Oh, what a wonderful world these walls have witnessed: the ray guns and rocket ships of Buck Rogers in the 1930s; the jungle-scapes and beating bongos of 1940s Tarzan; the melodramas and musicals of the 1950s. In the 1960s and 70s, nothing but Italian was spoken here, and, in the 1980s, an altogether different “language” when it was Eve’s Paradise, a pornography house. In 1990, these walls (and seats and screen) became part of the Festival chain of repertory houses.
In 2006, the Paradise Theatre’s screen at 1006 Bloor St. W. – a site that’s hosted a theatre of some sort since 1910 – went dark. After a brush with demolition seven years ago, these walls are now witnessing scaffold-building, hard-hatted workers brandishing power tools, interior designers with measuring tape and the buzz of anticipation that always accompanies a rebirth.
