The Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts is a 43,000-square-foot (4,000 m2) multi-use cultural facility on 1.5 acres (6,100 m2) of land directly on Yonge Street in the heart of Richmond Hill's downtown core, at the corner of Yonge and Wright Streets. The Centre will provide a home for Richmond Hill's diverse arts community, create a destination in the downtown core, and be a major venue to bring Canadian and international performing and visual arts to Richmond Hill and York Region.
Canadian architect Jack Diamond, and his firm Diamond and Schmitt Architects, have been given the task to design the Centre's building, and Michael Grit had been chosen by the Town Council as the first theater manager. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on October 5, 2005, and the opening night was February 28, 2009. Among others, David Onley, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario addressed the crowd during the opening ceremony. The schedule for the next year was announced June 2, 2009.
The Centre is to host:
- Main Auditorium, seating 631 guests, the largest seating capacity of any theatre in York Region.
- The 150-seat Rehearsal Hall with a flexible configuration for interactive presentations, dinner theatre, award ceremonies and corporate events.
- Lobby Galleries to display an array of visual arts.
- Outdoor Piazza perfect to exhibit large-scale art and to bring productions and presentations in the open air (alfresco).
- Multi-purpose rooms for meetings, classrooms etc.
- Restored Heritage Building which will house the Centre’s administrative offices on the second floor while future commercial and/or retail spaces are being considered for the ground level.
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“More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.”
—Uta Hagen (b. 1919)
““Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.””
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?”
—Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)
“To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“Bottom. What is Pyramus? A lover or a tyrant?
Quince. A lover that kills himself, most gallant, for love.
Bottom. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure—if you don’t like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don’t like it, you don’t understand and you ought to find out.”
—John Drummond (b. 1934)