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Grove theater offers relief with pay, vouchers

Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007

COCONUT GROVE PLAYHOUSE

Grove theater offers relief with pay, vouchers

Former employees and Coconut Grove Playhouse subscribers got some relief as the theater continued to fight for its future.

BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

Nearly nine months after the Coconut Grove Playhouse abruptly shut down at the end of its 50th anniversary season, two groups are getting a partial return on their financial -- and, for some, emotional -- investment in the historic theater.

In separate letters mailed to subscribers and former employees over the weekend, Playhouse board chairwoman Shelly Spivack detailed a subscriber ticket voucher offer from six South Florida theaters and told ex-staffers they're being paid for time worked before the theater closed at the end of April. Checks covering back pay and expense reimbursements -- vacation and severance pay are still owed -- were included with the letter.

Spivack said the money to cover what is being paid to former employees -- about $23,000 -- became available after Miami Parking Authority Executive Director Arthur Noriega supported a six-month advance payment on its lease of the theater's parking lot.

Offering ticket vouchers to other theaters is a goodwill gesture to subscribers who paid for the canceled 2006-07 Playhouse season, Spivack said. The ''miniseason'' that the Playhouse's board had hoped to present in the first part of 2007 won't happen.

''This is Act One, Scene One,'' Spivack said of the board's efforts to dig South Florida's largest regional theater out from under more than $4 million in debt.

"We've accepted the theater's historic designation, secured the building, bought insurance, paid and reimbursed the employees, and offered the subscribers something for this season. It took a long time to happen because it's such a complicated issue with so many moving parts.''

Using $150,000 received in July from the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, the theater's board has been working with Connecticut-based arts consultants AMS Planning and Research and with Miami-Dade's Department of Cultural Affairs to sort through the theater's intertwined financial, legal and artistic issues.

THEATER'S SURVIVAL

What's at stake is the survival of the theater where Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot had its American premiere in 1956.

''The Coconut Grove Playhouse is so much larger than all the rest of us that when they catch cold, the other theaters sneeze,'' said Joseph Adler, producing artistic director of GableStage, one of the six theaters offering free tickets to Grove subscribers. "This makes sense on every level, because it would be a black eye to the South Florida theater scene to have another theater go under.''

Also offering tickets are Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables, City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, M Ensemble in North Miami, New Theatre in Coral Gables and Teatro Avante's annual International Hispanic Theatre Festival.

The offers vary, ranging from City Theatre's buy one-get one deal to New Theatre's offer of a free pair of tickets to each of its three remaining shows. In general, subscribers are restricted to two tickets per household at each theater. If they already have a subscription at any of the six theaters, they can't use the offer to get extra tickets at that theater.

Michael Spring, director of the Department of Cultural Affairs, helped work out the ticket deal along with Rem Cabrera, the department's senior cultural administrator. The offer isn't meant as a replacement for the Grove Playhouse subscriptions, Spring said, but rather so that those subscribers ``have great theater to see now, and so that they can have confidence in the future.''

The former employees and subscribers are ''the ones who have been loyal, who have stuck with the Playhouse through the years,'' Spring said.

Barbara Stein, executive director of Actors' Playhouse, said the offer is ``mutually beneficial. Everybody wins. It's nice that the subscribers get to explore other theaters. And hopefully, some form of theater can reemerge at the Coconut Grove Playhouse.''

LOST SUBSCRIPTIONS

Adriane Silver of North Miami Beach is one of the affected subscribers. She has been burned twice, first when the Hollywood Playhouse closed and she lost the subscriptions she had bought there, then when the Coconut Grove Playhouse shut down. But the retired teacher is game to try the voucher offer.

''I appreciate that all these theaters offered tickets. It's above and beyond that they'd do this,'' she said. "And if the theater is able to reopen, I will go back. It's hard to believe that the Coconut Grove Playhouse would go under.'

As for the former employees, their reaction to the long-overdue checks is a mixture of relief and frustrated anger.

Peg McCue, who worked at the theater for 21 years and was its education program manager when it closed down, hasn't had a job since April and is struggling to hold onto her house.

She worked with Michele Walter of AMS and other former theater colleagues to provide the documentation necessary to get 25 former staffers paid. The theater's two top executives, producing artistic director Arnold Mittelman and general manager Alex Morr, were not included in that group.

''We just wanted to get the money that was fairly owed us. We didn't want to rip off the Playhouse -- I want it to reopen,'' McCue said. "In this whole process, I was adamant about maintaining our dignity, because we are professionals.''

Terri Schermer, a 28-year Playhouse veteran, was the theater's company manager. Because she used her personal American Express card for theater expenses, she was left with a bill of almost $8,500 when the theater closed.

She was forced to transfer the amount to a different credit card, and has been making payments, including interest, ever since. She, too, has been out of work.

''As soon as I get the check and it clears, I will pay the credit card bill off and breathe a major sigh of relief,'' Schermer said. ``I think it's despicable that I had to wait so long. And I'm glad I'm getting it back.''

Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/16515422.htm