Toronto's centennial gift to itself grew a proper proscenium house. The Bluma Appel Theatre is the larger of the two auditoriums inside the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts at 27 Front Street East, the city's official project marking Canada's 1967 Centennial, which opened on 2 February 1970 to designs by Gordon S. Adamson and Associates. The room began life as simply "The Theatre," an adaptable 863-seat experiment that could shift between thrust, proscenium and caliper stage formats - flexibility that proved better in theory than practice for the dramatic repertoire it hosted through the 1970s. A 5.3-million-dollar redesign by The Thom Partnership and Theatre Projects Consultants fixed that in 1982-83: the thrust stage came out, a balcony and boxes went in, an optional orchestra pit was added, and the room reopened on 19 March 1983 named for Bluma Appel, the philanthropist whose gift led the campaign. Today the theatre seats 868 across orchestra, dress circle and boxes, with an adjustable proscenium, seventy counterweight linesets and a trap-floored stage that let it take everything from Canadian Stage Company drama - its main tenant for over a quarter-century - to opera, dance and amplified touring productions. Operated since 2019 by TO Live, the city agency that also runs Meridian Hall next door and the Meridian Arts Centre uptown, the Bluma Appel anchors the Front Street cultural block a short walk from Union Station and the St. Lawrence Market. Further restorations in 2007 refreshed the interiors and exterior, and redevelopment planning for the aging centre continues - but the room itself remains what the 1983 rebuild made it: downtown Toronto's essential mid-size dramatic stage. The technical house is a rental workhorse: an orchestra pit for twenty musicians assembles below the apron, forty-six stage traps open the floor, and the adjustable proscenium narrows from fifty to forty-two feet to suit each production's frame. Canadian Stage's decades in residence gave the room its dramatic identity, but the calendar now spans festivals, film premieres, corporate galas and touring theatre - the full civic workload the 1967 planners intended.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Canada, M5E 1B4

Website: https://tolive.com

Capacity: 868

Opening Date: 02/02/1970

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