Just two weeks out from its unveiling, the new Blackfriars Theatre at 795 E. Main St. was very much a work in progress. The lobby was crammed with buckets of paint, boxes of tile and a dusty piano.
Red velvet theater seats bought on eBay still needed to be set up in the performance space, bathroom fixtures needed to be installed, walls needed paint and floors needed carpeting.
Still, those involved in the three-month project were optimistic that the venue would be ready for its Sept. 19 debut. "We're always worried about the timeline, but we just have to keep pushing forward," David Spiro, actor and director of public relations and development for Blackfriars, said at that time.
Despite workers' efforts, however, the theater was forced to push things back a week. So Sept. 25 will mark the beginning of Blackfriars' 60th anniversary season, which opens with Zorba, a romantic musical about an American who inherits a mine on Crete.
The company's new space is a former bus garage, which by opening night will have been transformed into a 126-seat theater, complete with parking and a more convenient entrance than at Blackfriars' former location, 28 Lawn St., which required patrons to walk up a flight of stairs.
The stairs and the broken-up space at Lawn Street also created hassles for actors and producers, said Jack Haldoupis, Blackfriars' artistic director.
"Our scene shop was in the basement, and our dressing room on the fourth floor," he said. "It was difficult to produce theater where we were. I think we did a lot of great stuff, but it was an effort."
After a two-year search for the perfect venue, the theater company settled on the Main Street location. It's part of what the Blackfriars board of directors are calling Rochester's Theater Row, which includes the Rochester Auditorium Center, Downstairs Cabaret Theatre, the Eastman Theatre and nearby Geva Theatre, 75 Woodbury Blvd.
"I think the location is going to open us up to a huge amount of people who don't know Blackfriars," said Danny Hoskins, actor and president of the Blackfriars board. "It may be a small community, but it's very strong. There are some really dedicated professionals in all the arts disciplines here that make the Rochester arts scene really rich and vibrant and exciting."
Blackfriars has been a theater staple in Rochester since 1950 and has shaped the careers of many locally and nationally known actors, including Broadway's Donna Lynne Champlin.
A Greece native, Champlin got her start at Blackfriars and has since starred in the Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Hollywood Arms, among others. Champlin even came back to Blackfriars last year to perform a benefit show to raise money for the new theater.
"Blackfriars helped shape my career by instilling in me a very high professional work ethic at a young age," she said. "There is a level of professionalism at Blackfriars that is equal to and even higher than many professional theaters I've worked at since. To this day, Blackfriars remains a professional standard to which I hold all my theatrical experiences."
For theatergoers, the new location also will offer a more intimate setting; the space has 74 fewer seats than the Lawn Street location. And the seats are arranged in just four rows, which puts viewers feet away from the ground-level stage.
"As an actor, there's a certain intimacy with the audience that's really nice," Spiro said. The $200,000 project wouldn't have been possible without donations and hands-on work by volunteers and board members. (The construction also was funded by contributions Blackfriars had planned to use to pay for the installation of an elevator at the Lawn Street location.)
"Every board member has picked up a hammer," Spiro said. "It's all been about commitment and believing in what we're doing and making this a reality."
