Take a look inside the renovated State Theater, which debuts with ‘Cabaret’ this weekend
Since “Deathtrap” closed in February, Harlequin Productions’ State Theater has been a construction zone.
Earlier this week, workers were scrambling to complete the work even as actors, musicians and designers were in the final stages of preparation for “Cabaret,” opening Friday, June 28.
The focus of the project, started in August, was creating a spacious and comfortable backstage.
“We basically demolished the back of the building, left the shell and put an entirely new building inside it,” said Aaron Lamb, the company’s producing artistic director.
The building within the building has three stories, three spacious dressing rooms with illuminated makeup stations, three restrooms, a shower, a laundry room and a greenroom with a kitchenette, meeting space and a large window.
The old backstage, by contrast, had a single restroom and a small dressing room on the main floor and a makeshift second-floor dressing room set up on a stage platform originally built as part of a set. “That temporary dressing room lasted for 25 years,” Lamb said.
The redesign increased the square footage backstage tenfold, estimated Michael Miltmore, a project manager with Forma Construction, which did the work.
The changes are invisible to those seated in the theater, but during the run of “Cabaret,” audiences will get a rare look behind the scenes.
The theater has been temporarily transformed into the seedy, seductive Kit Kat Klub, the setting for the 1966 musical about a group of artists and free thinkers facing the rise of fascism in Berlin.
Theatergoers, who are invited to arrive an hour before showtime, will enter through the new stage door on Washington Street and visit the spacious second-floor greenroom, where they can buy drinks at a pop-up bar and watch an aerial act before heading to the lobby for more entertainment.
The theater itself is largely unchanged — with one big exception: The well-worn seats that dated back to the ’80s, when the theater was a multi-screen cinema, have been put into storage. In their place are plush green velour seats that were previously installed at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts.
“The seats are gorgeous and new to us,” said Helen Harvester, Harlequin’s marketing director, adding that there are now 216 seats instead of the previous 212.
One of the most important parts of the renovation will be heard but not seen: It’s a floor-to-ceiling wall that separates the backstage from the theater.
“It used to be that backstage, you could hear everything out front, but from out front, you could also hear everything backstage,” Lamb said. “That was always a problem for us. It also just sucked up the sound. This helps the acoustics of the room tremendously. … The audience will hear a huge difference.”
“Before, you would project your voice from the stage, and it would go everywhere,” said Harvester, who was last seen in September’s “The Revolutionists.” “I can hear the difference when I speak. It’s so much easier to project.”
The new backstage is just the first phase of the theater’s renovation plan.
Eventually, some of the copious storage space in the front of the building will be turned into office space and a second black box theater, where the former cinema seats will be installed, Lamb said. That won’t happen for quite some time, though.
“The next thing we’re looking at is the lobby and the marquee and the exterior of the building,” he said.
See ‘Cabaret’
What: Harlequin Productions is transforming the State Theater into the Kit Kat Klub for an immersive production of the oft-revived and much-awarded musical.
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, June 28 and 29, plus July 5-6, 11-13, 18-20 and 25-27; and 2 p.m. Sunday, June 30, plus July 4, 7, 14, 21, 24 and 28, with pre-show entertainment beginning an hour before showtime
Where: State Theater, 202 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
Tickets: $33-$48 for regular seats; $141 for VIP tables for two attached to the stage
More information: https://harlequinproductions.org
