Coal Mine Theatre is in the midst of an extensive renovation to turn the former Royal Bank of Canada building at 2076 Danforth Ave., Toronto into its base of operations.Ivan Cabus/Ivan Cabus
“The Coal Mine’s on fire, the Coal Mine’s on fire!” shouted Ted Dykstra as he raced up the stairs to his wife, Diana Bentley, who was busy behind the bathroom door performing her morning ablutions.
Before she could towel off, Mr. Dykstra had bolted out the door of their home in Toronto’s east end to survey the controlled chaos and fire trucks assembled in front of the couple’s beloved storefront theatre at 1454 Danforth Ave., Coal Mine, known for its intimate performances and challenging repertoire. Once Ms. Bentley was able to find someone to look after their distressed four-year-old, Henry, she followed her husband.
“There was an explosion,” Ms. Bentley continues, her expression hardening as she remembers the events of Sept. 2, 2022. “The fire happened in the lobby, the fire didn’t go into the theatre [but] the smoke rippled all the way back to the back, back bathroom and the heat damage melted the posters, that’s how hot it got in there. … The crazy thing in all of it is that the play we had just done, Detroit, ends in a fire.” Part of the dialogue of that play, she says, dealt with how a fire takes a person “down to zero”… which, ironically, is where the couple now found themselves.
But the theatre, which they founded in 2015, is like “a light,” Ms. Bentley says. “It moves, it has nothing to do with me and it has nothing to do with Ted, it’s its own organism, it’s very intense – this is where I’m going now – so I always say ‘it’s my job to chase it and hold it,’ and when I met Eric I was, like, this is so full circle.”
The former Royal Bank of Canada building at 2076 Danforth Ave., Toronto.Ivan Cabus/Ivan Cabus
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The canary, in other words, found a new coal mine.
“Instantaneously I [said] ‘yes, this is going to happen,’” says Eric Veyt, smiling as he looks over at Ms. Bentley. Mr. Veyt is not a theatre person. In fact, Mr. Veyt has made a name for himself with One York, a construction management firm that, until recently, operated out of a small office at 7 Woodmount Ave., just north of the Danforth and about a kilometre east of Coal Mine Theatre.
When success forced him to find larger quarters, it brought him to the corner of Woodbine and Danforth avenues: there, vacant since 2017, stood a 10,000-square-feet property. The brutalist, raked concrete and limestone-paneled, purpose-built Royal Bank branch at that spot would make one heck of a good base of operations. And since the half-basement was somewhat superfluous to their needs, One York casually looked around for a tenant. After being courted by a golf simulator, a gym and a children’s daycare, Coal Mine came a-callin’ … and it was love at first sight.
“I was, like, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’” Mr. Veyt says with a laugh.
Interestingly, even before the fire and before Mr. Veyt had leased 2076 Danforth Ave., Ms. Bentley had admired the old bank. She’d even asked the owner for a tour, but ultimately gave up on the idea because the only washroom is on the top floor and the Coal Mine couldn’t afford to lease the whole building.
Today, Ms. Bentley and Mr. Veyt are standing in a long corridor on the second floor near that very washroom. On the basement and first floor, workers are making an extraordinary racket stripping away the old drop ceiling to expose the concrete waffle construction, building One York’s offices and showrooms, and creating a lighting rig and other necessities for the theatre. Interestingly, here on the windowless top floor, One York has given over some space for the Coal Mine to use as their green room, as well as placing makeup stations in the corridor.
“So when we’re not in production this’ll just be a thoroughfare that [One York’s] people will just be able to come through,” Ms. Bentley says.
Trotting down two flights of speckled green terrazzo stairs, Ms. Bentley shows off the new theatre space, which will seat up to 120 people (the old location held about 80). Because it’s much wider, the Coal Mine will be able to configure the room to arena/theatre-in-the-round or proscenium at will, using risers and movable seating.
Even the old bank vault will be put to use: “We’re calling it the jewel box,” she says. “It’ll be used for actors to change during the show, but when Ted’s doing a rock opera and we want to transform the whole space into a dive bar, there’ll be a bar in there; the whole space will become flexible … for Judas Iscariot, have that be a jail – we’ll use the architecture of the building.”
It’s good to use a 56-year-old old piece of Brutalism this way. Long criticized for small windows, heavy cladding, utilitarian interiors and a lack of warmth, the repurposing of this type of architecture – first popularized by Alison and Peter Smithson in England in the mid-1950s – into ‘friendly’ things such as theatres or construction offices (or, perhaps one day, coffee shops and resto-bars!) will go a long way towards ordinary, non-architecture-obsessed people appreciating Brutalism’s rough charms.
And because Brutalism was used mostly for larger scale buildings (this author can think of exactly one house in Toronto that could be classified as such), it will be these kinds of multiuse, synergistic arrangements that will ultimately save buildings from the wrecker’s ball.
“Their time, when they need to be loud, is the time that we’re not here,” Mr. Veyt says. “And we were patient with each other to work out all the minutiae, and now we’ve got a great deal for both of us for the next 10 years.”
Author’s Note: I grew up a 10-minute walk from this building. This RBC branch was my parent’s and I vividly remember amusing myself while in line by playing with the bathtub-chain-secured pens at the little deposit/withdrawal slip tables with one hand while holding my mother’s hand with the other. And I can’t wait to see a play here.