New Haven Independent

On an icy cold Thursday afternoon Kevin Rose (left) and Danny Cruz of the city traffic department hoisted a sign rededicating the southwest corner of College and Chapel as Shubert Square.

It was the beginning of a weekend-long celebration of the storied theater’s birthday. Click here for details.

Seats for the 1914 Shubert opening night production of a London-import dialect comedy called The Belle of Bond Street were priced from 25 cents to $1.50. This weekend’s celebratory prices are even better: They’re free.

The events include an open house, behind-the-scenes tours, and a screening of The Sound of Music.

As a tryout house for Broadway through the 1960s, the Shubert stage became legendary in theater circles. By way of one example, a little show called Away We Go did so well in New Haven in 1944 that it went to Broadway, renamed Oklahoma!.

The theater fell on hard times and was closed for nearly a decade between the late 1970s and early 80s. A public-private effort saved and renovated it theater. It reopened in 1984, when the original “Shubert Square” plaque went up on the street.

Shubert officials said that first plaque wasn’t seen by a whole lot of people. It needed a brushing up; the 95th theater anniversary seemed a good pretext.

Kevin Rose said he knew the sign was there. He knew the designation, Shubert Square.

A theater-goer, he used to patronize the Roger Sherman Theater (now the closed down Palace across from the Shubert) in the 1970s.

“There are a lot of theaters the size of the Shubert that don’t exist anymore,” said Anthony Lupinacci, the theater’s director of public relations. He said he hopes people coming to the weekend’s events will leave with a more living sense of some of this history and with pride in what their city has done.

So 2009 also celebrates 25 years of that coming back to life, said Shubert Executive Director John Fisher. And the Shubert, he went on to say, also anchored the revitalization of downtown.

“We take it for granted that it [a revitalized College St. and downtown] was always like this, but it wasn’t,” said Lupinacci,

He said the Shubert is celebrating how it has also transformed itself from a performance venue to include all kinds of public and educational programming and partnering with schools such as the new nearby Coop arts-themed high school.

All of this was undreamed of by Sam Shubert when he booked Sam Bernard to play The Belle of Bond Street in 1914.

Owned by the city, and operated by a not-for-profit called the Connecticut Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA), the Shubert is today “the community’s theater,” said Fisher.

It certainly is that this weekend. On Friday between 12:30 and 4:30 on the half hour there will be tours of the Shubert’s historic backstage. At 7 p.m., after the official rededication ceremony, the movie Sound of Music, will be screened.

The eponymous stage play with a young actress named Mary Martin and Theodor Bikel, on which the film was based, opened at the Shubert 50 years ago, in October 1959.

So what’s on tap for the 100th anniversary? Fisher said that is still a gleam in the institutional diva’s eye. But as all performers have to keep out-doing themselves, he suggested 100 might call for a year-long celebration.