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Meridian Arts Centre

Toronto performing arts venue

Field	Value
name	Meridian Arts Centre
former_names	North York Performing Arts Centre (1993–94)
Ford Centre for the Performing Arts (1994–98)
Toronto Centre for the Arts (1998–2019)
image	Toronto Centre for the Arts front.jpg
image_size	260px
address	5040 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6R8
coordinates
owner	City of Toronto
architect	Eberhard Zeidler
website
opened	October 16, 1993

Ford Centre for the Performing Arts (1994–98) Toronto Centre for the Arts (1998–2019) Toronto, Ontario M2N 6R8 The Meridian Arts Centre is a performing arts venue in the North York district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It opened on October 16, 1993, as the North York Performing Arts Centre and was designed by Canadian architect Eberhard Zeidler for musicals, theatre productions and other performing arts. At opening, North York awarded management of the centre to Livent, which sold the naming rights in 1994 to Ford Motor Company of Canada. It became the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts. Later, it debranded as the Toronto Centre for the Arts.

In January 2019, TO Live (formerly Civic Theatres Toronto, a City of Toronto agency which manages and operates the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Toronto Centre for the Arts, and the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts) announced a new sponsorship deal with Meridian Credit Union, which saw the theatre rebranded in September 2019.

Facility

The building originally housed three theatres: the Main Stage Theatre with 1,727 seats, the George Weston Recital Hall with 1,036 seats, and the multi-purpose, 200-seat Studio Theatre. When Livent declared bankruptcy in 1998, the City of Toronto government assumed control of the facility.

The Main Stage was home to Dancap Productions' Canadian production of Jersey Boys from August 2008 until August 2010. Prior to Jersey Boys, the facility was the home of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard in 1995 and a 1993 production of Show Boat that transferred to Broadway.

After Dancap ceased operation, the centre had difficulty finding enough tenants for the Main Stage, and began a series of renovations from 2014 to 2016 that divided the Main Stage into two smaller theatres. The Greenwin Theatre seats 296 and was built on the original stage and backstage areas, while the remainder of the original auditorium became the Lyric Theatre, seating 576 and featuring LED backlit acoustic panels that can change colour with the lighting design.

Meridian Arts Centre Lyric Theatre 2024.JPG|Lyric Theatre George Weston Recital Hall 2024.JPG|George Weston Recital Hall Meridian Arts Centre Lower Galleries 2024.JPG|Lower Galleries

References

Raju Mudhar. (21 January 2019). "Meridian Credit Union buys naming rights for Sony Centre and Toronto Centre for the Arts". [[Toronto Star]].
Haskell, Richard. (December 15, 2013). "Toronto Centre for the Arts". [[The Canadian Encyclopedia]].
Knelman, Martin. (December 13, 2013). "North York's theatrical delusion sinks for good". [[Toronto Star]].
Williams, Patricia. (October 24, 2016). "Staging the newly renovated Toronto Centre for the Arts". Daily Commercial News.
(July 2013). "Splitting the Stage: The Mainstage Theatre Becomes Two". ArtsBuild Ontario.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

music-venues-in-toronto performing-arts-centres-in-canada theatres-in-toronto north-york eberhard-zeidler-buildings music-venues-completed-in-1993 theatres-completed-in-1993 1993-establishments-in-ontario

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