InterAct’s big move: Goodbye Adrienne, hello Drake

Have you ever enjoyed a show in any space at the Adrienne on Sansom Street — from ComedySportz in the first-floor PlayGround to the 106-seat mainstage (home to InterAct Theatre Company) to any number of productions by smaller companies on the 80-seat third floor SkyBox — and heard the music and pounding feet of another simultaneous performance or class? And how about the mainstage's tight, old, rickety rows of wooden folding seats with their red padding?

No more, InterAct announced in April. It has spent 18 of its 27 years at the Adrienne, long a hub of Philly’s theater community, with a recently renovated lobby. The Adrienne will continue to host companies like ComedySportz, Philly Improv Theater, and others, but InterAct is joining four other local theater companies in a new home.

InterAct, PlayPenn, Simpatico Theatre Project, Azuka Theatre, and Inis Nua Theatre Company are all moving into a new Philly performance hub called The Drake at 1512 Spruce Street, a former University of the Arts dance space. (Inis Nua and Azuka are coming from their former home base at 17th and Sansom, the Off-Broad Street Theater at the former First Baptist Church.)

Beginning this fall, it sounds like there won’t be many quiet nights at the new Drake, according to a statement from the Adrienne. It’ll have a 128-seat main stage and a 75-seat second stage, along with two lobbies, and will be the city’s only theater that is a long-term home to multiple theater companies, as well as being “a place where theater makers come to read, write, research, discuss, exchange, devise, rehearse and attend new plays.”

With a total commitment of less than $4 million, InterAct will anchor the venue and is launching a 15-year lease, in turn renting space to its four resident partners. Between them all, the Drake is projected to host over 250 performances and events a year, reaching 18,000 patrons, and that doesn’t include 100 performances and 2,000 patrons expected from other non-partner renters.

The new space will let InterAct and its partners “present higher quality productions,” InterAct producing Artistic Director and founder Seth Rozin says, “Along with our partners, we’re building a robust venue with year-round activity, as well as a stronger, more sustainable business model for all of us.”

At right: an exterior view of the The Drake. Image courtesy of InterAct.