The Aurora City Council has approved a lease and liquor license for the new Stolp Island Theatre downtown.
The theater is a 98-seat, immersive theater, with people attending close to the action. Part of the experience will be a lobby that features a street scene and a diner-type of setting for food and drinks.
The first show opening in the theater will be “Million Dollar Quartet,” which will open on July 19.
The theater is being remodeled into a suite in the city’s Stolp Avenue parking garage at 5 E. Galena Blvd. The suite, along the Riverwalk promenade between Downer Place and Benton Street, is in what used to be a restaurant and the city’s former cable television studio.
The city will lease the space to the Aurora Civic Center Authority for $1 a year for 20 years.
The theater also needed a liquor license for the food and drink area. Aldermen on Tuesday night approved creating a license for the theater which the city’s liquor commissioner, Mayor Richard Irvin, will issue.
“Million Dollar Quartet” takes place during one evening in which four iconic musicians – Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash – meet during their formative musical years at Sun Records in Memphis.
The play relives part of that evening, and the immersive theater seeks to transport people back to that time, right down to the refreshments being served.
The refreshments will be on sale for an hour leading up to the show, and during a short intermission, in a lobby created to look like the street outside the Sun Records building, and a cafe next door.
slord@tribpub.com