In 1995 we created a new company and named it TheatreZone, for the location where we produced our plays: the intersection of the Theatre District and the Combat Zone. Soon after, we began searching Chelsea for a place to create a new performing arts center. In 1999 we purchased our historic building in Chelsea Square, located on a site that once housed the lavish Academy of Music where Sarah Bernhardt and Edwin Booth performed.
After four years of fundraising and renovations, we opened our new theater in the historic 1906 Old Post Office Building/Odd Fellows Hall, now the Chelsea Theatre Works. The Chelsea Theatre Works houses a fully equipped theatre, class and rehearsal studios, and a lobby gallery exhibiting local and national artists, and is home to our full season of indoor Productions and the base for our outdoor Summer Bilingual Theater, Chelsea Youth Theatre program, Actor Training Program, and provides rehearsal and performance space for local and touring groups. Further, over the past several years, the Chelsea Theatre Works has become an anchor for the revitalization of Chelsea Square—one of Chelsea's four historic register districts.
Yet the prohibitive costs of bringing a 100-year-old building up to code, and making it fully accessible, kept us under constant threat of closure. With the installation of our elevator in 2007 we celebrated the success and survival of our permanent home by changing our name, from one that represented our past to one that inspires our future- Apollinaire Theatre Company.
Poet Guillaume Apollinaire was one of the leaders of an explosion of artistic activity in the early 20th century which resulted in the modern art movement in painting, dance, music, sculpture, and theatre. Apollinaire coined the term Surrealism, which he applied to his only play Les Mamelles de Tiresias. The revolutionary artistic energy of Apollinaire and his contemporaries -Cocteau, Jarry, Picasso, Chagall, to name a few- and their risky, wildly creative, and collaborative theatre works serve as both an inspiration and challenge as we reenvision ourselves as Apollinaire Theatre Company.
