2006 Renovations

Hello! In 2006 the Patrick's Cabaret staff, building contractors, and assorted volunteers worked diligently to give Patrick's Cabaret a much needed facelift. This work was done around a very full and erratic event, performance, class and rehearsal schedule of dancers, musicians, performance artists and community members. But FINALLY we are finished with the renovation!

Patrick Scully, Patrick's Cabaret Founder and Artistic Director, gave me very loose reins to basically "re-invent" the new theater space. Patrick's philosophy, has been to give artists complete freedom to create, "because" as Patrick says” It is in this freedom that they make their best work". I certainly appreciated Patrick's hands off attitude, except of course when it came to staying within a budget”. Lord knows I could have gone way over board! So when possible I relied on a lot of recycled materials I found in the building, discovered at the Re-Use-It Center or happened upon in alleys and dumpsters. We are also really fortunate to have Jeff, Matt, M.J. and Sluggo of Load Bearing Construction as a tenant in our building to give us much needed advice on construction details and material sources.

We also removed all of the old non-usable electrical wiring and moved some of the gas lines that we found to be distracting. I took out part of the west wall separating the lobby from the theater, but left the supporting beam in place. Then I added some Decorative corbels and a capitol to make the supporting beam more of a focal point than an after thought. (We think that this wall was the curtain and stage area when the Firehouse Experimental Theater occupied the building from the late 1960's until the mid 1970's.)

Perhaps the biggest change you will notice is THE WALLS. You can see all the holes on the walls in the before photos. Until last year, there was white pegboard covering every wall. We took those 8' x 4' panels down and found 1" x 4" boards attached into the plaster with cement nails.

When you take a cement nail out of 112 year old plaster, you get a BIG hole. I personally patched every one of the thousands of holes myself. Boy, did I learn a lot about plaster!

New Windows North Wall. We installed new windows where, in the past, only boards and fiberglass insulation had been covering holes that once held air conditioners. The north wall had not had windows that open for 40 over years! (This fact I discovered in old photos that our fairy godmother/ building owner, had found in the Minneapolis Historical Society.) The awning windows on the north wall added much needed ventilation for those stifling Minnesota summers and of course more light.

New Window South Wall: The south wall had a door in the wall that used to hold a window, when the room used to be divided into a furniture store with a separate entrance for the Airport Taxi company that was on the second floor. Peter, our masonry contractor took out the door and put in a new glass block window. But because the window looks like it belongs there, most people don't notice that the wall no longer is boarded up. They just notice all the light!

EAST WINDOW ~ What was once an after thought and eyesore is now a focus for the room. This wall and window used contain the main doors for the firehouse. Horse drawn Fire coaches, (and later fire trucks), exited and entered through huge wooden doors. Now only the original upper window and cobblestone floor remains, as some time in the 1970'sthe doors were removed and a concrete wall with a display window was installed. The drab, ugly, concrete brick wall was full of holes and leaked drafty, cold air in the winter.

We also removed the crumbling plaster exposing the brick on the east wall.

I built and insulated a framed wall. Put in a moisture barrier and sheet rocked this area, finishing off the mostly unusable space.

NEW CURTAINS ~ Actually these are "used curtains", as they used to be in the South West High School Auditorium. South West High was kind enough to donate the EGGPLANT and BLACK curtains, to us when they decided to renovate earlier this year. We eventually hope to install curtain hardware so we can close and open the curtains. Right now they are temporarily mounted to add ambience and "soften" the walls.

Then I painted a mural of a sunset with waning moon, over the window space. If this wall was not here, open sky would be your view so I just expanded on that open air idea. The mural, framed and partially obscured by eggplant curtains, with gold passementaries, and tropical plants,adds a bit of mystery to the room. Only with closer inspection do you see the entire mural which changes with the different light during the day and is artificially lit at night to recreate the sense of a sunset and "excitement of an evening at the theater".

The emergency exit door was a real challenge as it had just been an ugly gray fire exit.

SEATING and RISERS ~ WOW! Thanks to a $20,000 grant from the McKnight Foundation! That grant paid for the new chairs and risers. Which means we finally got rid of the old seating. The first thing I said to Patrick when he returned to be the Cabaret’s Artistic Director was, "We need new seating. Those old chairs may look charming but they are really dirty, falling apart, uncomfortable, and driving away your audiences".(I think "the look" was called "Early American Disaster".)Caffeto Coffee House gladly took 22 matching chairs. And the public schools were really happy to take about 80 folding chairs. Now kids won't be sitting on the floor at school. But we still had 3 times that number in really ratty chairs, stools and sofas. So we tried to give some of the old furniture to the Salvation Army but they wouldn't take it. So allot of the stuff went into the garbage. The day after our foiled furniture donation attempt. I got an email from a friend with a list of ten things that make you a red neck.... one them was” you know you're a red neck when the Salvation Army won't take your furniture". Who would have guessed that a bunch of Liberal Avant Garde performance artists would have the same decorating tastes of Rednecks? Anyway...

Bart found some great chairs. Bart and I decided on the color together and then discovered that color would be back ordered for 8 weeks. Luckily Sarah, our sales rep from Hertz Furniture said "Wait! don't worry, I may have another color, SIMILAR but close enough...." Well that turned out to be a better match for the egg plant curtains! Bart also decided that half the chairs should have arms. Which, when the theater is in use for performance, creates a better sense of personal space for the audience. NEW RISERS! Versatile and modular, we can now have proscenium or stadium seating! Patrick liked the idea of being able to make the seating areas more portable and interchangeable. People coming to Patrick's Cabaret can expect to find it looking different on every visit.

NEW TECH BOOTH ~ Notice the old photos of our tech area... it was an assortment of tables, stereo, and lighting equipment, with lots of wires everywhere.

I created an enclosed tech booth which is elevated 5 feet above the stage area. The view is much better of the entire theater. The tech booth is accessible by ladder. Now there is room to spread out the equipment with out worrying about anything falling over the edge. Most of the materials were recycled from the old plywood risers, and the original rafter facade. The asymmetrical and angular shape, repeats the slightly askew window trim.

PAINT ~ The eggplant curtain color, dominated the color choices I could make for wall, trim and accent paint. The OLD STRAW HAT wall color was an idea that Bart Buch, our facilities manager, and I decided on after we discovered the same color under the old flocked wallpaper, as it had been one of the original colors in the firehouse. Valspar Paint Company donated 20 gallons of paint for our walls. We had a hard working volunteer staff that April Sellers, our volunteer coordinator lined up and it took 3 days to paint the walls and another 2 months to paint all the trim.

Trompe l'oeil window trim and door details ~ When Artistic Director Patrick Scully first talked about doing the renovation he said "he wanted the theater to have an air of excitement, be playful and have a sense that anything might happen! In essence the mood should be unpredictable." Unpredictable, is a good word to describe renovating a 112 year old building! Not very many things in the place are square, even, symmetrical or level anymore! So I thought, let's work with those imperfections but let's call them "interesting characters", and make them the focus instead of trying to hide them. I also wanted to honor the heritage of the building. The trim details I created are similar to the actual painted wood trim and rosettes that are still intact in much of the building. The rosette (concentric circle in the square motif) is repeated on all the windows and doors. I intentionally painted the window frames to appear even more out of balance. The effect I strived for was playful, yet surreal. The deep red violet is a very serious color. 5 layers of paint were need to create the shadow and high light effects.

Saying "the facelift is complete" may be a bit misleading....because there is still more we want to do. the creation of a "green room" for performers is already in progress in our vast undercroft. In less then two years we plan a huge capital improvement project that will add a new welcoming entrance,4 more bathrooms, cozier lobby, added storage, some much needed exterior renovations and much more!

I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Mark Bautch