WEST PALM BEACH — Like many a local resident in this downbeat economy, Palm Beach Dramaworks has decided to rent instead of buy.
Long in the market for a new theater to replace its current 85-seat digs, the 10-year-old professional theater company in West Palm Beach announced today it will be signing a 20-year lease to move into the Cuillo Centre for the Arts at Clematis and Narcissus, with a grand opening expected in November 2011.
Dramaworks had been looking at a variety of theater sites over the years, as far away as Palm Beach Gardens, but West Palm Mayor Lois Frankel has been working to keep the organization in the city. She succeeded by persuading the local Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) to purchase the building from former car dealer and occasional Broadway producer Bob Cuillo and leasing it to move Dramaworks.
In recent years, Dramaworks had been in negotiations with Cuillo to buy the building themselves, but could never reach a satisfactory agreement. The lease offers a purchase option within the first six years.
The theater, a former movie house as well as home to Florida Repertory Theatre, was dark for many years before reopening in 1999 as the residence of the short-lived Burt Reynolds Institute of Theatre Training. At the time, it was renovated with a love-it-or-hate-it steeply raked auditorium that offered excellent sight lines but treacherous entry and exit, particularly for senior audience members.
Dramaworks intends to gut the theater and reconfigure the seating in a larger version of its current auditorium. At the moment, the Cuillo seats 377. Expected seating capacity after the reconfiguration will be about 250 seats.
The CRA board voted to “conditionally approve” the purchase for $2.85 million. Like Florida Stage, which moved to a larger facility within the Kravis Center this summer, Dramaworks will soon have the potential to produce a greater variety of plays, since the Cuillo space will eliminate its current limitations of set changes, wing and fly space, and stage entrances.
South Florida Symphony expands concert series into West Palm Beach
The South Florida Symphony, in its role as concert presenter, has announced a lineup of classical music programs for the season that for the first time will reach Palm Beach County.
The orchestra, which until earlier this year was the Key West Symphony, has presented similar series in Monroe County for more than a decade, but last year began hosting them further north. For the second season, the orchestra is welcoming two high-profile violinists, one each to the first two of its five concerts.
Chee-Yun, the celebrated South Korean violinist, will perform the Violin Concerto of Beethoven (in D, Op. 61) with the orchestra on Oct. 6 in Key West, on Oct. 7 at the Broward Center and Oct. 9 at the Lincoln Theatre on Miami Beach. Conductor Sebrina Maria Alfonso will also lead the group in the Academic Festival Overture of Brahms and the Enigma Variations of Sir Edward Elgar.
The fine Canadian violinist Lara St. John appears Dec. 1 at Key West’s Tennessee Williams Theatre, on Dec. 2 at the Broward Center and Dec. 5 at the Lincoln Theatre. She’ll perform Mozart’s Concerto No. 3 (in G, K. 216) and Sarasate’s Ziegunerweisen; Alfonso will lead the orchestra in the Beethoven Fourth Symphony (in B-flat, Op. 60).
Pianist Barry Douglas, a frequent South Florida concert guest during the season, handles the huge Brahms Second Concerto (in B-flat, Op. 83) in a concert at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach on Jan. 30. He’s in Key West on Jan. 28 and at the Broward Center Feb. 1, and the orchestra also will perform the Masquerade Suite of Aram Khachaturian and the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Miami native and part-time Pompano Beach resident Ellen Taaffe Zwilich sees two of her pieces on the fourth and fifth concerts in the series. The Sima Trio performs the Zwilich Septet for piano trio and string quartet, which had its Florida premiere earlier this year at the Kravis. Also on the program are the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 of Bach and the String Sextet No. 2 (in G, Op. 36) of Brahms. Concerts are set for March 2 in Key West, March 3 at the Broward Center, and March 7 on the new Frank Gehry-designed campus of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach.
Pianist Adam Golka joins the orchestra on April 29 in Key West, May 1 at the Broward Center, and May 2 at the Gehry campus for the perennially popular Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 (in B-flat minor, Op. 23). Zwilich’s Fifth Symphony also is on the program with the Festive Overture of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Alfonso said the concert series marks a move by the orchestra to raise its arts profile.
“We are committed to becoming leaders in the cultural landscape of South Florida by striving to present high-level classical programming, world-class guest artists, introducing new works and most importantly to become a leader in music education for the area,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “We are seeking grants, sponsorships and partnerships that will allow us this privilege.”
For more information about the series and ticket sales, call 800-775-4086 or visit www.southfloridasymphony.org.