Hale Center: Beautiful new theater will be 3 times bigger

OREM — Hale Center Theater owners have long felt they worked and lived within a puzzle.

"I think of this building like it's one of those little puzzles with the movable squares. We're always trying to move things around to fit," said owner Anne Swenson.

"For 'The Scarlet Pimpernel,' most of the sets lived outside the theater," said Cody Hale, also an owner. "We had to put a bridge in that spanned the entire stage. We had to bring it in from two sides in pieces that we could put together in the dark in less than 30 seconds. It required making absolutely sure no one was in the hallways. It's like an entire ballet."

This next year should bring considerably more breathing space as the current facility is replaced by a facility three times larger with ample parking, almost twice the seating, restroom and rehearsal space.

The current building on 400 North and Orem Boulevard was originally built to be a veterans hall. It's been used as a school, a dance studio, an alternative school, a church and a reception center. In 1990, the Hales and Swensons opened it as one of the Hale Center Theaters, the fourth in a chain.

The building consisted of 11,000 square feet of space and held 305 seats.

The new $7.5 million building — to be built in the southwest corner of the Midtown Village complex at 320 S. State — will have 522 seats and 39,686 square feet of space. Ground was broken on Nov. 16, 2007.

It will still be theater in the round.

"In traditional proscenium theater, there are great physical distances between the artistic elements and the patrons," said Cody Swenson. "At Hale Center Theater Orem, that has never been the case. The audience has been and always will be so close to the stage and the performers that some can literally reach out and touch them.

"Grandma and Grandpa Hale used to say, 'Patrons want to leave having had an emotional bath,"' he said. "When you are up close and personal with the show and feel like part of the action, it is so much easier to be swept along with the magic."

Currently, Hale Center shows are consistently sold out. Shows being prepared for the stage are rehearsed either off the property or downstairs in space shared with the costuming shop, set and prop storage and offices.

The new theater will feature a new winch-driven fly system, a stage with slip stages and movable sections, a tension grid ceiling and a slightly larger stage.

It's expected the new building will be ready for the 2008 production of "A Christmas Carol."