TheaterWorks Receives $2.5 Million Grant For Major Renovations

For its show “Constellations,” which ends its run Feb. 22, TheaterWorks cleverly redesigned its performance space from a proscenium to an arena.

Now the entire building is getting a real long term facelift.

TheaterWorks announced Monday that it had received a $2.5 million grant for renovations and improvements to 233 Pearl St., the location of its performance space and offices. The Urban Act Grant from the State of Connecticut Bond Commission is being added to $1.5 million that the theater has already raised, and (according to a TheaterWorks press release) will be spent on “building-wide renovations designed to address health, energy efficiency and safety issues as well as improve the patron experience and the artistic product.”

The project is being overseen by Rob Ruggiero, who has been TheaterWorks’ producing artistic director for the past five years and was involved with the theater in other positions for nearly two decades before that.

Ruggiero describes the renovations as “phase two” of a sweeping overhaul of TheaterWorks that began shortly after the theater marked its 30th anniversary in 2016.

“Phase One” included creating a new rehearsal studio space in the building as well as minor physical improvements to the space. This second phase, which will begin in just a few months and take about a year, will make sweeping changes throughout the lobby area, the restrooms, the auditorium and even the stage.

A second elevator will be added to the building. The restrooms will be moved and expanded. The theater’s lighting grid will be raised. New seating will be installed. The backstage area will create stage-left access that the theater currently does not have.

“Right now, it’s just this four-foot corridor,” Ruggiero says. The main thrust stage configuration itself will not change — unless of course TheaterWorks chooses to reshape it for an individual show, as it did for “Constellations.”

“What we are working on now,” said Ruggiero Tuesday afternoon, “are things that will most affect the artists’ experience and the audience’s experience. We’re creating an audience space upstairs for more of an audience experience before you go downstairs.”

Ruggiero expects that during the main renovations the theater space will not be usable for as long as four months. He is programming TheaterWorks’ 2018-19 season so that its third, fourth and fifth shows could be produced in another space. The theater quietly quizzed its audiences about whether they’d be up for shifting to a different location for some shows in a questionnaire that didn’t mention the renovations.

Audience members, says TheaterWorks Director of Marketing and Communications Freddie McInerney, had an overwhelmingly positive response to the purposefully vague suggestion.

Ruggiero says that TheaterWorks’ intention is to “celebration completion of this phase of the renovations at the beginning of the 2019-20 season,” a year and a half from now.

The third phase of the renovations will involve repairs that “aren’t critical yet,” Ruggiero says, like roof work that is anticipated but doesn’t need to happen for a while.

Meanwhile, TheaterWorks will continue to fund-raise. The $1.5 million the theater raised distinct from the Bond Commission grant was done without announcing a major campaign. Now the call will “go more broadly out to our supporters and patrons,” McInerney says.

“We are so grateful to the state” for the Bond Commission grant, Ruggiero says. “It shows how much they believe in TheaterWorks and that they see how much we impact downtown Hartford. We’ll make every penny count.”