The city’s vibrant theater scene will crank up another notch as the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati (TCT), America’s oldest professional theater for young audiences, is about to move into a historic space: Over-the-Rhine’s Emery Theater. It’s a homecoming of sorts, since TCT’s shows for children were produced there from 1949 to 1969. In 1970, it moved to the Taft Theatre on Fifth Street, where thousands of local schoolkids came annually on yellow school buses to see four kid-friendly performances.
Now, thanks to a $51.5 million renovation of the historic Emery space, TCT will move into what it’s calling “the most technologically advanced proscenium-style theater in the United States.” With a Gilded Age pedigree, the Emery opened in 1912 as a new home for the 17-year-old Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Leopold Stokowski, the CSO’s legendary music director from 1909 to 1912, compared the venue to New York’s Carnegie Hall. The CSO performed there until returning to Music Hall in 1936.
The adjacent classroom building (today’s Emery Center Apartments on Central Parkway), built for the Ohio Mechanics Institute, was absorbed into the University of Cincinnati in 1969. The theater ceased to be used regularly in the 1990s, after which it fell into disuse and disrepair. Starting in 1999, Cincinnati architectural firm GBBN worked with a few prospective buyers on plans for the theater’s possible renovation. Ownership eventually went to developers Dave Neyer and Chris Frutkin, who facilitated the sale of the entire building to TCT.
The venerable theater company conducted a period of due diligence before acquiring the theater in 2023. Although some had deemed it beyond repair, TCT and GBBN, with considerable experience designing arts facilities venues across the U.S. (including the new homes locally for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and Cincinnati Ballet), determined that the building was actually in good structural shape, just sorely in need of cosmetic improvement and modern technology.
According to Kim Kern, TCT President and CEO, in a conversation with CityBeat, “We could have gone out to the suburbs and built something new, but that didn’t feel right. Cincinnati’s theater district is downtown, and TCT has always been downtown. We were the only ones that could make the Emery work. As the oldest professional theater for young audiences in the country, we already had a model that worked.” TCT began providing theater for children and parents in 1919. Today, its annual attendance for Taft Theatre productions has exceeded 110,000.
“We are a professional theater,” Kern explained. “Our audiences are children, not our actors. Our productions are Broadway quality.” She said TCT’s shows are typically one-hour “junior” versions — including The Wizard of Oz: Youth Edition, the debut production in October. (It was also TCT’s very first stage production in 1919, 20 years before the 1939 movie.) “Our productions are designed for the attention span of a child,” Kern added. “We are inspiring and engaging children in theater in an age-appropriate way that we believe instills a love of the arts that will pay forward to our sister organizations in town and create future audiences for our city.”
A CityBeat conversation with GBBN architects Marcene Kinney and Steve Karoly revealed some of the ingenuity required to convert a century-old concert stage and auditorium into a state-of-the-art theater facility. “The ‘front of house’ features were in rough shape,” said Karoly. “There were no dressing rooms. The stage was just 36 feet deep. There was no wing space on either side. … The stage was half the size that TCT typically used [at the Taft Theatre]. We addressed this by putting in a stage lift.”
That required excavating a deeper basement to accommodate an innovative “elevator” with a built-in turntable, capable of pushing scenery up to the stage level. According to Kinney, “Creativity was essential. Our architectural design had to accommodate projection-mapping technology. To fit everything together, we worked with theater planners for projection locations. That meant coordinating with construction contractors, since these locations were in the arch and walls.”
All this was accomplished while honoring the Emery’s historic design. But with GBBN’s expertise as well as Apeiro Design (a national expert that designed the Michael Jackson Experience and the Beatles LOVE Theatre in Las Vegas) and acoustical designers, TCT’s renovation touched and modified virtually every aspect of the facility. A narrow lobby is significantly expanded; a new elevator makes three levels of seating fully accessible. The hall was originally designed for 2,200 people with benches on the third level; now there are over 1,500 contemporary seats on all levels with unobstructed views of the stage.
A new canopy now shelters the entrance, topped by a yellow crown that symbolizes TCT. The theater has been updated with 21st-century technology, including the automated stage lift, mechanical systems for moving scenery, a rear stage wall that’s a digital LED screen and projection-mapping lighting for the proscenium and walls, creating an immersive experience for young theatergoers.
TCT’s future seems bright: “We are eager to be an anchor in OTR,” said Kern. “In the past [at the Taft], we had only eight weekends of performances. Once we have year-round programming, we can be an attraction to tourists and area residents.” TCT’s production schedule for 2025-2026 is similar to past seasons. Following Wizard of Oz: Youth Edition, TCT will present Elf The Musical JR. (Dec. 5-21), Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Musical (Feb. 20-March 8, 2026) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Musical JR. (April 17-May 3, 2026).
Kern plans to slowly ramp up. “There will be a third weekend for each production,” she said, “so there will be 12 weekends, up from eight.” More shows will be added, one season at a time. The first year, there will be one for very young audiences, then one aimed at middle schoolers. In 2028, Kern anticipates adding a summer production. TCT’s long-awaited return to the renovated Emery marks an exciting new chapter for Cincinnati’s oldest theater company.
The Wizard of Oz: Youth Edition, presented by the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati at the historic Emery Theater, will be performed from Oct. 10-26. More info: thechildrenstheatre.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Sept. 17 print edition.
This article appears in Sept. 17-30.