One Evening in Theatre — and What Our Cities Are Missing
By Saeed Vahid
It started with a simple invitation: an evening of free theatre at the Richmond Hill Curtain Club Theatre.
This was a place I had long meant to visit but never quite found the time for. When the opportunity came, I took it. What I didn’t expect was that the night would leave me thinking less about the performance—and more about how we design our city.
Because here’s the problem: in too many suburban communities, including Richmond Hill, we treat cultural spaces like standalone facilities rather than part of a larger urban experience. We build theatres—but fail to build the kind of places around them that make an evening feel complete.
From the outside, the Curtain Club is modest, especially compared to the larger, more commercial venues nearby. But step inside and that perception disappears. The space is intimate, warm, and deeply human in a way that larger venues often struggle to achieve.
We weren’t processed through a system; we were welcomed. Volunteers and organizers greeted us with a quiet pride that only comes from people who care deeply about what they do. This is a theatre sustained not by scale or funding, but by commitment.
That commitment stretches back decades. Founded in the 1950s, the group staged performances in garages and public spaces before eventually securing its current home. Today, it remains almost entirely volunteer-run—a rare and admirable example of community-driven culture.
And yet, despite everything it offers, the Curtain Club sits in an industrial pocket near Newkirk and Elgin Mills. Once the show ends, the experience ends with it. The lights go down, the doors open—and the city disappears.
There are no nearby cafés to continue the conversation. No bookstores to wander into. No restaurants filled with people dissecting the same performance you just watched. No sense that the theatre is part of a larger, shared civic life.
Compare that to destinations that work. Around the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts, there is at least the beginning of an urban fabric—spaces where people can linger, extend their evening, and feel connected to something beyond the event itself.
That difference matters more than we often admit.
An evening out is not just about what happens inside a venue. It’s about everything before and after—the walk, the conversation, the chance encounters, the feeling of being part of a place that is alive. When we isolate cultural institutions in disconnected areas, we strip away those layers and reduce them to single-purpose trips.
We shouldn’t.
If we want arts and culture to thrive, we need to stop thinking of theatres, galleries, and performance spaces as isolated investments. They should be anchors—surrounded by the kinds of uses that bring people together and keep them there.
That means rethinking how we zone land. It means encouraging small businesses—cafés, restaurants, shops—to cluster around cultural venues. It means designing streets that invite people to stay, not just arrive and leave.
Most of all, it means recognizing that what we’re building isn’t just infrastructure—it’s experience.
The Curtain Club proves that you don’t need a large budget to create something meaningful. But it also highlights what’s missing when that meaning isn’t supported by its surroundings.
We already have the destinations. The question is whether we’re willing to build the city around them.
Because in the end, people don’t just go out for a show.
They go out for an evening—and we should be giving them one.