Hurricane What’s-Her-Name didn’t do a speck of damage to the St. Petersburg City Theatre’s 58-year-old building on SW 31 Street. The electricity never even went off.
(OK, so the old wooden sign out front was blown to smitheroons, but that thing was pretty raggedy to begin with.)
This news was especially gratifying to the board of directors, who’ve been grappling with a roof in need of $100,000 in repairs and an air conditioning system on its last legs (estimate: $300,000 for a new chiller system).
The 92-year-old theater, as announced this past spring, isn’t it debt, exactly; there just isn’t enough money in the till to pay for everything that’s necessary.
Vice president Lisa Marone says the strategic plan put into action last May is still in operation. All productions, with the exception of the summer children’s camps, were canceled until the establishment of a sound operating budget.
Meanwhile, fundraising efforts continue. Parkshore Grill is hosting “A Theatrical Evening of Food & Wine” Wednesday, Sept. 27, with 50 percent of the proceeds going to the St. Petersburg City Theatre. It’s a five-course dinner, prepared by Chef Tyson, paired with special wines by Antinori.
Click here for more information, or to make a reservation. The menu is available here.
Other such events are in the works.
The hard part, Marone says, is “getting over the hurdles while you’re trying to make progress. It’s been a challenge, but everybody’s still incredibly optimistic because we know that the theater does provide for the local community, and what the potential is there as well.”
With that in mind, it was decided to do a play this season after all (allowing SPCT to retain its title as Florida’s “longest continually-operating community theater”).
Director David Middleton is holding auditions for A Christmas Carol Sunday, Oct. 8 (at 2 p.m.) and Monday, Oct. 9 (at 7 p.m.).
The show will run Dec. 7-17.
“It did really well last year,” explains Marone. “We have all the set design and costumes, so doing it again, in that regard, was kind of a no-brainer. It’s such a great story. It’s one that brings people together and touches your heart — it’s got the warm fuzzies and the introspection to it.”
And, Ebenzer Scrooge notwithstanding, A Christmas Carol is well-loved and familiar, guaranteed to bring in the Benjamins.
So, even there are to be “no shows,” there’ll be this show. That’s just how theater people are sometimes.
“It’s kind of a catch-22, if you will,” offers Marone. “We have to have these productions in order to draw people into the theater, in order to create revenue. But then we also need to fix some things at the theater that have been overlooked over time. And you need money to do that. We didn’t want to dip into the surplus that had been provided by the former board. So we’ve been delicately handling that, to be fiscally responsible.”
But so many technical people, costumers, set builders and actors have already pledged to help out with the show.
“We do feel like we have the support of the community. Everybody’s coming out because we all want the same thing – we want the St. Pete City Theatre to keep alive.”
Learn more about St. Petersburg City Theatre at spcitytheatre.org
Bill DeYoung was born in St. Pete and spent the first 22 years of his life here. After a long time as an arts and entertainment journalist at newspapers around Florida (plus one in Savannah, Ga.) he returned to his hometown in 2014. He is the author of Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay’s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought it Down and the forthcoming Phil Gernhard, Record Man. Learn more here.
This article appears in Sep 21-28, 2017.