The theatre lives on the lower floors of a 32-storey government tower, named for the first woman to run the Ohio House. The Speaker Jo Ann Davidson Theatre at 77 South High Street is the 903-seat anchor of the Riffe Center Theatre Complex, opened in 1989 inside the Vern Riffe Center for Government and the Arts opposite the Statehouse. The building stacks state government above culture: 2,000 state employees work the tower while the complex below houses the main theatre, three studio spaces, scenery and costume shops and the Riffe Gallery - all managed by the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts since 1994. The theatre opened as the Capitol Theatre and was renamed in 2016 for Jo Ann Davidson, the first female Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives - matching the building's own tribute to legendary Speaker Vern Riffe. The resident calendar leans dance and community: BalletMet performs its season here, joined by the Columbus Gay Men's Chorus, the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra and Ohio State's Department of Dance, with CAPA layering comedy, music and family shows between. The studio theatres downstairs complete the ecosystem - the 227-seat flexible Studio One, black-box Studio Two and dance-focused Studio Three house CATCO and Available Light Theatre, giving downtown Columbus its small-stage cluster. The High Street address faces the Ohio Theatre and Palace Theatre within three blocks - CAPA's downtown portfolio functioning as one distributed performing arts centre with the Davidson as its modern mid-size room. The theatre's technical fit-out - a full fly system, orchestra pit and broadcast-capable lighting rig unusual for a government building - lets it take touring dance and mid-scale Broadway product, and the Riffe Gallery in the same tower runs free exhibitions of Ohio artists curated by the Ohio Arts Council, rounding out the building's public-culture mandate.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 77 S High St, Columbus, OH, United States, 43215

Website: https://www.capa.com

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 903

Opening Date: 01/01/1989

Accessible