by Eleanor Stacey
I have big news.
On April 18, The Civic Theatre will close its doors to allow the City to repair the roof. This process is expected to take up to five months. During this time we will also prepare for our own renovations, and while the full schedule isn’t finished yet we expect to finally undertake our larger capital project, dividing our circa-1935 auditorium into three spaces. The future Civic Theatre will still have the original stage that we all know and love, while also boasting two smaller theatres where the very back rows of seats used to be.
This change will allow NCTS to program three things at the same time, enabling us to cater to many audience tastes and interests at once. As a result, our financial future is also expected to be much brighter — more theatres means that more audiences will walk through our doors each week, and our dependence on grants and other fundraising will diminish as a result. Our goal is to be self-sufficient and to keep ticket prices affordable while also offering diverse cultural programs and services in our community too. This development will enable NCTS to be more stable than we have ever been as a single screen, ensuring that our community has a cinema for many years to come.
Of course, we also know that this exciting news comes with the disappointment of not having The Civic open for a while. Again.
I can’t deny that this idea also comes with some residual sadness. In fact, The Civic has now closed down twice: once for the two years before NCTS was formed, and again in 2020 when the COVID-19 lockdown began and for much of the two years after that until all restrictions on cinemas were lifted in April 2022.
As I write this, I can’t help but feel a real sense of déjà vu, as I’m home from work with kids on spring break, thinking about cashflow and how to navigate the financial reality of the physical heart of our organization being shut down for a while. But I guess experience has its benefits. NCTS has been here before: when we had to navigate mandated closures, we decided on one clear path, which was to remain visible and relevant, and rise again when it was over. This again seems like a good plan.
This next time has much better things to offer. After all, there is no public state of emergency, and our closure is for all the right reasons. We are excited about what is to come, and of course, nervous about how much there is to do, but we have a great team who will navigate with knowledge and experience. From our board of directors and staff to our architectural and building teams, this project is in good hands.
It’s so important to remember that even though The Civic Theatre will be out of the equation for a bit, NCTS is still a vibrant and busy cultural operator. With 225 Hall Street boasting Reo’s Video and regular film screenings every week, the upcoming second iteration of the STOODIS Indigenous Film Festival at the end of May (watch for venue announcements!), exciting plans in the Screen-Based Industry Program and Kootenay Regional Film Commission, as well as many other projects and initiatives in development, we are anything but dark. Watch for many exciting new events coming up this spring and summer at civictheatre.ca.
As we anticipate the kick-off of this major undertaking, I am really looking forward to sharing our progress with our community. This isn’t a sit-back-and-wait kind of project, because The Civic Theatre belongs to us all in Nelson. We plan to write updates frequently and look forward to taking you through the designs, plans, developing spaces and stories as this project begins to gain momentum and form into the new Civic Theatre. There will be lots of opportunities to learn more about what we are doing and to help us build the very best future venue for our community.
Much more to come soon. In the meantime, we are forming a frequently asked questions section about the Capital Campaign to share on our website. If you have a question, please let us know by emailing it to info@civictheatre.ca.
Eleanor Stacey is the executive director of Nelson Civic Theatre Society, which runs The Civic Theatre and 225 Hall Street (The Shoebox Theatre and Reo’s Video).