GableStage To Converge and Expand at Coconut Grove Playhouse

In 2006, Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse dimmed it's lights for the seemingly last time as they shut down due to the more than $4 million in debt they had accured.  Now, however, GableStage has stepped in to once again give this historic playhouse life, according to a report in the Miami Herald.

The Playhouse's board, which had been focusing solely on maintaining the building and coming up with a plan to get out of debt for the past three years, has chosen GableStage's producing artistic director, Joseph Adler, as the man to help revitalize the theater.  

Changes are on the way, as, according to the Miami Herald, "GableStage's new home won't look much like the existing historic building. Using $20 million in designated Miami-Dade County capital-improvement funds from a 2004 bond measure, the plan is to replace the 1,100-seat Coconut Grove Playhouse with a 300-seat theater and a ``footprint' for a larger 600-seat theater."

To read the full story about the plan for the GableStage's new home in the Miami Herald, click here. 

The Playhouse, which Adler calls "the most recognizable theater name in the Southeast" has had a distinguished and respectable past. Constructed as a movie house in 1926, the historic Playhouse includes two stages, the 1700-seat proscenium Mainstage Theater and the intimate 100-seat Encore Room Theater. It opened on January 3, 1956 with the US premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, starring Bert Lahr and Tom Ewell.

In the fifty years that have followed, The Playhouse has played host to many of theater's most renowned performers, including Maureen Stapleton, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Tallulah Bankhead, Carol Channing, Liza Minnelli, Linda Lavin, Beatrice Arthur, George C. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst, and Ethel Merman.

Founded in 1979, the Florida Shakespeare Theatre (now known as GableStage), has grown to become a major cultural institution of South Florida. GableStage has won critical acclaim for its artistic excellence and has been recognized through numerous Carbonell Awards. GableStage year-round programming includes main stage productions - among which are recent contemporary plays and educational theatre programs that include Shakespeare and the Classics.

Adler hopes to expand GableStage's range of works with this move.  The Herald reports that "he envisions producing more musicals and larger cast plays in the bigger space," and is patient about waiting however necessary for the renovations to be made, as he wants to "do it right."