Tokyo International Players were black-tie occasions. Today, TIP generally presents four mainstage shows per season. In June 2009, TIP launched its "Second Stage" series with "Honiefaith" by Monty DiPietro. Second Stage features smaller-scale, black box-style productions. The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, one of the few buildings in Tokyo to withstand the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, had an intimate theater which hosted the club until the early 1960s. Most TIP performances from 1974 to 2007 were staged in the Grand Ballroom of the Tokyo American Club. Currently, TIP uses several professional theater spaces in the Tokyo metropolitan area including Theater Sun-mall in
Hotel Astoria (Saint Petersburg) which owned the land. It was designed by Russo-Swedish architect Fyodor Lidval, who developed a style based on Art Nouveau and also influenced by neoclassicism. The hotel was constructed by the German firm of Wais and Freitag. It was built to host tourists visiting Russia for the Romanov tercentenary, a huge celebration of 300 years of Russian imperial rule in May 1913. Hotel Astoria opened on December 23, 1912. The luxurious hotel was used during the celebrations to house guests of the imperial family, and was afterwards popular with the aristocracy. Rasputin was said to stay there with some of