{"id":6422,"date":"2013-03-06T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T17:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=6422"},"modified":"2013-03-05T12:54:51","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T20:54:51","slug":"new-play-looks-at-surprising-history-of-victorias-plaza-hotel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2013\/03\/06\/new-play-looks-at-surprising-history-of-victorias-plaza-hotel\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre: Ghosts of the Plaza<\/em> looks at Victoria’s Plaza Hotel history"},"content":{"rendered":"

The play Ghosts of the Plaza<\/i> has elements of comedy and drama, and it also has a musical number. However, that\u2019s not all it has to offer. Between all that, it manages to incorporate a part of Victoria\u2019s history into the show.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Sadie Forbes, Sarah Smith, and Rosie Bitts of Ghosts of the Plaza<\/em> (photo by Zora Feren).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cA history that hasn\u2019t really been looked at,\u201d says play co-writer Sarah Smith, who is also a Cheesecake Burlesque Revue performer.<\/p>\n

The play looks at the history of the 102-year-old Plaza Hotel, famous for housing the exotic showroom\/peeler joint Monty\u2019s. As a former employee of the Plaza, Smith came into contact with numerous stories and became curious about the origins of the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years I wanted to do the research to find out what happened here. Everyone would always talk about it and ask, \u2018I wonder what this place used to be?\u2019 I would be like, \u2018I\u2019m going to find out,\u2019\u201d says Smith.<\/p>\n

On the chase to discover the true history of the plaza, Smith and play co-writer Sadie Forbes became interested not only in the Plaza itself but also its street district. \u201cWe did the research through the archives, and looked at the directory and traced the names of businesses, of the proprietors, and all the businesses that were on that block, not just the actual hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what they found was more than what they could have hoped for, so they featured some of it in Ghosts of the Plaza.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cFor the longest time in the 1920s and \u201930s, it used to be a boarder house on the Pandora side,\u201d says Smith, \u201cand was called Stranger\u2019s Rest Rooms, and on the Government side there was the Stranger\u2019s Rest Restaurant, and those two businesses were run by this woman for a super long time. We have this whole scene that we wrote about this woman that we know nothing about but we just imagine what it would have been like running a business, and being a woman, and what kind of business that was.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as times changed, so did the Victoria Plaza Hotel. It became a hit in the mid-sixties when it transformed itself into the Century Inn, Smith explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it was opened up as Century Inn, it was an Arabian Nights<\/i> theme, it was totally like I Dream of Jeannie<\/i> and Lawrence of Arabia.<\/i> That was the fashion then: it was a super cutting-edge, gorgeous hotel that was done up, and everyone was dressed in theme.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Monty\u2019s building as a cutting-edge Arabian themed hotel? A history that hasn\u2019t really been looked at, indeed.<\/p>\n

Ghosts of the Plaza
\n<\/i>March 8 and 9
\nOdd Fellows Hall, 1315 Douglas Street, $15
\nghostsoftheplaza.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The play Ghosts of the Plaza has elements of comedy and drama, and it also has a musical number. However, that\u2019s not all it has to offer. Between all that, it manages to incorporate a part of Victoria\u2019s history into the show. \u201cA history that hasn\u2019t really been looked at,\u201d says play co-writer Sarah Smith, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-march-6-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6422"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6468,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions\/6468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}