FINAL SCENES: PERFORMING ARTS

The Show Must Go On PERSEVERANCE TAKES CENTER STAGE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

By Cathy Chestnut

Rendering of the future Gulfshore Playhouse Theatre and Education Center

Jessica Walck directs Naples Players actors at Sugden Community Theatre.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Gulfshore Playhouse

Darkened stages, empty seats: The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on performing arts organizations. While it’s temporarily diminishing cultural enlightenment in Collier County, the crisis has plunked the organizations at a crossroads. Forging ahead takes analytical thought, planning, and a lot of moxie. Being the creative types, local cultural institutions took performances, readings, and instruction to audiences virtually as they painstakingly plotted reopening their doors.

The Bonita Springs Center for Performing Arts offered several regular online arts classes, including music instruction and an array of acting workshops—including cabaret—for youth, adult playwrights, and acting coaches. Many had fun with YouTube, such as Gulfshore Opera and Naples Philharmonic musicians (ever heard of a contrabassoon?), while Opera Naples’ #KeepONSinging streamed popular arias and included a fundraising component.

TheatreZone created behind-the-scenes content for “Zoom into the Zone,” curated by founder and artistic director Mark Danni. The Naples Players stayed in the spotlight virtually by offering improv and comedy for teens and adults, “Fairy Tale Mornings,” and dance lessons “designed for small spaces at home.” Gulfshore Playhouse offered a variety of interactive Zoom presentations on topics ranging from Shakespeare to the role of a casting director.

‘ALL SYSTEMS ARE GO’ The pandemic comes at a critical time for Gulfshore Playhouse, which is a third of the way through its $50 million The Next Stage capital campaign to build the 44,000-squarefoot Gulfshore Playhouse Theatre and Education Center at the corner of First Avenue

South and Goodlette-Frank Road. Since 2006, the company has staged performances at Norris Community Center. For more than a decade, founder and producing artistic director Kristen Coury has envisioned a community jewel incorporating a 350-seat main stage, 125-seat experimental studio, education wing, rehearsal spaces, a welcoming lobby with a café, garden, and rooftop terrace.

The project has garnered impressive philanthropic support, beginning with Jay and Patty Baker’s initial $10 million for the property purchase. Construction costs are estimated at $33.7 million.

How does she plan to move forward? “One step at a time,” Coury says. “I’m not exactly risk-adverse. Starting and running a theater takes a certain amount of patience and faith, and this is another new challenge that’s been put in my way.”

Coury not only remains undaunted—she’s fully optimistic that ground will be broken by March and the center will open by late 2023. “All systems are go,” she says. “We’re devising ways to move forward. Getting back to work, that’s the most important thing. We need to get back to life and do the thing that we do. We make art; and there’s nothing like the live theater experience.”