All stories about the Dome (that is, when it really was the Dome) begin and end with Bertrand A. Henry . . .
Humber College was a great experience but it had a dismal ending. The Vice Principal of Humber College decided that MONEY must be saved and therefore Programs must be cut and, when in doubt, cut the arts. As a result, the entire theatre program (acting and technical) went on the chopping block. The Undertaking Program, however, lived on. But I was out of a job. Fortunately, three good things happened: the Dome (including Bert) solicited me to come back, Eugene had left, and after a bitter, two year, very public fight, the Humber Theatre Program was saved (long after I had returned to Dawson). The people who communicated the request for me to return to Dawson, to which I had agreed, had actually forgotten to mention one small fact. The Dome had been condemned and could not be used as a theatre, a classroom or even a set shop. We were without a building.
How the theatre was lost came to be a matter of some debate. It seems that a rather costly mistake had been made by the department and the College. A fire inspector had examined the building and condemned it based on the city’s Theatre fire regulations. But no one had thought to examine those regulations in detail. Had they done so, the building would never have been condemned. As a result, the College had to decide whether to continue with the Theatre Department or scrap it. I had gone from the frying pan into the fire. After a lot of unpleasant meetings, with Bert at his blustery best and a number of interventions from irate acting school parents – not to mention the threat by the Department to call a Press Conference (with free booze for the reporters), the College gave in. A closed and unused elementary school (Riverside)in Pointe St. Charles was rented for the classes and the technical requirement sand Centaur was rented for the performances of the Majors, which would have to be built at Riverside and, in effect, toured to Centaur.
As far as I can remember we ended up doing two seasons of majors at Centaur – the studios were done at various locations around town, including Richelieu basement. I directed one in the hall upstairs at the Atwater Library. Not a bad venue, actually. Meantime there were a number of changes to the faculty, including the loss of Marcy Kahan (ultimately to the BBC) and the addition of W. Steven Lecky and Howard Ryshpan. They, in fact, did one of the first Majors at Centaur: Spoon River Anthology.
There were two more large complications that ran through this period of time. The first was the gradual re-acquisition of the Dome, first as a workshop and then as a performance space. I finally had time to examine the City of Montreal’s regulations concerning Theatres, and, surprisingly, Studio Theatres. The Theatre regulations doomed the Dome forever, requiring exits that we did not have, a sprinkler system, that we did not have and a fire curtain – that we could not have since it had to hang in the (fire-damaged) loft and that was behind the stage. It seemed that we were fated to tour to Centaur indefinitely (something that was not going to happen) or find another building (highly unlikely, although we looked). Things were pretty grim as we struggled on at Centaur; although being at Centaur was paradise for the performing year students.
I should explain the purpose of a fire curtain in the theatre. Theatrical sets (and costumes) are tremendously combustible. In the event of a fire on stage, the purpose of a fire curtain is to drop down (automatically or at command) behind the proscenium arch and close the stage fire off from the audience with a wall of asbestos, allowing the audience to exit in safety while the cast and crew are consumed by the fire on the stage. They were invented in the 19th century when theatres were lit by candles or gas and consequently burnt down on a fairly regular basis. To have a fire curtain on most modern stages, where the scenery and acting extends often far beyond the Proscenium arch (if there even is a Proscenium arch) is simply ludicrous. But the fire rules for theatres were written a long time ago and city bureaucrats, or fire inspectors, wouldn’t have a clue as to the actual nature or location of a Proscenium arch.
And speaking of fire curtains . . .
When I was (for a period of seven or eight months) the technical director of the Confederation Theatre at Bishop’s University, one of my first tasks was to act as the technical host for the summer assembly of the United Church of Canada. This took place in the late summer in the mid 1970’sand the theater was still inadequately equipped with air conditioning even though it had just completed the third season of Festival Lennoxville. Whatever had been barely adequate for three hours of evening theatre was plainly useless during an all-day session in a packed playhouse. The officials from the church had been complaining to the University throughout the weeklong session about the heat. On the closing night of the synod the problem made itself dangerously obvious.
The outside temperature had been high and the theatre packed all day and the closing ceremonies were going to be a fiery furnace. The organizers had requested a speaker’s podium and table on the thrust portion of the stage and the three rows of chairs for the dignitaries behind it with the last row ending up just behind the proscenium arch line. The rest of the stage was left open for a view of a lit cyclorama in the background. When it was ready and the necessary lights were focused and patched, I made my way up to the control booth at the back of the house to run lights and sound. Because the event was so simple to run the crew had been dismissed following the set up, so I was the only technician left in the theatre.
All went well, despite the stifling heat, until the closing moments. The assembled members were asked to end the evening with a rousing rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers” which was sung with great vigor (in anticipation, I expect, of the coming release into the cool external air). On the final chorus, everyone spontaneously rose – including those seated on the stage – and as they all sang with fervour, the fire curtain broke loose in the fly gallery and descended with slow but majestic force and crushed the back row of (now-empty) chairs on the stage.
Now in that theatre there is a stairway and passage under the audience that takes one backstage from the control booth. I am sure that I still hold the record for that distance. When I arrived backstage-right the members of the church were exiting the theatre and the head of the assembly was coming off by the side stage exit. When he saw me standing there utterly speechless with shock, he said: “Well, it was spectacular. But you should have warned us”. And then he left.
By then what had happened had finally dawned on me. Heat rises. The intense heat of the audience had concentrated in the upper levels of the fly gallery. Fire curtains have heat-triggered release connections and they had let go, dropping the curtain. The curtain makes a “relatively” slow descent because it is counterweighted, but it is heavy-duty asbestos and is enormously massive. Clearly, only religious fervor and cosmic intervention saved those sitting in the back row on stage. The next spring, I was part of the Festival Lennoxville crew assigned to removing the fire curtain permanently from the theatre, without, of course informing anyone.
Back to the Dome.
The regulations called for by the city were completely unachievable at the Dome. The existing structure could not sustain a sprinkler system nor a fire curtain no matter how ludicrously located. And the exits called for from the balcony level were also undoable. That was why the Dome was condemned. But no one had thought to read further, to the section concerning “Studio Theatres.” Here it was made clear that those theatres below a certain number of seats and with fewer than a certain number of performances per year were to be classified as “Studio Theatres” and the rules on exits, fire curtains and sprinkler systems did not apply. Clearly, we were a “Studio Theatre” and clearly, we were un-condemned – just filthy and ill-equipped. And so, gradually, the Dome would, like Lazarus, resurrect.
But not without further mishaps at Centaur, a real “strike” and a real renovation.
