Hanna Theatre

Last updated
Hanna Theatre
Washington Week taping - Hanna Theatre (28421558646).jpg
Hanna Theatre
AddressEast 14th Street
Cleveland, Ohio
Flag of the United States.svg  United States
Owner PlayhouseSquare
Capacity 550
Current usePerforming arts center
Construction
Opened1921
Closed1988
Rebuilt2008
Architect Charles A. Platt

The Hanna Theatre is a theater at Playhouse Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is one of the original five venues built in the district, opening on March 28, 1921. [1] The Hanna Theatre reopened in 2008 as the new home of Great Lakes Theater Festival after a major renovation by the classic theater company. [2]

Contents

Original structure

The Hanna Theatre was envisioned by industrialist and publisher Daniel Rhodes Hanna as part of a larger complex in memorial to his father, late U.S. Senator Mark A. Hanna, and was designed by architect Charles A. Platt. [3] Faustinno Sampietro was responsible for most of the interior decorations, which included green and gold carpets, dark green seats, frescoed walls, a fireplace, and Louis XVI gilt furniture; the ceiling was coffered and was made up of circular and octagonal medallions, each of which contained gilded classical figures (including Cupid, Psyche, and Pegasus). [3] The orchestra level consisted of 827 seats arranged in 24 rows, and the upper deck held 570 seats. Four rows in the mezzanine, ten rows in the upper balcony, and the box seats brought the theatre's full capacity to 1,421. The stage was forty feet in width and forty feet in depth, equipped with a thirty-six foot proscenium arch. [3] Some idiosyncrasies exist in the layout: Dan Hanna insisted he wanted more room in between the fourth and fifth rows when he tested out a seat he meant to reserve for himself, and as a result there remained thirty-five inches in between these two rows instead of the standard thirty-one inches. [3]

Theatre hosting the taping of Washington Week during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland Empty stage - Washington Week taping - Hanna Theatre (28375385981).jpg
Theatre hosting the taping of Washington Week during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland

Opening

On March 28, 1921, 1,500 people ventured out into the freezing cold temperatures to witness the new theatre's first production, William Faversham's adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain. The lobby measured a little over twenty feet in each direction and was nothing in the way of spectacle compared to the State and Ohio Theatres, both of which had opened the previous month. [3] At exactly 8:15 Cleveland orchestra director Max Faetkenheuer opened the show with the "Star-Spangled Banner" and the play began. During intermission, playwright Faversham gave an impromptu speech at the request of the theatre patrons. [3]

Hanna Theatre's first season

The following is a list of productions that ran at the Hanna Theatre beginning in the spring of 1921: [3]

The most expensive seats cost three dollars. [3]

Theatre rivalry

Program cover from a 1936 show at the theatre Hanna Theatre program 1936 cover.jpg
Program cover from a 1936 show at the theatre

When Dan R. Hanna died three months into the Hanna Theatre's first full season, the Shubert brothers (Sam, Lee, and J.J. Shubert) remained as lessees under the management of John S. Hale. [3] Around the corner, the brother's biggest rival, Abraham Lincoln Erlanger, continued to lease the Hanna's largest competition, the Ohio Theatre. Under the management of Robert H. McLaughlin, a former newspaperman and press agent, the Ohio Theatre had already built a distinguished repertoire of high class theatre. The Hanna Theatre could not always stand up to such an impressive lineup (including plays such as The Merry Wives of Windsor , Lady, Be Good , and Strange Interlude ) and often suffered for it. [3]

Ray Shepardson's vision

The Hanna Theatre closed in 1989, [4] and soon after, Ray Shepardson left his job in the Cleveland public school system to launch a campaign to prevent the closed theater of Playhouse Square from being destroyed. [3] His new vision for the Hanna was based on the concept of a cabaret theatre, which proved successful enough to generate funding by the Junior League and the Cleveland Foundation. By 1993 Ray Shepardson was nationally recognized as a theatre restoration expert, although he was not able to revive interest in the Hanna. [3] The $38 million restoration drive he led mainly helped the larger Playhouse Square theatres, such as the State Theatre, thrive. [3] For the brief time the Hanna did run as a cabaret theater, the interior was refurbished to meet the new needs. Tables and chairs replaced the usual theatre rows, although Shepardson insisted on preserving the theater's original, ornate décor. [3]

Restoration

Gwen Ifill after filming an episode of Washington Week at the Hanna Theatre during the 2016 Republican National Convention Chatting after - Washington Week taping - Hanna Theatre (28375386491) (cropped1).jpg
Gwen Ifill after filming an episode of Washington Week at the Hanna Theatre during the 2016 Republican National Convention

The Hanna Theatre was fully restored and reopened in 2008 with the following changes: [5]

  1. Six styles of seating: regular house seating, private box, banquette, club, lounge, and bar; reduction to 550 person capacity
  2. Multiple ticket-price points for each performance ($20 for lounge area and up to $60 for premium seats)
  3. A three-part hydraulic thrust stage that can lower to create a traditional proscenium stage with a full orchestra pit
  4. A computer controlled mechanical fly system structurally independent of the building to handle more weight, intended to raise and lower scenery
  5. Renovated street-level entrance with a door from the balcony level to an elevator lobby in the Hanna Annex building to allow patrons covered access to a parking garage, and balcony access for disabled patrons
  6. Registration with the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System, in pursuit of a Silver rating, the third-highest rank

The $14.7 million renovation was meant to rejuvenate the house space and create a comfortable atmosphere for theatre patrons. The Hanna Theatre was the last Playhouse Square theater renovated, a process that began in 1981. Great Lakes Theater producing artistic director Charles Fee and director Bob Taylor were behind the designs for the new theater. [5] The renovated Hanna Theatre opened on September 20, 2008. [4]

Related Research Articles

Great Lakes Theater Professional classic theater company in Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Great Lakes Theater, originally known as the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, is a professional classic theater company in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1962, Great Lakes is the second-largest regional theater in Northeast Ohio. It specializes in large-cast classic plays with a strong foundation in the works of Shakespeare and features an educational outreach program. The company performs its main stage productions in rotating repertory at the Hanna Theatre in Playhouse Square, which reopened on September 20, 2008. The organization shares a resident company of artists with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. On its main stage and through its education programs, GLT connects approximately 85,000 adults and students to the classics each season.

Playhouse Square United States historic place

Playhouse Square is a theater district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is the largest performing arts center in the US outside of New York City. Constructed in a span of 19 months in the early 1920s, the theaters were subsequently closed down, but were revived through a grassroots effort. Their renovation and reopening helped usher in a new era of downtown revitalization in Cleveland, and was called "one of the top ten successes in Cleveland history."

Majestic Theatre (Broadway)

The Majestic Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 245 West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan. It is one of the largest Broadway theatres with 1,681 seats, and traditionally has been used as a venue for major musical theatre productions. Among the notable shows that have premiered at the Majestic are Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The Music Man (1957), Camelot (1960), A Little Night Music (1973), and The Wiz (1975). It was also the second home of 42nd Street and the third home of 1776. The theatre has housed The Phantom of the Opera since it opened on January 26, 1988. With a record-breaking over 13,300 performances to date, it is currently the longest-running production in Broadway history.

CIBC Theatre

CIBC Theatre is a theater located at 18 West Monroe Street in the Loop area of downtown Chicago. It is operated by Broadway In Chicago, part of the Nederlander Organization. Opened in 1906 as the Majestic Theatre, it currently seats 1,800 and for many years has presented Broadway shows. In its early years, the theater presented vaudeville celebrity acts.

Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts

The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts is a performing arts center and flagship for dance in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Cowles Center was developed as an incubation project by Artspace Projects, Inc and includes the refurbished 500-seat Goodale Theater ; the Hennepin Center for the Arts, home to 20 leading dance and performing arts organizations; a state-of-the-art education studio housing a distance learning program; and an atrium connecting the buildings. The Cowles Center is a catalyst for the creation, presentation and education of dance in the Twin Cities.

Straz Center for the Performing Arts

The David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts opened its doors as the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa, Florida in July 1987. The venue was rebranded in November 2009 to recognize the donation of financier David A. Straz Jr.--the largest individual philanthropic gift ever made to a cultural institution in Tampa.

North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center

Blumenthal Performing Arts is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. It opened in 1992 and is named in honor of the people of the state of North Carolina and the Blumenthal Foundation established by I.D. Blumenthal who founded RSC Brands, the largest private donor to the capital campaign. The idea for the center dates back to the late 1970s. Momentum for the project grew in the 1980s resulting in a $15 million allocation from the state of North Carolina, approval of a $15 million bond by the citizens of Charlotte and an additional $32 million contributed by individuals, corporations and foundations. In 1987 the Belk Brothers donated a valuable piece of land as the site of the new theatre complex. Total construction cost for the Blumenthal Center was over $62 million.

Seattle Repertory Theatre is a major regional theatre located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and Theatre Communications Group. Founded in 1963, it is led by Artistic Director Braden Abraham and Managing Director Jeffrey Herrmann. It received the 1990 Regional Theatre Tony Award.

Proctors Theatre (Schenectady, New York)

Proctor's Theatre is a former vaudeville house located in Schenectady, New York, United States. Many famous artists have performed there, notably Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Hal Holbrook, Ted Wiles, and George Burns, as well as many others. It has one of the largest movie screens in the Northeast.

Connor Palace

The Connor Palace, also known as the Palace Theatre and historically as the RKO Palace, is a theater located at 1615 Euclid Avenue in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, part of Playhouse Square. The theater opened in 1922, as Keith's Palace Theatre after B. F. Keith, founder of the Keith-Albee chain of vaudeville and movie theaters. It was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Rapp and Rapp in the French Renaissance style, and originally housed live two-a-day vaudeville shows. The $2 million theater opened in the Keith Building on November 6, 1922, seating 3,100. The interior featured Carrara marble and 154 crystal chandeliers, and the main lobby, dubbed the "Great Hall," was decorated with over 30 paintings.

Ohio Theatre (Cleveland, Ohio)

The Ohio Theatre is a theater on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, part of Playhouse Square. The theater was built by Marcus Loew's Loew's Ohio Theatres company. It was designed by Thomas W. Lamb in the Italian Renaissance style, and was intended to present legitimate plays. The theater opened on February 14, 1921, with 1,338 seats. The foyer featured three murals depicting the story of Venus, and the balcony contained paintings of Arcadia. Throughout the 1920s, the Ohio had a stock company and hosted traveling Broadway plays.

State Theatre (Cleveland, Ohio)

The KeyBank State Theatre is a theater located at 1519 Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the theaters that make up Playhouse Square. It was designed by the noted theater architect Thomas W. Lamb and was built in 1921 by Marcus Loew to be the flagship of the Ohio branch of the Loew's Theatres company.

Allen Theatre

The Allen Theatre is one of the theaters in Playhouse Square, the performing arts center on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It was originally designed as a silent movie theater by C. Howard Crane and opened its doors on April 1, 1921, with a capacity of more than 3,000 seats. The first show was of the movie Her Greatest Love, and featured Phil Spitalny and his 35 piece orchestra as live performers. The theater was designed in the Italian Renaissance style and was one of the few "daylight atmospheric" theaters in the country, with a ceiling painted to resemble the open daylight sky. In the lobby, a rotunda was built to resemble the Villa Madama in Rome. The ceiling of the rotunda was decorated with Renaissance-style figures from an unknown artist's imagination which greeted cinema patrons for decades.

ImaginOn

ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center is a collaborative venture of Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and the Children's Theater of Charlotte located in Charlotte, North Carolina. This 102,000-square-foot (9,500 m2) landmark learning center opened on October 8, 2005. ImaginOn was designed by Gantt Huberman Architects and Holzman Moss Bottino Architecture, and is owned by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.

Folly Theater United States historic place

The Standard Theatre, now known as the Folly Theater and also known as the Century Theater and Shubert's Missouri, is a former vaudeville hall in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Built in 1900, it was designed by Kansas City architect Louis S. Curtiss. The theater was associated with the adjoining Edward Hotel, which was also designed by Curtiss; the hotel was demolished in 1965.

Victoria Gardens Cultural Center

The Victoria Gardens Cultural Center (VGCC) is a community library and performance venue attached to the Victoria Gardens lifestyle center in Rancho Cucamonga, California. The building, which links the Lewis Family Playhouse, the Paul A. Biane Library, and the 4,500-square-foot (420 m2) Celebration Hall under one roof, officially opened on August 19, 2006. It is supported, in part, by The Rancho Cucamonga Library Foundation and the Rancho Cucamonga Community Foundation. These two organizations joined together in 2002 to create the Promoting Arts and Literacy (PAL) fundraising campaign. Since then these two groups have continued to hold their annual fundraising events: the Rancho Cucamonga Public Library Telethon and the Community Foundation Gala for the sole benefit of the PAL campaign.

The Cleveland Ballet was founded in Cleveland in 1972 by Dennis Nahat and Ian Horvath as a dance school, the School of Cleveland Ballet. It was the second incarnation of the Cleveland Ballet, having been preceded a ballet company of the same name founded in 1935 and succeeded by another founded in 2014.

Raymond K. Shepardson

Ray Shepardson was a theatre restoration specialist and theatre operator credited by many with beginning the trend toward restoring old unused movie theaters into economic engines for their communities. He is the founder of the Playhouse Square association in Cleveland and is recognized as the visionary that helped motivate the creation of one of the nation's largest performing arts districts. He was involved in 40 restorations throughout his career and operated several theaters after their restoration.

Hanna Building

The Hanna Building is a historically renovated high-rise in downtown Cleveland's Theater District on the corner of East 14th Street and Euclid Avenue. The building stands 194 feet high and rises to 16 stories. It was built in 1921 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The Hanna is part of the Playhouse Square historic property portfolio and features many of the same features such as news tickers, billboards, and decorative elements as the other "theatrical" buildings in the locale. The Hanna is highly recognizable on the Playhouse Square and is currently the third tallest building in the Theater District behind the B.F. Keith and the US Bank Centre. Like many buildings of the era, the Hanna sits in an oblong fashion in relation to the street grid and runs parallel to the roadways of Euclid Avenue and East 14th Street, respectfully.

39th Street Theatre Defunct playhouse in New York

The 39th Street Theatre was a playhouse in New York City located at the corner of 39th Street and Broadway. Originally called Nazimova's 39th Street Theatre after the actress Alla Nazimova, it was in operation from 1910 to 1925 when it was demolished to make way for an office building. Throughout its existence, it was owned by the Shubert family. Its architect was William Albert Swasey, who had designed or remodelled several other Broadway theatres for the family.

References

  1. ↑ "PlayhouseSquare: History". Archived from the original on October 10, 2011. Retrieved October 24, 2011.
  2. ↑ Brown, Tony; Litt, Steven (2008-10-25). "Great Lakes Theater Festival's Hanna Theatre renovation should wow PlayhouseSquare audiences". The Plain Dealer . Cleveland, Ohio. Retrieved 2010-02-22.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Vacha, John (2007). From Broadway to Cleveland: a history of the Hanna Theatre . Kent:Kent State University Press.
  4. 1 2 "Timeline of Events - Playhouse Square: Cleveland Memory" . Retrieved October 24, 2011.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  5. 1 2 Brown, Tony (January 18, 2008). "Great Lakes Theater Festival has raised 75 percent of money for Hanna renovation". The Plain Dealer. Retrieved October 24, 2011.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)

Coordinates: 41°30′1″N81°40′52″W / 41.50028°N 81.68111°W / 41.50028; -81.68111

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.