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Stagehouse Expansion

Stagehouse Expansion

1997 - 1999

Broadway was getting bigger and bigger - and Shea's was just too small. Popular "mega-musicals" of the 1980's like Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon were in hot demand with the falling chandeliers and flying helicopters but even just the bus-and-truck tours for Annie and Cats were already struggling to fit backstage. "We had to shave three-sixteenths of an inch off a couple of bricks to get the set in," producer Albert Nocciolino remembers.

Patrick Fagan led the charge: if Shea's was going to join the "major entertainment leagues", we would need a major stagehouse expansion.

Patrick Fagan led the charge: if Shea's was going to join the "major entertainment leagues", we would need a major stagehouse expansion.

Photo Credit: The Buffalo News - December 3, 1997

The show must go on!

The stagehouse expansion took fourteen months before re-opening the Shea's Buffalo Theatre with The Phantom of the Opera. Meanwhile, our Broadway season continued offstage, with shows playing at the University of Buffalo Center for the Arts, the former Cheers restaurant in Theatre Place, and Kleinhans Music Hall.

Photo Credit: November 30, 1998

$14.8 million dollars and 50-feet long

You read those numbers right - our 1999 stagehouse expansion cost a total of $14.8 million dollars and nearly doubled the stage, from 29 1/2 to 50-feet long (the standard Broadway stage was 42 feet long) making Shea's Buffalo one of the biggest stages in the country! Complete with new dressing rooms, a set of A/C units installed on the roof (donated from the recently-closed Memorial Auditorium), a two-truck loading dock, and a new freight elevator installed backstage. And our front of house got a makeover too: new seat numbers were installed on all the seats and all 3,783 light bulbs were replaced in the theater ceiling for the first time since 1926.
In 2001, Patrick J. Fagan retired from Shea's -- but not before bringing in Anthony C. Conte to replace him as president. Conte already had a long history with Shea's, having begun volunteering for the theater in 1970 and would serve as our president for fourteen years.

Photo Credit: The Buffalo News - April 1, 2001

In 2001, Patrick J. Fagan retired from Shea's -- but not before bringing in Anthony C. Conte to replace him as president. Conte already had a long history with Shea's, having begun volunteering for the theater in 1970 and would serve as our president for fourteen years.

“The reward is seeing people coming through the doors and taking three or four steps, their jaws dropping and just staring up. You can always pick out the people who have not been in the theater before,”

- Anthony C. Conte