Union Theatre (Peterborough) - Interesting Facts

Interesting Facts

• Peterborough New Dance staged some of its early shows, including early runs of its Emergency new dance shows Emergency Archive

• Space's first show Can You See Me Yet by Canadian playwright, Timothy Findley was staged in November 1989 and was attended by Findley himself as he was at the time living in Cannington, Ontario, about 30 minutes East of Peterborough. The show was directed by John Barclay.

• The space ran monthly "Writers in the Round" songwriter shows where Canadian songwriters would share their newest works "in the round" with four or five other artists in front of a live audience.

• Weekly "Improv Soaps" were developed using serial-style episodic story lines featuring recurring characters. The series The Coffin Factory was inspired by the (supposed) history of the space while the series "Hurricane Ridge" was loosely based on the Twin Peaks television show. Other series included a noir detective series called One Red Shoe, a series called The Seven Deadly Sins where the characters each embodied one of the biblical seven deadly sins or four cardinal virtues, and Biosphere 2013 a dystopian, near future science fiction black comedy. During the summer of 1991 a development series called "The Cactus Hotel" was run for new improvisers.

• Shows sought funding through a number of sources including government grants and student-based funding from Theatre Trent (Trent University).

• The space ran a soup kitchen run by a number of the artists as well as a late night coffee house.

• The Union Theatre was noted in Anne Russell's edition of Aphra Behn's The Rover as one of a selection of small theatres in the 20th century to produce the rarely-produced Restoration comedy script.