Victoria Playhouse: Re(de)fining Space and Focus in Rural Prince Edward Island

Abstract

Prince Edward Island’s Victoria Playhouse celebrates its twenty-fifth season in the summer of 2006. Since 1981, the Playhouse, as it is locally known, has been producing theatre in the Victoria Community Hall, which inside looks like the inverted interior of a ship, quite appropriate for a theatre a two-minute walk from fishing wharves. This cosy hall, built by Win Bradley between 1914 and 1916, has had a long history of activity. During the two world wars, the Playhouse was used for “recruiting meetings, lectures, plays, concerts, suppers, [and] quilting bees” to help the war effort (Boswell 27). At other times, the Playhouse was used for “showers, farewells, joint political meetings, movies, Christmas [concerts], school closings, fashion parades, [and] music festivals,” and it has seen performances by artists such as Anne Murray and Don Messer and His Islanders (27–8). However, it is as home of the Victoria Playhouse that the hall has had the most significant impact on the community over the past twenty-five years.