Vancouver Playhouse

The Smaller Civic Room

The Playhouse dates to 1962, the year the operator lists for its construction, and went up as part of the civic complex around the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, designed by the Montreal firm Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold and Sise. For roughly five decades it was the home of the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company, a regional troupe founded in 1962 whose first production, The Hostage by Brendan Behan, opened on October 2, 1963. That resident company announced it would close on March 10, 2012.

A Presenting House Now

Today the Playhouse operates as a presenting house, booking dance, film, and theatre with a particular strength in acoustically driven work. Recurring presenters listed by the operator include DanceHouse, Friends of Chamber Music, the Vancouver Recital Society, and the Vancouver Chopin Society.

Built for Chamber Acoustics

The room is a proscenium house whose stage thrusts forward into the seating, an open plan the operator calls well suited to chamber sound. At 668 seats plus five wheelchair spaces, it is a small single-room house, the intimate counterpart to the roughly 2,765-seat Queen Elizabeth Theatre next door.

Part of the Hamilton Street Complex

The Playhouse is one of four venues Vancouver Civic Theatres operates for the City, with the Orpheum, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, and the Annex. Sharing a building with the much larger QE Theatre, it serves as the mid-scale civic room for seated, performance-focused programming downtown.