Where does a love of theater begin? For thousands of kids around the Tristate, it’s long been with the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati, America’s oldest theater for young audiences. It began in 1924 as a project of the Junior League and became a nonprofit organization in 1947, eventually evolving into a professional theater company.
For decades, buses have delivered schoolchildren to the Taft Theatre in downtown Cincinnati for four productions annually, giving countless kids their first taste of theatrical magic. If they loved it enough to want to do it themselves, Children’s Theatre did its best to meet the need — with classes and training programs for children from ages 6 to 18.
Those classes were offered at the building in Madisonville that also housed administrative offices. But that facility was bursting at the seams and really could not respond to the demand for training and performances. A decision was made to establish a new $6.5 million venue at 4015 Red Bank Road in Hyde Park bordering Fairfax. Operations relocated there early in 2016, and now it’s time to celebrate with an open house on Saturday.
That day will be a chance for the public to drop by between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. and see the possibilities. There will be performances as well as face painting, balloon animals, a photo booth, games, meet-and-greets with characters and tours of the facility. A special treat: Local 12 news anchor Bob Herzog, who’s also been a Children’s Theatre MainStage star, will be there to meet visitors.
The dazzling venue can truly accommodate the fundamentals of teaching young performers and provide them with space to practice and perform. At the same time, Children’s Theatre’s leaders remind everyone that MainStage performances — which drew nearly 100,000 attendees in the most recent season — will continue at the Taft, which can seat approximately 2,200 people. (It’s the same venue that will be home for the Cincinnati Symphony during its 2016-17 season while Music Hall is being renovated.)
But this coming weekend, the focus will be on the new building, which offers studio space for drama, vocal music and dance. There’s a 152-seat theater, as well as a costume shop and expanded rehearsal space for those MainStage productions that eventually land on the Taft’s downtown stage. It’s also where Children’s Theatre can assemble its touring productions.
Walking around the brand-new facility (Children’s Theatre purchased a warehouse and made it their own with considerable adaptation) with Managing Director Kim Deaton and Artistic Director Roderick Justice, it’s easy to see why they’re proud of what’s been put together.
The Ralph and Patricia Corbett Showtime Stage has already been rented to film a Totes commercial. The Corbett Foundation, a major supporter of many local arts organizations, played a big role in making this all possible, as did philanthropist Edyth B. Lindner, who was a supporter of Children’s Theatre for many years.
Studios are wired with modern tech—nology and creatively named: Four vocal music rooms are called “Do… Re… Mi,” “Coda,” “La La La” and “Fermata.” (The latter is a term for a musical symbol indicating the prolonging of a note.) Dance studios are labeled “Body Electric” (from the 1980 movie Fame) and “5… 6… 7… 8” (a countdown to start a number, as in A Chorus Line). Drama students can learn skills in rooms marked “To Be” and “Not To Be” (recalling a soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet).
The facility also features two large dance studios that can serve as rehearsal space with tour sets that can be brought in via a loading dock. There’s a small scene shop, a spray room for painting, a costume shop with laundry facilities and multilevel storage for hundreds of costumes — rails hung with animal costumes, glitz and glamor, pants, suits and more, as well as boxes of shoes (“Ladies Character Boots”).
Behind the north wall is about 4,000 square feet of unfinished space that can be used for set storage now and more growth when needed. There’s also ample office space for Children’s Theatre’s staff, from Deaton’s orderly office to the creatively chaotic space that Justice inhabits with a desk he made for himself, festooned with artifacts from his grandmother’s home, including a rhinoceros head with a red clown nose on its horn.
Asked what the new facility means for Children’s Theatre, Deaton says, “It’s really a two-part answer. First, it’s allowing us to do existing programming more efficiently. We just did not have the space in our old facility. We were trying to rehearse our MainStage and our touring productions and to do our classes in one space. We couldn’t do it.
“Second, we needed to respond to the incredible growth we’ve experienced in terms of what we’re able to offer to the community,” she says. “Now we can expand things that we were already doing. In our first session here we’ve seen a 340 percent increase in class attendance!
“We knew the demand was there; we just couldn’t accommodate it. Now we’re able to offer not only more classes, but also a bigger variety and things like costuming and puppet theater.”
She also points out that the Corbett Showtime Stage and other venues make it possible for parents and grandparents to watch their children’s hard work.
“We’ll still do MainStage productions at the Taft,” Deaton is quick to say. “But we can have smaller shows or longer runs here. We can do our preschool series and young adult series. We can do more original work in that theater, and we can expand the ages to which we’re reaching — even preschool groups and home schoolers.”
Deaton and Justice both say they love the opportunity to interact with the community. They’re bringing in groups like dancers from Cincinnati Ballet, artists from Malton Gallery and images from Fran Carlisle Photography.
Justice says that 98 Degrees was there recently rehearsing for their tour. “That was fun!”
Yes, Children’s Theatre is definitely turning up the heat.
CHILDREN’S THEATRE OF CINCINNATI holds an open house at its new home on Saturday, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. More info: thechildrenstheatre.com.
