Still Standing: 132-Year-Old Auditorium Theatre Welcomes Audiences Back
WDCB’s Gary Zidek sits down with Auditorium Theatre CEO Rich Regan to talk about the historic venue’s reopening process.
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“Now we’re open again, which is the great news. We went through some changes, we had to do a reorganization and we had to add new staff, but we’re back open again and back hosting shows. I really wasn’t quite prepared for the feeling of having patrons back in the building … until we had patrons back in the building.” - Auditorium Theatre CEO Rich Regan talking about what it was like to welcome audiences back again.
Auditorium Theatre CEO Rich Regan
The Auditorium Theatre has seen a lot over the course of its nearly 132 year history. Designed by the acclaimed architecture firm of Adler and Sullivan, the theater opened to great fanfare on December 9 1889. The Auditorium Theatre is one of Chicago’s only still operating venues that can claim to have already survived a pandemic, having made it through the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Over a hundred years later, the Auditorium Theatre (like performing arts venues all over the country) is dealing with the challenges of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The structure’s historic stage was dark for around a year and a half after everything shut down in mid-March of 2020. In October, the Auditorium Theatre officially welcomed audiences back with a performance from Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater. The Auditorium Theatre will present a variety of concerts, dance performances and other events through the end of 2021 and in 2022.
Inside the Auditorium Theatre. Photo credit: Carlos Rosas
