St. Paul’s
Gremlin Theatre is looking to relocate to another part of the St. Anthony Park neighborhood, an area it has called home for the past five years.
Peter Hansen, the theater’s artistic director, says Gremlin wants to stay nearby because “It’s a great location. We love the businesses and the contacts and we feel that patrons have gotten used to coming here.”
Gremlin will also probably keep its aesthetic and 115-seat house, about the same. “The whole theater is built on the idea of intimacy and closeness to the stage,” he says.
This way, the audience “feels involved in what’s going on,” he adds.
At the same time, the theater hopes to find a way to improve its situation, in some respects.
For example, the theater has to contend with outside noise on occasion. This has partly to do with other activities happening close to the theater, including the
Central Corridor light rail transit construction that’s underway, just beyond the entryway.
Hopefully, a new space won’t have those kinds of sound issues. The idea is, “We want to be able to give our patrons and artists a better experience,” he says.
Additionally, the building the theater is housed in could be redeveloped at some point, as well, making for an uncertain future for Gremlin.
The building’s lease goes through July, so that’s when the theater will move out. Although signing up for another lease, in the short-term, was an option, “We figured that treading water wasn’t the best option,” he says.
In the meantime, Gremlin is exploring the possibilities for a new venue. “If we determine that a place we’re looking at doesn’t meet the needs or needs more time, then we’re looking at a situation where we need to regroup and mobilize,” he says.
That could lead to more site-specific work in the meantime, he says.
Considering that the theater has gone through this process twice already, “We’d like to be in a place longer, while still keeping the same sorts of values in terms of how we produce shows,” he says.
Source: Peter Hansen, artistic director, Gremlin Theatre
Writer: Anna Pratt