Before Brent Fidler mounted his production of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Kitsilano Neighbourhood House hadn’t been used regularly as a theatre space since the 1980s.
Fidler, a veteran producer and winner of a Leo Award for best actor, is the artistic director of Theater Crossing, a company he founded while living in Los Angeles. Now a Vancouver resident, Fidler’s success in bringing theatre back to Kitsilano Neighbourhood House is the result of perfect timing and a touch of good luck.
“I was teaching meditation classes there in February” of this year, he recalls. “I got to know the staff a little bit as I’d be talking, and I noticed that their community hall wasn’t being utilized to its full potential… it’s a beautiful space, a gorgeous [formerly] Greek Orthodox church.”
Fidler approached the house’s executive director, Allen Smith, and inquired about the space.
Reached by phone between meetings, Smith tells the Westender he had been hoping to re-open the space to community theatre.
“Kitsilano Neighbourhood House used to have a theatre running, and quite a well known one, in Vancouver, many, many years ago, and for various reasons that finished,” he says. Since then, the building has been renovated, but, at the time of the renovations, the then executive director opted to keep the main hall conducive to theatre productions. “When I came on board [in 2016],” Smith says, “it was like, ‘Yes, here’s a theatre, what are we going to do with it?’ And then one day we were approached by Theater Crossing to say, ‘Hey, this is a good theatre setup – let’s do something with it.’”
The partnership between Theater Crossing and Kitsilano Neighbourhood House is mutually beneficial. Fidler created an actor’s equity collective to help finance the production (and which would share in any profits) and the neighbourhood house receives a share of the ticket revenue. It also provides staff for the box office, front of house and concession.
The current show includes eight different actors, with Fidler playing both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the split personalities of a well respected man whose alter-ego is tempted by the dark side.
But the hall wasn’t exactly ready and roaring to go when the two groups joined forces. As part of its commitment to community programming, the neighbourhood house paid $18,000 for a state of the art LED lighting system. Smith says the non-profit plans to recoup some of the cost from theatre grants and ticket sales, but would not reveal anything more, saying that the board of directors is still working through the funding details.
Fidler says that the current production isn’t drawing as much of a crowd as he had hoped, but the show has been receiving standing ovations. Nevertheless, the space fills a need in the theatre community, where Fidler says production companies can pay $3,000 per week to rent a theatre, a rate influenced by Vancouver’s high rents and operating costs.
Smith says the neighbourhood house’s return to theatre has the potential to fill several other community needs, as well.
“We’re a community facility, and Kitsilano and the West Side [are] a little bit different [from the East Side] and the arts here aren’t really being promoted,” Smith says. With colder weather on the way, he sees the potential for attracting local crowds, who wouldn’t have to travel far to see live theatre. Furthermore, he hopes to make the shows accessible to lower-income residents. “Hopefully some can come who wouldn’t normally,” he says, adding that the neighbourhood house had already given subsidized tickets to some community members, making The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde accessible to everyone.
• Got an idea for a show at the Kitsilano Neighbourhood House? It's open to new theatre partnerships. Get in touch at [email protected].
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde runs Tuesdays through Sundays until Nov. 19 at the Kitsilano Neighbourhood House (2375 West 7th Ave). Tickets $15 - $25.
