Virginia Repertory Theatre Purchase Scottish Rite Temple for $3.5 Million

Virginia Repertory Theatre recently purchased the Scottish Rite Temple on Hermitage Road for $3.5 million. It will become the new home for the Rep’s Children’s Theatre known as the Virginia Rep Center for Arts and Education, and will house children’s theatre productions, educational touring programs, camps, classes, and workshops.

The facility features three distinct performance areas – a 650-seat main auditorium and two smaller studio stages. There is also rehearsal space for the 18 annual tour productions that reach over

400,000 students and families across the country. In addition, there is room to double the

number of camps, classes, and workshops currently offered by Virginia Rep.

The first show to be presented in the new facility will be ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. More details with show dates and times will be announced soon. The Scottish Rite Temple space will 

also be the future permanent home for Gospel Nativity, a new, annual holiday partnership with

Virginia Union University, which offers the only Gospel Music degree program in the nation.

“Virginia Rep is arguably among the top five children’s theatres in the nation in terms of scope of

programming, geographic reach, and audience size, but our facilities have not been on par with

this distinction until now,” says the Rep’s managing director Phil Whiteway. “After leaving our rented space at Willow Lawn during COVID and months of careful planning and due diligence, this investment will allow us to create a new path for the future of Virginia Rep’s children’s, families, and schools programming.”

The Scottish Rite temple was formerly home to the Richmond Children’s Theatre, and has a long history as a performing arts venue. Virginia Rep is preserving this legacy and will be making it available to other local theatres, dance companies, schools, community nonprofits, and other area arts

and education organizations.

“With this project, we will be saving the historic Scottish Rite Temple—Richmond’s Kennedy

Center—as a performing arts space for RVA audiences,” Phil Whiteway says.