City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Address: 254 Granby St.
17. Chrysler Hall
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Telephone: (757) 664-6464
Address: 215 St. Paul’s Blvd.
Description: This venue annually hosts a Broadway play series. The city says the show will go on. Norfolk was negotiating with a new production company as this book went to press after Broadway Across America decided it was scaling back its touring activities and cancelled its contract with the city to provide shows.
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Address: 201 East Brambleton Ave.
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Address: 317 Monticello Ave.
20. Tcc Roper Performing Arts Center
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Telephone: (757) 822-1450
Address: 340 Granby St.
Description: This is a former movie and vaudeville house Tidewater Community College converted to a performance venue when it moved downtown. The reclamation project restored the Loew’s State Theater’s gilded box seats, glass chandeliers, and other period details. These days, the venue seats up to 900 and hosts feature films, college convocations, symposia, and a variety of live acts. Among those who use the facility are the Hurrah Players, a local children’s theater troupe, the Virginia Ballet Theatre, and Todd Rosenlieb Dance, a Norfolk-based modern dance company.
21. The Attucks Theatre
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Telephone: (757) 622-4763
Address: 1010 Church St.
Description: Once known as the Harlem of the South, Church Street was the heart of Norfolk’s African-American community, and the Attucks Theatre, named after the first patriot to lose his life in the Boston Massacre, a black man named Crispus Attucks, was its centerpiece. This is the nation’s oldest theater designed, financed, and operated by African Americans. Giants such as Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, and others performed here before it closed in the 1950s. It’s been restored and reopened in 2004. Once again music and inspiration emanate from the building, officially declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977.
22. Ted Constant Convocation Center
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Telephone: (757) 683-4444
Address: 4320 Hampton Blvd.
Description: This is another large venue that does more than serve as home to the Old Dominion University Monarch and Lady Monarch basketball teams and graduation ceremonies. There is room for up to 10,000 here, which makes it a venue of choice for some large concerts. Past events have included B. B. King, comic Dave Chapelle, rock group 3 Doors Down, singer Kelly Clarkson, rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Moody Blues, and even the Boston Pops Orchestra.
23. L. Douglas Wilder Performing Arts Center
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Address: 700 Park Ave.
Description: This 1,800-seat concert hall is named for the first African American to be elected governor of a state in America, Virginia’s own L. Douglas Wilder. It features a full theatrical stage that hosts not just college productions like Porgy and Bess but also classical and jazz programs, lectures, and educational forums.
24. The Little Theatre Of Norfolk
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Telephone: (757) 627-8551
Address: 801 Claremont Ave.
Description: The longest running community theater in the country, Norfolk’s Little Theatre is still going gangbusters. It opened in 1926 and never saw a darkened season—not even during the Great Depression or either World War. They moved into their current location in 1951. It’s a completely volunteer-run troupe that presents a number of shows each season. Offerings here range from a live adaptation of the holiday classic A Christmas Story to the intense drama of 12 Angry Men.
25. The Generic Theater
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Nightlife
Telephone: (757) 441-2160
Address: 215 St. Paul’s Blvd. (down under Chrysle
Description: Think of this as Norfolk’s off-Broadway community theater. This group, founded in 1981, knows how to have fun. Their offering of Evil Dead: The Musical, based on Sam Raimi’s cult classic film, featured wildly popular “splatter rows” where patrons were likely to get doused by flying gore from the chainsaw scene. But they also can play for impact, such as the production of Letters for A Young Girl, which featured the story of Anne Frank being read by a 13-year-old girl trying to endure the genocides in Darfur.