Thomas Breen photo
The Shubert Theatre’s new digital marquee on College Street.
An historic early 20th century theater took a step into the 21st century with a new digital marquee that advertises upcoming plays with text, images, and videos displayed above the venue’s College Street entrance.
On Tuesday afternoon, around 50 board members, staff, and supporters of the Shubert Theatre gathered at the venue’s 247 College St. location to celebrate the unveiling of the new double-sided digital marquee.
Thomas MacMillan photo
The former Shubert marquee atop the sidewalk kiosk outside of the theater’s entrance.
Unlike the theater’s previous fluorescent-tube marquee, which stood atop a sidewalk kiosk outside of the theater’s entrance and required staff to manually change each letter whenever they wanted to advertise a new show, the digital marquee hangs on the side of the building two dozen feet above the sidewalk and can be updated from a computer inside the theater’s main office.
“It’s a great landmark,” said John Fisher, the executive director of the Connecticut Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA), the nonprofit that runs the Shubert. “That image of the Shubert is iconic for New Haven, and it’s replicated on the kiosk and on the top of the sign. It identifies who we are and where we are, and it’s a great marketing tool for telling everybody what’s coming up.”
Fisher said the theater will keep the sign on 24 hours a day, though it will dim the sign’s lights at night. The sign is roughly 10 feet wide by eight feet high.
Thomas Breen photos
Shubert executive director John Fisher and donor Suzanne Weinstein.
Fisher and Shubert spokesman Anthony Lupinacci said that the theater had long planned to replace the old text-based marquee, which stood outside the theater’s entrance from 1983 to March 2018, because of the wear and tear the old sign had taken over the course of 35 years. They said that the old sign also used to shake badly during violent snowstorms and rainstorms, and that the staff would have to wait until the weather cleared before they could change its text.
Initially, they said, they were planning on updating the old fluorescent tube-based sign to one with LED lights, but then donor Suzanne Weinstein came forward and said that she would be willing to finance the purchase and set up of a new digital marquee.
Shubert supporters gather in the rain outside of the theater to watch the new digital marquee light up.
As the sky clouded over and rain began to pick up on Tuesday afternoon, the celebrants moved from the theater’s lobby outside to the sidewalk and burst into applause as the marquee showed its first digital animation, of scissors cutting a red ribbon followed by a thank you note to the Weinstein family, just after 5:30.
The sign’s display then transitioned to a video montage of 19th century French revolutionaries silently dancing and singing, advertising the theater’s upcoming run of the musical Les Misérables.
The north-facing side of the digital marquee and the sidewalk kiosk.
Lupinacci said that the lighting of the new sign was just the first in a series of upcoming events commemorating the 35th anniversary of the Shubert Theatre’s reopening in December 1983. The historic theater opened in 1914, and earned the nickname the “Birthplace of the Nation’s Greatest Hits” for premiering such shows as Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, and A Streetcar Named Desire throughout the early and mid-20th century.
The theater closed in 1976 and was on the brink of being demolished before efforts by the city and private donors led to the theater’s restoration and reopening in late 1983.
The south-facing side of the digital marquee.
“When the Shubert reopened, I was ecstatic,” said Weinstein, a Westville neighbor has been a devoted Shubert attendee since she was a teenager in the 1950s. She said she hopes the new sign will attract new visitors to the theater and help keep the Shubert alive and well for another century to come.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the lighting of the Shubert’s new digital marquee.
