IN CASED YOU MISSED IT: LYNN NOTTAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH PBD






A LOOK BACK...
Dear Friend,

Nine years ago today, November 11, 2011, we inaugurated our new home with a special, gala evening. The following day, we opened our first production on the stage of the Don & Ann Brown Theatre, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. In honor of this milestone, we’ve put together a photo-essay that offers a glimpse of the various occupants of 201 Clematis Street down through the years.     

One note before we begin: there will be no Dramalogue: Talking Theatre! this week. The series resumes on Friday, November 20 at 7:30pm, when the guest will be PBD Director of Education and Community Engagement Gary Cadwallader.

Stay safe!
The Palms Hotel, courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

Two weeks ago, we showed you a photo of the Palms Hotel that was taken around the time the building opened on January 15, 1896. There were a few horse and buggies and some bicycles on mostly deserted Clematis Street (or Clematis Avenue, as it was then known), which was then a dirt road. The commercial district appeared to be a block or two long. The street was paved in 1904, sidewalks were built, and street lights were installed. The above photo was taken between 1920 and 1922, and it’s apparent that Clematis was now bustling, extending much farther west. The hotel closed in 1926; the 1927 city directory shows the building to be unoccupied. By the following year, it appears that the hotel had been razed. 
Under construction: The Florida Theatre 

We hit a brick wall trying to discover what occupied the site for the couple of decades following the demolition of the Palms Hotel. We do know that there’s been a theatre on the lot since December 23, 1949, with the opening of The Florida Theatre, an 871-seat movie house. (Remember those?) The first film to play there was The Heiress, starring Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift. The theatre closed in 1981.     
Rendering of Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training

The movie house was transformed into a live theatre venue and reopened later in 1981 as the home of the newly formed, for-profit Stage Company of the Palm Beaches. The troupe dissolved in 1983, and the space was taken over by another new company, Florida Repertory Theatre (which has nothing to do with Florida Rep in Fort Myers). The company never found its financial footing, and closed in 1991. There were several reasons Florida Rep didn’t prosper, one of which was that throughout its brief history, downtown West Palm Beach was deserted at night and crime was a problem. It’s fascinating to note all these years later that Jack Zink, in an article in the Sun-Sentinel reporting on the company’s demise, wrote, “Other theater producers in the area say it is not likely that the downtown playhouse will get another professional theater tenant. They say the theater’s physical condition, its location and history of double failure is probably too tough a combination to overcome.” The financially troubled Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training (BRITT) moved from Tequesta to 201 Clematis at the end of 1996 after a very expensive renovation – and was gone four months later. 
Cuillo Center for the Arts

Bob Cuillo held the mortgage on the theatre during the BRITT debacle, and subsequently purchased the building. For a short time, it was known as the Clematis Street Theatre, but that incarnation never gained traction. Cuillo then renovated the theatre, named it the Cuillo Center for the Arts, and opened the 377-seat venue in November, 2000. The renovated lobby is below.
Cuillo closed the theatre in June, 2009, at the height of the recession. The City of West Palm Beach, acting on behalf of PBD, purchased the theatre in the fall of 2010 and gave us a 20-year lease with a five-year option to buy. We bought the building two years earlier than scheduled. 
The theatre was renovated to our specifications. It was important to us and to you that we retain the intimacy that we’d had at our theatre on Banyan. We reduced the seating capacity of the venue from 377 seats to 218 seats, which necessitated a complete demolition and revamping of the interior.  
 The set of our inaugural play, All My Sons, and the newly refurbished interior of the
 Don & Ann Brown Theatre. Photos of interior and exterior by Brantley Photography
Elizabeth Dimon and Kenneth Tigar in a scene from All My Sons. Photo by Alicia Donelan
   PBD today. Photo by Tim Stepien
To view the past Dramalogue: Talking Theatre! programs including recent guests

Bruce Linser
John Leonard Thompson
Michael Amico
Patti Gardner
Dennis Creaghan