Miami Developer Flies Stranded 'THE LIFE' Cast Back to N.Y.

The Miami Herald reports that the hapless group of out-of-town actors, stranded in a rented Wilton Manors house after their theatrical production was canceled this week, have received a needed helping hand from Miami real estate developer and arts patron Tony Goldman on Friday.

Goldman, reports the Herald, offered to give $150 plus airfare from Miami to New York to each of the six actors cast to perform in a production of the musical The Life, which was to begin this week.

'I was touched,' said Goldman, who read about the actors' plight in Friday's Miami Herald. ``I'm a New Yorker. I felt for the kids. I have an acting degree from Emerson College. It's not an easy deal out there.'

The actors were sent home from rehearsals early on Tuesday, a  day before preview performances of The Life were scheduled to open and were told by the show's producer that he had no money to pay them.

'We're a business that is stopping a production for a variety of reasons, most of them economic,' said Gary Waldman, producing artistic director of the Wilton. "Right now anybody that has tickets for the show is getting a phone call and getting refunded", but tickets were still being sold as of Thursday reports the paper.

Waldman and Troutman incorporated Wilton Theater Inc. as a Florida nonprofit in January, but they have been producing theater in South Florida since about 1999, when they opened Wilton Playhouse. The pair vacated the Playhouse abruptly in 2000, though, as former associates claimed more than $100,000 in bad debts and investment losses reported the Herald in an earlier article.