Kitchener’s Registry Theatre returns with first show since pandemic began

Kitchener's Registry Theatre opened for a special showing of Nosferatu, celebrating its 100th anniversary. A new official season will begin in the fall.

Another sign of a return to normalcy occurred in Kitchener on Thursday night when the Registry Theatre hosted a show it curated for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The theatre, which was originally established as a registry office for Waterloo County back in the 1930s, was a fitting host for a showing of the silent film Nosferatu, as the father of all vampire movies celebrates its 100th birthday this year.

“We were celebrating the centenary of Nosferatu last night with a five-piece band and the film with a nice print of the film,” Lawrence McNaught, one of the theatre’s curators told Global News.

The theatre director says they will host another show tonight and then shut down again until the fall. The plan had been to close and really get things going this fall.

“We have a number of great projects that were postponed, and had to be cancelled because of COVID,” McNaught explained.  “So we decided that we would just come back with a few events in the spring now just as a way of shaking off the rust.”

He said a crowd of between 40 and 50 people came out to watch the theatre’s first show since March 8, 2020.

The Registry Theatre was in the middle of its season when things shut down in 2020.

“It stopped us in our tracks,” McNaught  explained. “There were so many local artists that we were going to bring in, as well as artists from beyond, you know. We’ve had international artists too. And we had to cancel them all.”