It has been a rough year for theater companies in Palm Beach County, with the demise of Boca Raton Theatre Guild, Women’s Theatre Project, Delray Square Performing Arts and the Plaza Theatre, as well as the move away by Slow Burn Theatre from Boca to the Broward Center.
Suddenly, though, there is some positive news with the announcement that Miami’s Naked Stage Theatre Co. is coming north to downtown West Palm Beach, setting down roots on Clematis Street in the city’s so-called “arts and entertainment district.”
Naked Stage has been in operation for the past nine years, producing such classic works as No Exit, The Turn of the Screw and Miss Julie with a contemporary twist, plus a few new plays, in the tiny Pelican Theatre on the Barry University campus. The husband and wife team of Katherine and Antonio Amadeo — the company’s entire production staff — have done some impressive shows there, while acknowledging that the location is remote and limiting.
“It’s in the middle of nowhere really,” Antonio says. “For the audience experience, there’s really nowhere to go eat afterwards and all that kind of stuff.
“We knew we didn’t want something a lot larger, but something that gave us the flexibility to do larger plays and to have more audience members. Really, our biggest issue was location,” he says. “Something that was closer to home” – Boca Raton – “and had a lot more foot traffic.
“Then four or five months ago, we started talking more seriously about it and we actually didn’t expect it to happen this quickly,” notes Antonio. “We started thinking, ‘If we could get our dream location, where would we look?’ And obviously Clematis is one of the top, if not the top, areas we wanted to look at. And we happened to find a building.”
The building is 522 Clematis St., formerly a garden retail store called Authentic Provence, now in the process of being bought for Naked Stage by supportive investor Michael Paul, who not coincidentally is Katherine’s father.
Although Mayor Jeri Muoio had long been in favor of creating a theater district downtown, the street was zoned for retail and restaurants. That has since been revised, thanks in part to some lobbying by the only other theater of Clematis — Palm Beach Dramaworks.
“Bill (Hayes) and Sue Ellen (Beryl),” Dramaworks’ top executives, “have been so wonderful,” enthuses Katherine. “They’ve been really like mentors for us for years now. They’ve given us advice on pretty much every step of the way. And not only that, they’ve attended meetings with us, they’ve written letters for us, they’ve gone and spoken to many different people on the City Council for us on our behalf. So being able to have a location close to them and knowing that we would have their support was a big thing.”
Both companies gravitate to the classics, but Naked Stage expects to focus on works that can draw younger theatergoers. “I think initially — at least for the first few years — we’re really looking to cultivate a younger audience, the people who hang out on Clematis,” says Katherine. “We really want to make sure that the first couple of pieces especially would be shows that appeal to that audience.”
That probably will mean opening with a few contemporary plays. “I’d rather not mention titles because we don’t have our first season locked down or anything,” she says. “But we’re looking at shows coming out of London. At the National, they’re doing a lot of younger, hipper, fresher stuff. I think younger people want to see plays with 20, 30-year-olds onstage.”
The Amadeos do not expect their audiences at Barry University to follow them to West Palm Beach, but they never previously had a subscription base there anyway. “Realistically, we know the South Florida audience doesn’t really travel over two counties,” says Antonio. “So it’s going to be exciting to see what we develop in West Palm Beach as far as audience.”
Previously, Naked Stage would work on a project without a published deadline, opening it when it was ready. “This will be the first time we’ll be able to put together a full season and cultivate a subscription base,” says Katherine. “That will be a huge change for us.”
From observing audiences in West Palm and performing in plays at Dramaworks and the now-defunct Florida Stage, the Amadeos feel they are trading up in terms of quality theatergoers in Palm Beach County. “It’s interesting that West Palm Beach has a more sophisticated theater base than Dade County does. Cultivating and holding on to an audience is much harder to do in Dade than it is in West Palm Beach,” Antonio feels. “There seems to be more of a theater culture influence in West Palm Beach than there is in Dade County.
“So the brothers and sisters and the children of people who already go to theater in West Palm Beach have a better chance of going to theater than do, say, the Hispanic young people in Dade County that have no experience with theater. It’s harder to pull them in, and then it’s hard to get them to come back, even if they loved the show. That’s not as large an issue in West Palm Beach.”
The Authentic Provence interior will be completely gutted and reconfigured as a theater, so it will be at least a year until Naked Stage opens its doors on Clematis. “Since I’m the set designer at Naked Stage. I put together my ideas for what I think the theater should be, based on the size of the space,” Antonio says. “Then we contacted an architect, Bob Currie, who will be taking those ideas and putting together a legitimate plan for the theater. He has been instrumental in building 13 or 14 performance spaces. He was the architect for the Mizner Park Amphitheatre, for one of the Burt Reynolds theaters and he consulted when they were doing the Kravis Center.
“We do know we want about 145 to 150 seats,” Antonio says, likening the playing space to what Florida Stage had in Manalapan. “But not quite as three-quarter round.”
Having a second theater on Clematis Street doesn’t really turn it into an arts district, but Antonio thinks more will follow, even if there is no other company waiting in the wings. “The idea is to now get the mayor and the city commissioners to now start searching for theaters and putting out the idea that they want theaters to come here,” he says. “Now that there’s been a code change, they can now start putting efforts and funds towards actually making an arts district. Not just theaters, but we’re talking art galleries and all sorts of things.
“This is sort of the beginning of what could be. It’s very exciting.”