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THEATER
New Gulfshore Playhouse theater a lightyear leap in space, potential
27 September 2024
Kristen Coury positioned herself on the balcony that rides the stone wave coursing around the new Gulfshore Playhouse, a cruise liner of a building that seems built to sail Naples’ coronary artery of Fifth Avenue South. That seagoing theme is no accident. The front doors of the new $72 million structure—full title, Gulfshore Playhouse Baker Theatre and Education Center—are within walking distance of the Gulf of Mexico. If Coury, who was up there for a photo, looked ecstatic, it was because she has worked 20 years, 10 of them in direct fundraising and planning, for this scenario. Yet it’s what’s inside the 40,000-square-foot building hugging the perimeter of central Naples that excites her. The potential for new theater in Naples is why she is standing there, delighted to christen the building she has championed since well before the inaugural pledge from Patty and Jay Baker in May of 2015, a $10 million matching grant. Gulfshore Playhouse opens for previews of its inaugural musical, Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, Oct. 27. Its repertoire is about to become vastly broader, with a two-stage season that tucks intimate plays such as the single-star Every Brilliant Thing and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill into its flexible 50-by-50-foot Struthers Studio theater. Larger-than-life musicals including Sweet Charity and stage-consuming farces such as Noises Off will be in the balconied Moran Mainstage theater. Increasing boundaries exponentially Coury can now think about complex works on a stage with 57 backdrop lines that can create endless scene changes. Can she set its perimeters a-twinkle for a work such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time? Yes. Send a cast circling the stage on a turntable, as has been done in Hamilton? Certainly. And she might consider both. Gulfshore Playhouse has taken a diversity of genres as its mission, and the new theater makes that possible. Coury is also looking to bring pre-Broadway works. “We want to be able to partner with Broadway producers. We’re already creating those pathways to getting to the right show that they’re looking to develop and put on Broadway that they would let us produce first,” she continued. “Which would be great. They could work on it while they’re here—work out the kinks, spend time, hear audience feedback.” For Naples, it can bring a sense of helping shape the blockbuster. For the producer, it can bring some economy, she said: “It costs a million dollars a week to tech a show on Broadway.” Along with the theater she’s excited about producing, Coury hopes her audiences appreciate the theater that was built to bring it to them in the best possible way. Inside its double- walled main hall you can hear a paper cup hit the floor on the stage, but not a cavalcade of jets passing overhead to land at nearby Naples Airport. “We have three-foot walls, three-foot ceilings,” she said. “There’s like a channel of air and then a wall and then another channel of air.” She admitted she had already...