Take Your Drink to Your Seat!
September 10, 2026
November 5, 11, December 9, 2025. ICAT and AAD.From left, Brittney S. Harris and Trevor Finney helped create motion-captured graphics in the University Library to use for the Nikki Giovanni Immersive Experience.
For the first time, you can settle into your seat at the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre with a drink in hand. Beginning with the 2026–2027 season, beer, wine, and non-alcoholic beverages from concessions can come into the theatre with you, thanks to a new Center for the Arts reusable cup.
Purchase your first beverage in a Center for the Arts reusable cup at concessions operated by Blacksburg Wine Lab, take it to your seat, and enjoy the show. When the performance is over, the cup is yours to keep. Take it home, wash it, and bring that same cup back to be refilled at future events where Blacksburg Wine Lab operates concessions.
Why the Special Cup?
If drinks are now allowed in the theatre, why can’t you bring one in using any cup with a lid? To understand the new guidelines, it’s helpful to know more about the infrastructure of the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre.
The theatre’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system operates through the floor, which means a significant spill doesn’t just make a mess — the liquid can also enter the floor-based HVAC system. And then there’s the performance happening onstage. A dropped cup, rattling lid, or spectacularly timed spill can become an unexpected addition to a quiet moment of music or theatre.
The reusable cups were selected with both concerns in mind. They’re durable and spill-resistant, with a quiet swivel closure that helps keep the focus on the performance, where it belongs.
One Cup, Many Performances
Bring your cup back to any future event where Blacksburg Wine Lab operates concessions. Order a beverage, hand over your clean cup, and they’ll refill it for you.
Each reusable cup is branded for a Center for the Arts season. Your 26–27 cup can be used throughout this season and until the following season’s cup is launched. The cups are dishwasher safe, BPA-free, recyclable, made in the U.S., and intended for cold and frozen beverages only.
Over the course of a season, your cup might just become a small souvenir of the performances you’ve experienced along the way.
Why Now?
Allowing beverages into the theatre is something we’ve approached carefully. In fact, this will be the first time since the building opened in 2013 that drinks have been permitted inside the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre.
The 26–27 season will serve as a pilot year for the new program. We want to make the experience more convenient for patrons while continuing to protect a performance space designed to serve audiences and artists for decades to come. The reusable cup gives us a way to try both.
Throughout the season, we’ll see how the program works in practice and evaluate it before making decisions about future seasons. In the meantime, the next time you stop at concessions before a performance, your drink no longer has to stay behind when it’s time to find your seat.
Cheers to that.
FAQs
Beer, wine, and non-alcoholic beverages purchased from concessions may be taken into the theatre when served in an approved Center for the Arts reusable cup. Other cups, containers, and outside beverages are not permitted.
Reusable cups are available with a beverage purchase through concessions operated by Blacksburg Wine Lab.
Yes. Bring your clean cup back to any event where Blacksburg Wine Lab operates concessions, and it can be refilled with your beverage purchase. A season’s cup may be used until the following season’s cup is launched.
Yes, when Blacksburg Wine Lab operates concessions for the guest event.
No. The reusable cups are intended for cold and frozen beverages only.
The 2026–2027 season is a pilot year for the reusable cup program. At the end of the season, the Center for the Arts will evaluate the program and determine plans for future seasons.