One room seats 60 people. Another seats 1,800. Between them sit four more rooms, and a building that has carried four different names.
The six rooms
Three opened with the centre in 1985. The Jack Singer Concert Hall is the orchestra’s home, the Max Bell Theatre seats 750 and the Martha Cohen Theatre seats 450, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.
The same entry says the Engineered Air Theatre opened in 1994 with 185 seats. The Big Secret Theatre followed in 1995 with a flexible 130 to 246, and the Motel Theatre arrived in 2005 with 60. Add it all up and the encyclopedia counts 3,682 seats across the five theatres and the concert hall.
The centre’s about page lists the same six venues and names five resident companies: Alberta Theatre Projects, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Downstage, One Yellow Rabbit and Theatre Calgary.
The whole complex fills a full city block on 8 Avenue, spanning 560,665 square feet across six levels, the encyclopedia says. The centre says it hosts more than 1,800 events each year, drawing almost 600,000 people. For a set of rooms that started as three, that’s a lot of great evenings.
Small rooms in a big building
The centre’s history says the campus had reached capacity by 2005, as Calgary approached one million residents, with six resident companies sharing the space. It names One Yellow Rabbit and Downstage among them.
The Canadian Encyclopedia and the centre’s history both date the Engineered Air Theatre to 1994 and the Motel Theatre to 2005. So the building kept adding rooms for more than a decade after it opened. Love that.
Small rooms are where a city gets to try things. A 60-seat room can take a risk that an 1,800-seat hall can’t afford, and a company with an odd idea needs somewhere that fits it.
Four names for one building
It opened in 1985 as the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts. The Canadian Encyclopedia says it became the EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts in 2001 under a $2.6 million, 10-year naming agreement, while the centre’s own history gives 2002. The sources differ by a year, so call it the early 2000s.
The history says the Epcor name reflected a corporate sponsorship. It stayed on the building for more than a decade.
Both sources agree on the next one. The building became Arts Commons in 2014, with the Canadian Encyclopedia dating it to December. Former president Johann Zeitsman, quoted in the centre’s history, said the new name reflected programming that reached beyond performing arts into “sound art, media art, visual art, and movement.”
The latest change followed the $75 million gift from Dave Werklund and his family, announced on June 26, 2024. The centre’s transformation news page calls it the largest known philanthropic gift to Canadian performing arts. The centre says it became the Werklund Centre as of September 2025.
What the new rooms add
The expansion adds a 1,000-seat theatre and a 200-seat studio. The centre’s transformation FAQ says the campus turns away roughly 600 revenue-generating events a year for lack of space, and that Calgary’s population has tripled since 1985.
The centre says the expansion will add about 45% more seating and community gathering space. The history names KPMB Architects and Tawaw Architecture Collective as design partners, and the City page says the renewed Olympic Plaza next door is meant to hold up to 5,000 people.
Names follow sponsors and donors, and they’ll probably keep changing. The rooms are the lasting record, and six of them already tell the story of a city that kept outgrowing its own performing arts centre. Look up what’s on in the 60-seat Motel Theatre this month.
More to read: Calgary’s Stagehands Union Began With 18 Names in 1911, Calgary Buildings Never Forget Their Old Names and Walk Stephen Avenue Like a Movie Fan.
More from the archive: Shakespeare Has Had Quite a Time in Calgary and Four Halls of Fame Share One Calgary Address.
Quick answers
The centre has six venues. They are the Jack Singer Concert Hall, the Max Bell Theatre, the Martha Cohen Theatre, the Engineered Air Theatre, the Big Secret Theatre and the Motel Theatre. The Canadian Encyclopedia counts 3,682 seats across the five theatres and the concert hall.
It opened in 1985 as the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts. It became the EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts in the early 2000s, then Arts Commons in 2014. The centre says it became the Werklund Centre as of September 2025.
The centre’s about page names five resident companies. They are Alberta Theatre Projects, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Downstage, One Yellow Rabbit and Theatre Calgary. The centre says it hosts more than 1,800 events each year, drawing almost 600,000 people.
