Park Square Theatre - St Paul, Minnesota

shayna K.

Lovely theatre! Hard to find parking in DT Saint Paul but that is not their fault ! Theatre is right next to a lot of great restaurant options if you’re wanting to catch dinner and a show right after ‘ they also had a great concessions stand with lots of options for snack and drink and reasonable prices !

Rugby

Mission: Park Square Theatre excites generations of artists and audiences through vibrant theatre that elevates our community’s multiplicity of voices.
Vision: To be a premiere gathering place for culture, thought, and dialogue.

To be a national leader in creating theatrical experiences for students in order to inspire confidence and compassion in the next generations.

Park Square opened in 1975 in an 80-seat walk-up in the Park Square Court building. With our move to the Historic Hamm Building in 1994, we began our strong relationship with Actors’ Equity Association (the union of professional actors and stage managers) and embraced a leading role as a producer of contemporary plays.
A Simple Beginning
Park Square Theatre was founded by Paul Mathey in 1972 first as Variety Hall in the Park Square Court Building in Saint Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood.

“The theatre grew out of an extension of the Smith Park Gallery as a bare spot with a brick wall and a few lights that hosted poetry readings and eventually plays,” remembers Richard Cook, Park Square’s longest tenured Artistic Director. As David Hawley, retired Pioneer Press theatre critic remembers, it was a tiny space “tucked away on the second floor of the then-headquarters of a scruffy outfit called Minnesota Public Radio.”
Richard came to Park Square in its first year as the designer for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, which was being directed by his husband, Steven Kent Lockwood (who retired in 2012 after 32 years as Park Square’s first Executive Director). From there Cook and Lockwood worked on every Park Square season for a few years until Mathey decided to retire for health reasons. Cook offered to shadow him as Assistant Artistic Director and took over in 1980.
Among all my other responsibilities in those first years was to thaw the radiator pipes with a propane torch” — Richard Cook

During the course of his tenure, Artistic Director Richard Cook conceived, designed (and often helped build) five unique theatre spaces in Saint Paul from that first 80-seat walk up to the Andy Boss Thrust Stage, which opened in 2014. After a major capital campaign, Park Square opened the 200-seat Andy Boss Thrust Stage in 2014 and now operates a 40,000 square foot facility with two theatres, two rehearsal halls, costume and scene shops and offices within in the landmark Historic Hamm Building.
It was in 1977 when he directed Oedipus at Colonus that Cook rearranged the little Park Square Court walk-up into a tiny amphitheater. In 1980, Cook designed a 120-seat, three-quarter round thrust theatre in the basement of the Park Square Court building.
He ran the upstairs theatre by day and built the downstairs theatre at night. I thought he would drop from exhaustion.” – Steven Kent Lockwood
By 1985, Park Square Court’s developers wanted to take over the new theatre to rent to more lucrative clients, and Park Square was itinerant for a season before landing in the Jemne Building, then owned by the Minnesota Museum of American Art. The Jemne Auditorium, remodeled into a 120-seat theatre for Park Square, won the 1987 Interior Architecture Award from the Minnesota Society of the AIA for architect Craig Rafferty.
By 1991, performances at the Jemne were bursting at the seams and Cook decided it was time to make a major move. The 350-seat Seventh Place Theatre (now known as the Park Square Proscenium Stage) became available. After a sold-out summer run of The Mousetrap, Park Square signed its first long term lease in the Historic Hamm Building. The move allowed Park Square to take off — first doubling, then tripling its subscriber base — and providing the capacity to launch its now wildly successful education program.

Your chair is waiting. Bring your story.

Cynthia D.

Love that they had a coat check were they allowed our Walker and umbrella. Staff very friendly and helpful when I got lost getting there as it is very confusing. They helped us on the phone with directions as there was so many roads closed and was hard to figure out how to get there. Loved the show too

Bonnie T.

Play itself was great good characters and so true. Getting there parking and entering thru bldg long way. Elderly should be warned when coming to bldg

Grace A.

Professional equity theatre so prices are higher than local community theatre.
Seats are comfortable. Concessions ok. Bathrooms clean.
New season looks promising.

Diana S.

Saw the first play of their season Holmes/Poirot and as usual, very good! I enjoy when they do the Sherlock Holmes/Hercules Poirot stories!

Ron W.

Great place to watch plays. Many works by local playwrights. Local star quality actors and actresses. High quality theater at reasonable prices. A local gem.

GoodKarma C.

A welcoming and wonderful experience. We recently saw a play here which was a modern mystery twist on Sherlock Holmes's Watson; the play was fabulous. Being it was our first visit we had concern about accessible seating, they were completely accommodating. Also we turned up later than expected after finding parking and again they were accommodating. We were able to quickly get out tickets and be seated with minutes to spare before the play began. We will definitely be returning to Park Square Theatre!