Addressing the grounds
For those who don’t know, the Dundas is not just a theatre space. There are three buildings on the property: the legacy theatre, which dates back to 1940 when the Civic Centre was incorporated; the rehearsal hall/workshop, which was built in the late 1970s when the first renovation took place; and a caretaker’s cottage, which may also have been built around the time of the renovation.
Winston V. Saunders theatre
Philip A. Burrows Black Box
Caretaker’s cottage
(Side note: I (Nicolette Bethel) am a graduate of Queen’s College and an alumna of Philip Cash’s school musicals, which we used to hold—you guessed it—in the Dundas. My first time performing in that theatre was at the age of 12 or 13 as part of the cast of Oklahoma! In those days what is now the foyer was the dressing area, separated from the main auditorium by very thick and heavy brown curtains; and what is now the dressing room and box office was the canteen. What are now windows covered by hurricane shutters were then doors which let in the breeze. There was a main entrance at the northern end of the building, facing the Ranfurly Home wall—it is hidden now by the steps which climb up to the back of the auditorium we have today. And though there was a stage and the lighting booth, there were no theatre seats and no risers to control sight lines. Chairs were just set up on the floor of the auditorium and curtains divided one area of the theatre from the other. The Dundas stage is a high stage for that very reason. But I digress.)
In recent years, the managers of the Dundas, Ringplay Productions, turned the workshop/rehearsal hall into a small theatre, which people now know as the Philip A. Burrows Black Box. This happened in 2014, and it’s a good thing too, otherwise the theatre would be dead now owing to the failure of the 42-yer-old air conditioning system at the end of the COVID-19 lockdown.
But the grounds! A green space in the heart of the city, with lots of trees (some getting old) and lots of work to do.
One of the things we found out about the Black Box was that there were trees impacting it. When Struckum donated their termite-ridding services back in 2022, they were not able to fumigate the Black Box because of these trees. So one of the first things we did when we started to collect contributions was invest in some tree trimming and tree removal, mostly around the Black Box and the caretaker’s cottage. Check it out below:
