Inside The Vault: A new lab for theatrical creations at Woodbine and Danforth

By ANNIE ROSENBERG

One by one, they shed the street: boots unlacing, coats draping, woolen hats tumbling onto small, careless heaps. At the juncture of Woodbine and Danforth, The Vault Creation Lab stands in the shell of a former bank. Inside, the bank’s bones remain: cool concrete under stockinged feet, vast windows stretching the full width of the street, light pouring in above the theatre’s dark below.

“The space always leads the way with this company,” says Diana Bentley. She and Ted Dykstra co-founded The Coal Mine Theatre a decade ago, shaping it into one of Toronto’s most respected indie companies.

In 2025, Bentley launched the Vault Creation Lab as a sister company, a new venture designed to address a growing gap in the Canadian theatre ecosystem: the lack of development time and space for new work. Here, creators—actors, playwrights, designers, and directors—come for the marrow of plays: words and time.

In one corner, an artificial tree sweeps toward the ceiling, its plastic canopy sheltering a cluster of potted plants in a kind of synthetic shade. A white credenza rests against one wall, lights strung loosely along its edge, pieces of wood tucked underneath—not a showroom, but a working space. “The Vault” is lettered across the walls and doors at steady intervals, extending down the hallway and up the staircase.

When Bentley and Dykstra took over the building, they considered softer names. “The Nest,” perhaps. But the architecture argued otherwise. The heavy doors and thick walls were built to safeguard assets.

Dykstra asked: “What about the Vault?” Bentley laughs. “I’m always saying, ‘Okay, put it in the vault.’ When we talk… I find myself saying, ‘It’s in the vault. Keep it in the vault.’ It’s about safety… a container for things that need protecting.”

The Vault is a nod to the building’s steel-and-rust history and a promise of protection. Once designed to guard currency, it now holds something more fragile: language still forming, ideas not yet shaped into dialogue, scene, and movement.

“You have to protect the early stages,” Bentley says. She eventually stepped away from her shared mantle of artistic leadership at Coal Mine to focus her energy on the Vault, overseeing the commissions, residencies, and Public Labs dedicated to what she calls “the gestation period.”

“What Ted and I have built at Coal Mine is artist-led, artist-forward,” she says. “Our mandate is simple: artists first.”

That philosophy sharpens its focus: the playwright—that solitary architect of worlds not yet built, facing silence, time, and the terrifying act of beginning. Within these walls, work is not rushed toward production or performance. Instead, there is the slow, deliberate work of gestation—readings, workshops, and discovery.

Bentley leans back, her eyes tracking the light as it shifts across the concrete. “People sometimes think plays just happen,” she says. “I wish they understood how hard and vulnerable and scary it is—and how long it takes. We want to honour that work.”

Around the table they assemble. Shoulders roll. Spines lengthen. Scripts open. Thermoses emerge from bags onto scarred wood—out, out—claiming their places. The air crackles with beginning.

Bentley moves through the room, a study in monochrome: black jacket, black pants, not a spectator, but the engine of the work.

“I envision the Vault as something like the Royal Court Theatre,” she continues. “A raw, unfinished space—but showcasing world-class work.”

Scattered across the concrete—black IKEA loungers, a white plastic chair on wheels—is the staging ground for the long work of revising and drafting, of holding the weight of a body mid-thought.

“It’s experimental, risky theatre—and a big part of the Vault,” Bentley adds. “People will come and see exciting new plays.”

One of the Vault’s quiet revolutions is its Public Labs—evenings when the doors open not only to artists but to audiences eager to step into the messy middle. When a script has found its legs, pages are shared and read aloud. The playwright sits apart, listening as the room shifts—laughter in surprising places, stillness when a line lands. It is less a performance than a testing ground—a chance to see where the current catches, where it stalls, and to carry that knowledge into the next draft.

Between those Public Labs, the work continues in smaller rooms. In the Writers Reading program, playwrights gather to hear their pages read by peers, then stay for the work of critique and discussion — a practice as old as theatre itself.

Bentley describes the lab as “multi-dynamic”—both a development arm for Coal Mine and a training ground for the broader theatre community. In an ecosystem where resources are shrinking, the Vault is working to rebuild what has eroded. “We have a lot of development funding being cut right now,” she says. “Playwrights have lost so much support.”

“When we came to renovate the space,” Bentley says, “the whole basement felt like a bank, and the vault was this beautiful little spot.”

 Downstairs, the vault opens into shadow: steel frame worn to rust-brown, hinges thick as fists. Where currency once sat, tools hang on hooks: red-handled clamps, dormant. Cables trail across the concrete. A black bin stands against the wall. The door, heavy and scuffed, now guards the machinery of theatre. Just outside the mouth of the vault, jackets and dresses hang from a rolling rack, suspended above the concrete.

In the basement, Coal Mine’s black box waits in darkness, rows of chairs rising into shadow, the stage bare, the space holding its breath. Above, drafts circulate in daylight—voices testing language against air.

“It’s about giving the work room to breathe,” Bentley says.

Nothing here declares itself finished. Lines are spoken, revised, returned to, and spoken again—each pass a small act of faith.

A solitary voice rises through the space. No one looks up. Dykstra shrugs. “Oh—that’s the cleaning woman. She likes to wear headphones and sing while she works.”

Beyond the vault, in the theatre’s dark, the cleaning woman sings.