Canada, opening in 1848, and the Royal George was built quickly during World War I, when thousands of Canadians were being trained in a military base for the trenches in France.

The difference?

The Court House is accessible,

“It has an elevator and the new configuration is quite accessible,” said Jennings.

The Royal George has traditionally provided somewhat better sight lines than the Court House, although that may not be true in the revamped new incarnation.

The problem is stairs, both the winding stairway to the basement and the stairs up from the lobby to go into the actual theater and another stairs to the balcony.

For some theater-goers, it’s difficult or impossible to use.

Jennings says when the new and slightly larger Royal George opens, it will be far different, from a better lobby to the seating arrangement,

There will be 350 seats and all of those rows will be accessible.

“The seating in the room, there’s 25 accessible wheelchair accessible spots in the building,” the CEO explained.

The theater will be re-configured, with fewer seats on the main floor and more in the balcony, which will be pushed closer to the stage.

There will be elevators to that balcony.

There will also be some accessible parking spaces outside.

The new Royal George will also have a loading dock, as does the Albright-Knox-Gundlach in Buffalo, making it much easier for production crews.

That was a longstanding complaint of Janne Sirén , who was AKG Peggy Pierce Elfvin director when that design and reconstruction was underway, citing security, convenience and issues to carrying artwork around.

Jennings also deals with the impact of shifts in health attitudes.

“Since the pandemic, you know, the number of understudies that we’ve had to use has doubled. I’ve used more understudies this year than I used in the 20 years before the pandemic,” he said.

It’s not just the use of understudies, who are often company members with more significant roles in other shows, there are costs.

“We have to pay them to be on call and then more when they go on stage. And, we also have to make sure they have a costume, which, frankly, is a lot of money. So, depending, they may not need just one costume. If they are understudying five parts, they need five costumes. So there’s often lots of different expenses that go with more regular understudy use.”

Meanwhile, the 100-year-old Spiegeltent, or “mirror tent,” that was brought over from Belgium for the 2023 and following season for special performances, has returned to Europe.

Visitors to NOTL will start getting a look at the 2026 changes on April 2 when the (new) curtain rises on “Sleuth” in the revived Court House Theatre.