Two years after it closed for major renovations, New Bedford’s historic Zeiterion theater reopens Saturday. CAI’s Jennette Barnes takes us behind the scenes, shortly before the big day.
When theater-goers finally return to the Zeiterion, they’ll probably be thinking about the long-awaited comfortable seats — and not everything new the Z is becoming.
A dance studio. An intimate nightspot. And more.
It may have been hard to envision, if you saw the main auditorium just one year ago.
“This was completely excavated,” Zeiterion president and CEO Rosemary Gill says, standing near the back of the auditorium.
“So at that point, this was all dirt. … We dug up the floor, because we regraded the entire room.”
Carpenters are getting ready to install the sound booth, and they’ve spread drop cloths and tools out on the floor.
“Let me see if I can show you a picture,” Gill says.
She pulls up a photo on her phone. The auditorium looks like a sandbox of earth, contained by ornate walls.
She says regrading the floor allowed for wheelchair access and a modern orchestra pit. The pit can descend below grade, or rise to extend the stage.
Installing the lift mechanism involved excavating below the water table. At one point, the hole filled with three feet of water.
“They pumped that water and created a holding area, here,” she says, gesturing toward the floor between rows of seats near the back of the theater. “Right where we're standing was a pond that they used to hold the water until they could safely pump it out of the building.”
Now, eight years after the staff and board began planning in earnest, the $37 million renovation is done.
The plaster ornaments on the walls and ceiling have been repaired. Greek muses, scrollwork, flowers — all gleaming in gold leaf.
“All that beautiful gold, and paint, and stenciling, and plaster work, those little rosettes you’re seeing — that's all individual plaster molds, and some of them are done by hand,” Gill says.
Shining amid all of it is the rewired and cleaned chandelier, designed by Harry Zeitz, who opened the Zeiterion with his brothers in 1923. The bowl-shaped fixture has more than 22,000 Bohemian-glass crystals, and now, the lights are LED.
“It's just gorgeous,” she says.
The Zeiterion has added new bathrooms and more than twelve hundred plush red seats — with, yes — cupholders. They’re a big upgrade from the old seats, which came secondhand from the Strand Theatre in Providence some 40 years ago.
As important as those things are, there’s a lot more to the new Zeiterion. What started as a plan focused on audience comfort brought transformative changes no one imagined at the start.
Frank Almeida, chair of the Zeiterion board, said hiring architects who specialize in theaters yielded a reworked vision for all four floors.
“We've tried to create a community living room. It's a term that's being used by a lot of places now, but I think it's actually real, where people can come in — anybody can come in — and feel comfortable in the building.”
Underutilized rooms above and below the lobby have been turned into public spaces for the first time — for classes, performances, and spots to grab a drink before the show.
“They had an entire second-floor space that was just being used as storage rooms, and kind of a junk pile of collections,” said project architect Chris Dynia, of Wilson Butler in Boston. “And we just looked at every nook and cranny in that building, because their ambition was to make it more than just a theater.”
Now, the third floor has a dance studio and classroom. The second has a member lounge, with camel-brown chairs, a bar, and coat check.
That’s where we continue the tour with Rosemary Gill.
“So here's — oh, they're bringing in the furniture,” she says, stepping into the lounge. … “This will be used on show nights, as a member lounge for our members. It has its own bar and restrooms, … all beautiful mahogany doors, and mahogany paneling on the front of the bars.”
Down on the main floor, the Z has taken over the old member lounge for a larger concession area, offering not just food and drink, but also space to mingle.
One thing not to miss is the new spot in the basement. At the moment, some of the construction crew are eating their lunch down here, but the Zeiterion has big plans for what it calls the Speakeasy.
It’s a nod to the theater’s founding during Prohibition, Gill says.
“This is meant to be a flexible space that can be used — we’ll use it — to present musical performances, lecture series, films, spoken word, that type of thing.”
Naturally, this industrial-chic room has its own bar.
The public can rent this or other spaces individually, or book the whole building for events. Rentals will bring new revenue for the nonprofit theater.
The rooms will also be used by the Z’s two resident companies, the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra and New Bedford Festival Theatre.
Gill says the renovation means the building, and the organization itself, are more welcoming to the community.
“This building will be open 24-7, as far as I'm concerned, and so that people can come through these doors for all sorts of reasons.”
Renewal of the century-old Zeiterion has made it modern — and made it more than it’s ever been.
