DULUTH — Duluth Playhouse is opening a new performance space within the NorShor Theatre complex, adding a second stage in addition to the historic auditorium.
"Stage," in this case, is a fluid concept. The Lab, as the new venue is known, will operate as what theater artists call a "black box": a small performance space designed for flexibility, with movable seating.
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Black-box spaces are often used for relatively new and adventurous work, as will be the case here. Duluth Playhouse will present its next season of "Underground" shows at The Lab, starting with "Misery" (Oct. 12-21). "Underground" shows in the 2022-23 season were presented at the Zeitgeist Teatro; previously, they played in the St. Louis County Depot space now known as Studio Four.
"The options are limitless," said Duluth Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Phillip Fazio, standing in The Lab on Monday. "It's going to be very intimate, very personal. The actors will be right there, just a couple of feet away from you."
The closest precedent for The Lab is the Play Ground, a black-box space Duluth Playhouse maintained in downtown's Technology Village from 2005-2012. (The University of Minnesota Duluth and College of St. Scholastica also have black-box theaters.)
In 2013, the Playhouse vacated the Play Ground and brought its smaller-scale productions to the St. Louis County Depot, where what had formerly been the Duluth Children's Museum became the Underground Theatre.
What is now The Lab has been hiding in plain sight, its street-facing windows covered in decals advertising Playhouse productions. For decades, it served as a retail space, even as the adjoining theater was transformed. When the former Orpheum became the NorShor in 1941, what is now The Lab was a store selling "women's furnishings."
The space is now part of the NorShor complex; a back door opens onto the NorShor's warming kitchen. The theater company is currently in what Executive Director Wes Drummond called a "super complex agreement" with the city of Duluth and developer Sherman Associates. "Eventually," said Drummond, "the Playhouse will own the building."
The company's holdings now also include a building it's calling The Annex, which sits just a block north from the NorShor on the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East. Once the Shrine Auditorium (its facade still bears lettering to that effect, along with the date 1896), the building was most recently home to the Encounter skate park.
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The former skate park space, on the building's First Street level, now provides storage for a vast quantity of Playhouse props and costumes.
"We've been renting storage units scattered all over Duluth," said Drummond. "What we're doing with this building is actually much more affordable than the amount of different rental spaces we were renting."
Upstairs, a recently refinished basketball court still functions as such for players in the Salvation Army basketball league. "Other basketball leagues have inquired," said Drummond. "The space is available for people who want to rent (a court) to play basketball."
The basketball court fronts a stage and has wraparound mezzanine seating. There are currently no plans to revive the stage for entertainment purposes, said Drummond. Nonetheless, a little razzle-dazzle has filtered into the room. Monday, classic show tunes played as middle-school theater camp students worked in groups under the instruction of Kaitlyn Callahan and Alyson Enderle.
"Summer camps sold out this year," said Drummond. "Then we added additional summer camps and they also sold out. It's amazing that we have this extra space to expand."
The Annex additionally houses organizations that rent office space and, in the case of The Cozy Hen kitchen space. "My dream for this space," said Drummond, "is that we will continue to get other nonprofits to rent office space and that this grows as a collaborative community space."
Last year, Duluth Playhouse also purchased a condominium at Waterfront Plaza in Canal Park. (The price for the entire Encounter building, at $695,000, was just over twice the cost of the condo, $317,000.)
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"The Playhouse prioritizes casting local artists, but sometimes there are roles that locally, we can't cast," said Drummond, citing the drag queen Lola in "Kinky Boots" as an example. Fazio added that "Ragtime," a show with a large and diverse cast of characters, also involved several out-of-town actors.
Drummond called the condo acquisition a "strategic solution," one that has the benefit of generating revenue as a rental unit when not housing visiting Playhouse artists. It makes for a nice commute — artists can travel by foot along the Lakewalk to get from the Lake Avenue condo to the NorShor.
Between now and October, the Playhouse staff have their work cut out for them in preparing The Lab to welcome its first audiences. The space still needs a coat of paint, seating, lights, sound and a method of blocking the light flowing in from the street-facing windows.
The Lab's existing exterior door opens immediately to the east of the NorShor's main entrance. Eventually, Playhouse staff hope to add a bathroom and another door, which would allow them to increase seating capacity. For now, Fazio explained, patrons at The Lab will be able to use the NorShor's lobby facilities. (Yes, including the bar.)
"It adds another performance space to the Historic Arts and Theater District in downtown Duluth," said Fazio. "Our education programming at the School of Performing Arts continues to grow ... and we're always looking for nooks and crannies and different spaces to put a class in."
"The Underground programming at the Playhouse has always been kind of scrappy," said Drummond. "I think a space like this lends itself to that."
This story was updated at 1:18 p.m. June 28 to add punctuation and clarify the description of The Annex seating. It was originally posted at 1:00 p.m. June 28.
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