About a month ago I attended the Cleveland Play House's Annual General Meeting largely for the promise of tours of the Allen Theater.
At that meeting, I was reminded about the Happy Hour that was scheduled for August 10th and lured with the promise of additional tours. Now tours were not my primary motivation for attending tonight's happy hour -- the CPH Happy Hours are generally great events with a ton of....well, happy...socialization. I've been to more of them than I've blogged. There was additional motivation in that I was curious about the evolution over the span of a month.
Tonight was no exception the CPHers once again were warm hosts and great conversation persisted through the evening. Rachel, my girlfriend, joined me and though she has not yet attended a CPH performance (yes, we need to fix that) was warmly welcomed by all.
Tonight's tours were significantly more limited than those last month -- reportedly, construction progress at the new PlayhouseSquare home has made access to the house, where seats were installed shortly after the Annual General Meeting, by the touring public impracticable. Most impressively, the temporary wall has been torn down, and the flow from the old lobby to the new lobby feels great, even if there are still some temporary obstructions blocking the view.
Today, Artistic Director Michael Bloom talked to the group on Dodge Court looking at the new *(and much shorter and more direct) gerbil tube linking the garage to the rest of PlayhouseSquare and the Cleveland Play House's two new ground-up theatres.
Here's a shot of the back side of the theatres plus the new gerbil tube (right), taken by Rachel since I inexplicably let my cell phone in my car
Some random tidbits picked up along the way:
- Mr. Moore described the transition as moving from "your grandfather's Buick to a Chevy Cruise"
- Galileo, the first show of the new season in the new home is being built and rehearsed at 8500 Euclid and will be loaded in to the Allen on September 11th.
- CPH's new offices will be ready end-ish of September, and the hope is to be completely moved out of 8500 Euclid by October/November with December as a firm deadline.
- Quote selected by the playwright of Galileo: "Theater without beer is just a museum"
- GenNow is a new program designed to lure 20-40s young professionals to the great cultural features of Cleveland and will offer significantly discounted tickets along with a happy hour or similar social event for select performances.
I'm starting to type incoherently now, so I think that's it for this post, but I've stumbled across some old writeups on the Bulkley Building -- in which the Allen is located -- which I suppose I shall save for a later post.
Lincoln
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