After a devastating fire, Coal Mine Theatre has come back blazing

Coal Mine Theatre had a rough 2022.

And that has nothing to do with the theatre itself. The beloved east-end company presented a terrific season of plays: a highly acclaimed production of Annie Baker’s “The Antipodes,” plus a haunting summer run of Lisa D’amour’s play “Detroit.” It announced an ambitious eighth season of programming in August. Coal Mine was also one of the 22 Canadian theatre companies chosen to receive a hefty donation from the Slaight Family Foundation.

Great art and generous donors, what more could a growing theatre company want?

Things changed pretty quickly in September, when Coal Mine’s Danforth Avenue performance space suffered a major fire.

Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the fire threw a wrench into the company’s 2022-23 season. The space was deemed a total loss, so Coal Mine quickly found a new venue down the road, just steps from Woodbine Station.

When we spoke just after the fire, Coal Mine co-founder Diana Bentley was optimistic about the future. “Magic can come out of destruction,” she said at the time. But it was unclear in September what might come next for the company.

Now, just four months later, it’s time for the magic to begin at Coal Mine’s new home. Simon Stone’s “Yerma,” directed by Bentley and featuring film and TV star Sarah Gadon, opens on Sunday and the Coal Mine team couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome audiences back into one of Toronto’s most exciting theatre spaces.

“It’s astonishing,” said Bentley in an interview. “We came in at the end of December and we had a theatre. Then three days later, the ‘Yerma’ set was installed and it’s been rock ’n’ roll ever since.”

Longtime Coal Mine fans will recall the intimacy of the company’s former space. Rest assured, the new theatre is still cosy enough to foster close proximity between the audience and the action onstage. But there’s at least one major upgrade.

“There were no water lines in the basement of the new space of any kind,” said Ted Dykstra, the other co-founder of Coal Mine and Bentley’s husband. “Now there’s three washrooms!”

“We have a few more seats, so our capacity has grown a little bit,” added Bentley. “And the three washrooms is really big for us … the footprint has doubled in width and we have more height. For us, it’s really big but, in the grand scheme of things, it’s still pretty small,” she said, laughing.

The Coal Mine community came together in the fall to allow Bentley and Dykstra to find and refine their new theatre, donating more than $300,000 in just over two months. While the company was indeed the recipient of a large round of Slaight funding, none of that money went toward renovations or repairs.

“I made a personal promise to Gary (Slaight) that none of that money would be used for capital improvements,” said Dykstra. “He was explicit about that. That money goes into marketing and into artists’ pockets … we were able to raise enough money to pay for all this and then the Slaight money can be perfectly placed elsewhere.

“Plus, we’re closer to a subway station than any other theatre,” he added.

“Yerma” marks a number of firsts for Coal Mine: the first show in the new space, for one. But it will also be Bentley’s directorial debut. And according to her, the rehearsal process has been a dream.

“It’s such a formidable room of actors and designers,” she said. “The structure of the play, it’s so smart and beautifully crafted. It touches on themes that are very important to me as a woman and I think will resonate a lot with our audience.”

“Yerma” investigates infertility and its effect on a relationship, as well as its individual effects on a woman who desperately wants to get pregnant.

“The way these actors are exploring the text and going so deeply into the belly of the beast — for me as a first-time director, it’s very, very inspiring to watch them work. I come home to Ted every day and tell him I’m just awestruck. They’re just relentless in their pursuit of honest and truth,” Bentley said.

“I just love watching. It’s so fun.”

“And she’s a natural at it,” chimed in Dykstra. “She’s just coming into the beginning of something new … and she couldn’t be in better hands. She has a room full of people who just want to serve. You can’t really go wrong when everybody wants to serve and play.”

“It’s all felt very lined up,” said Bentley. “It’s finally getting to come together.”

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