History Of THEATRE AURORA
PAST PRODUCTIONS:
2021 Season: Isolation Blues Girl Who Loved Her Horses Kitchen Witches No Exit Lonely Planet ​ 2020 Season: Secrets, Rumours & Lies The Children’s Hour Colours in the Storm Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Rumours The Memory of Water ​ 2019 Season: The Furious Five Blood Relations Assassins Les Liaisons Dangereuses The Tempest Arsenic and Old Lace ​ 2018 Season The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] This is a Play / Never Swim Alone The Drowsy Chaperone Proscenophobia Kiss of the Spider Woman Stepping Out ​ 2017 Season Death of a Salesman The Game’s Afoot; or Holmes for the Holidays If/Then Next Fall The Attic, The Pearls and Three Fine Girls ​ 2016 Season Love Letters Don’t Dress for Dinner Spring Awakening Much Ado About Nothing Speaking In Tongues Old Love ​ 2015 Season A Nice Family Gathering The Heart as It Lived The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Sexy Laundry Lucy ​ 2014 Season Prisoner of Tehran Maggie’s Getting Married Next to Normal Kimberly Akimbo Down Dangerous Passes Road Lost in Yonkers ​ 2013 Season Tuesdays With Morrie Missing Songs for a New World Men Are Dogs That Summer ​ 2012 Season Private Lives The Glorious 12th The Last Resort Les Belles Soeurs Jitters The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later ​ 2011 Season The Cemetery Club The Drawer Boy You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown The Laramie Project Harvey ​ 2010 Season Murder at the Howard Johnson’s Having Hope at Home The Saloon Keeper's Daughter A Streetcar Named Desire Noises Off! ​ 2009 Season California Suite Postmortem The Dining Room Suds: The Rocking 60’s Musical Soap Opera Remember Me Playwrights of Spring Festival 4 ​ 2008 Season Last of the Red Hot Lovers Jennie’s Story That Darn Plot! Urinetown - The Musical Murder in Green Meadows Playwrights of Spring Festival 3 2007 Season A Bench in the Sun Charley’s Aunt South Pacific Night Must Fall Move Over Mrs. Markham Playwrights of Spring Festival 2 2006 Season The Fantastiks! Educating Rita Dr. Cook’s Garden Crazy For YouTM Blithe Spirit Playwrights of Spring Festival 1 2005 Season Same Time, Next Year Same Time, Another Year An Experiment with an Air PUmp Pirates of Penzance I Hate Hamlet 2004 Season Painting Churches Li’l Abner Wait Until Dark Out of Order 2003 Season The Housekeeper Anything Goes Communicating Doors Moon Over Buffalo 2002 Season Rumors Guys and Dolls Run For Your Wife Waiting for the Parade 2001 Season Lettice and Lovage Sullivan and Gilbert Shadowlands Dearly Departed 2000 Season Footprints on the Moon The Secret Garden The Woman in Black The Importance of Being Earnest 1999 Season Pool’s Paradise Blood Brothers The Desperate Hours Pride and Prejudice 1998 Season Look No Hans Oliver! Dead Wrong One Toe in the Grave 1997 Season Broken Up Dracula, The Musical? 84, Charing Cross Road Bedside Banners 1996 Season The Butler Did It Into the Woods Bell, Book and Candle To Grandmother’s House We Go 1995 Season Lend Me A Tenor House on the Cliff Bye Bye Birdie Squabbles 1994 Season Exit the Body Annie Beyond Reasonable Doubt Forty Carats 1993 Season The Odd Couple (Female Version) Foxfire A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum The Curious Savage 1992 Season It Runs in the Family Little Shop of Horrors Gwendoline Allocating Annie 1991 Season Social Security Veronica’s Room Gypsy Chapter Two The Saloon Keeper’s Daughter 1990 Season Sinners Evita Sea Marks I’ll Be Back Before Midnight 1989 Season A Thousand Clowns Finian’s Rainbow Summer of the Seventeenth Doll The Murder Game 1988 Season A Gown for His Mistress Cabaret Wait Until Dark The Anniversary 1987 Season Count Dracula Camelot A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Rainmaker 1986 Season At This Evening’s Performance Jesus Christ Superstar Hobson’s Choice Someone Waiting 1985 Season Absurd Person Singular The Merry Widow The Nightmare The Hand that Cradles the Rock The Glass Menagerie 1984 Season Luxury Cruise Man of La Mancha Waiting in the Wings Come Blow Your Horn 1983 Season Not Now Darling Oliver The Lion in Winter Deathtrap The Mumberly Inheritance 1982 Season The Prisoner of Second Avenue My Fair Lady Hedda Gabler Butterflies are Free 1981 Season Finishing Touches South Pacific The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Move Over Mrs. Markham 1980 Season Night Watch Brigadoon Rasho-mon Sleuth Here Lies Jeremy Troy The Drunkard 1979 Season How the Other Half Loves Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat There’s a Girl in my Soup Live with Father 1978 Season Present Laughter Guys and Dolls Night Must Fall Midsummer Mink 1977 Season Private Lives Fiddler on the Roof The Unreasonable Acts of Julian Waterman Tartuffe The Man Who Came to Dinner 1976 Season Pool’s Paradise A Man For All Seasons The Innocents Beyond the Fringe Pyjama Game 1975 Season Oh Coward A Christmas Carol Once More With Feeling The Sound of Music Relatively Speaking 1974 Season Charley’s Aunt The Odd Couple You Know I Can’t Hear You When The Water’s Running Iolanthe Moved to The Factory Theatre 150 Henderson Drive 1973 Season School for Scandal Barefoot in the Park The Chalk Garden The King and I 1972 Season You Can’t Take It With You Dial ‘M’ For Murder Separate Tables Kiss Me Kate As the Aurora Drama Workshop: 1971 Season Romanoff and Juliet The Music Man Gaslight Plaza Suite Chickenfeathers ‘72 1970 Season Blithe Spirit The Mikado Aladdin Ladies in Retirement David and Lisa The Boyfriend 1969 Season The Shop at Sly Corner Pirates of Penzance See How They Run Oklahoma 1968 Season Arsenic and Old Lace Toad of Toad Hall Playboy of the Western World Chickenfeathers ‘69 1967 Season HMS Pinafore Hay Fever Time Remembered 1966 Season The River Line Roar Like a Dove Sleeping Beauty The RatsThe GirlfriendBrats Overruled The Vigil 1965 Season The Seven Year Itch The Tinderbox An Inspector Calls Our Town 1964 Season The Diary of Anne Frank The Importance of Being Earnest Breath of Spring 1963 Season The Two Mrs. Carrols Caesar and Cleopatra Harvey The Wedding Antigone 1962 Season Gramercy Ghost Arms and The Man You Touched Me! Anniversary Waltz 1961 Season The Curious Savage Bell, Book and Candle The Lady’s Not For Burning George Washington Slept Here 1960 Season Autumn Crocus Claudia Noah Meet a Body 1959 Season Suspect The Outsider Tobias and The Angel 1958 Season Tovarich Storm in a Teacup
A Look Back:
November 1958, the young people wore crinolines and bobby socks, and danced to American Bandstand. George Armstrong was captain of the Maple Leafs, and John Diefenbaker was Prime Minister of our Country. Meanwhile under the watchful eye of Mayor Jim Murray, Aurora was a rapidly growing town with a population of 3,957. At this time a newly formed small group called themselves The Aurora Drama Workshop and was rehearsing a play called Tovarich. Under the sponsorship of the Hobby Craft Guild of Aurora, the group made its debut on November 7, 1958 at the Aurora District High School.
For the first fifteen years, rehearsals took place in basement rec-rooms, dilapidated buildings and anywhere else available to an enthusiastic cast and crew. The group was playing to a steadily growing audience.
​
Then in 1973, amalgamation with the Aurora Musical Theatre Society resulted in the new Theatre Aurora. In 1974, the Town of Aurora offered a lease on the cement factory on Henderson Drive to the newly formed group.
​Extensive renovations by the new group's members and patrons transformed the old abandoned factory to the Factory Theatre – Home of Theatre Aurora.​
We have never looked back...as audiences grew, so did our need for more space and better seating arrangements. The theatre was a hive of activity in the summer of 1980 as we again renovated, including a new spacious foyer and raised seating.
Further changes to the tiered floor and seating arrangements took place in the summer of 1998, and in the summer of 1999 we installed new theatre fixed seating to complement the revised sightlines.
.jpg)
In 1999 we were also granted Charitable Status! This gave our long-term members and supporters the opportunity to donate to us while receiving a tax receipt for their generosity.
In 2004 we began a ten year lease at the Factory Theatre. With this lease came the responsibility for us to repair and maintain both the interior and exterior of the building. To enable us to do this, Theatre Aurora was the proud recipient of a capital grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. With the help of this grant, a new lighting board and sound equipment enhanced our technical capabilities. Air conditioning was installed, much to our audiences and melting actor's relief, as well as a fire alarm and sprinkler system.
In 2012 we opted to drop the name Factory Theatre from use, and the location has now become synonimous with
the group's name.
We are very proud of our Theatre. Our group is a member of the Association of Community Theatres - Central Ontario (ACT-CO) and Theatre Ontario. We have been nominated and awarded in ACT-CO’s annual festival of plays and musical productions and have been honoured to remount a production for the Theatre Ontario Festival.
We honour our members who have maintained active membership for over twenty-five years with a Life Time Membership.
​
Today, after 65 years, Theatre Aurora has the honour of producing four productions per year; giving our audiences and members the opportunity to explore the theatre arts in comedy, drama and musicals.
In 2022, thanks to a grant from the Trillium Foundation, we were able to make significant improvements to our theatre's infrastructure. We installed a brand new Accessible All Gender Washroom and upgraded the lighting and flooring in our lobby, ensuring our theatre remains a welcoming, inclusive, and comfortable environment for all.