By Bill Hirschman
It is not an imposing space. It is just space. Often blank. Like a canvas waiting for something.
Mostly, it’s just a 3,000-square-foor sprung floor, a lattice of rods above, two catwalks, a tech booth overlooking the expanse and sometimes a bleacher of comfortable seats collapsed in on themselves at one end of four walls covered by blue-beige drapes.
But in a few months, magic that has been brewing 10 years will transform that featureless vacuum into a witty woman’s Washington Heights apartment crammed with memorabilia being packed to move. Months later, the empty box will alchemize into the equally cluttered home of a university professor and his volatile wife.
And between those abodes of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Albee’s George and Martha, the space transfigured cabaret-style will house a cirque aerial extravaganza, concerts recreating Edith Piaf, Bette Midler and Judy Garland, a magic act and an evening with local diva Avery Sommers.
The Island Theatre (note the capital T in The) debuting Oct. 6 as a new space at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre is also home to the most recent phase in the drama-worthy evolution of a 22-year-old company whose theater building dates back to 1978 when film icon and Jupiter resident Burt Reynolds broke ground in the current location.
The space will house as many as 198 audience members in what could be 11 rows of 18 seats in telescoping seats facing the playing area. As a “flexible space,” the seating can be reconfigured to be set up with cabaret tables in four-top tables as would be seen in a night club. Any seating configuration that is in our imagination is possible,” said Andrew Kato, producing artistic director/chief executive, celebrating his 20th year there.
Shows like Becoming Dr. Ruth and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at The Island are carefully scheduled to alternate between productions on the mainstage.
The current scope of the theater mirrors the comeback from being shut through the COVID crisis with a handful of employees.
Prior to the shutdown, the theater had a subscription base of 8,000 customers. It trained nearly 600 students a year in after-school, weekend, and summer programs at its Goldner Conservatory. More than 400 volunteers assisted encompassing administrative tasks, ushering, bartending, production support and hospitality.
But the new $5 million black box space is not just a part of a physical expansion. It’s a deepening of the theater’s theatrical substance through a wider, long-range vision.”
It represents one of three long-term ongoing objectives — “to diversify the kinds of work that we’re going to be doing,” Kato said. Citing Dr. Ruth, Virginia Woolf and current planning for the 2026-26 season, he added, “It’s a little bit off of our normal track, right?”
Slowly, treading carefully, is an expansion of what you’ll see. This coming Island season only has those two traditionally constructed shows separated by an avalanche of concerts and variety acts usually lasting one or two nights as are already common on the mainstage schedule.
But Kato is already planning an Island season of more dramatic works. In fact, for years, the theater has carefully scheduled one such show occasionally on the mainstage such as Disgraced, Frost/Nixon and An Inspector Calls.
Andrew Kato
“I think the idea is that we do more plays. I would love to do a collaboration with (another theater) and do (the two-part) Angels in America. We do one part and they do the other part. That would be a great idea. I worked on the original (on Broadway). That’s the thing that you want to do, but you don’t just jump into the deep end.”
“The mainstage does a populist season for the most part with a few exceptions here and there. That’s not a bad word for me. I’m fine with that. But I also cut my teeth Angels in America and David Mamet and Jelly’s Last Jam on Broadway. Those were the shows that I was attracted to.”
Finding saleable yet adventurous titles is a juggling act. “Doing classics like an Albee play or more difficult material is not a decision based on my taste. It’s based on I’m a producer for the Maltz Jupiter Theater, not the Andrew Kato show. I have a job to do, which is to put butts in seats.”
The design and planning of The Island is having it surrounded and integrated with the extensive upgrades and extensions of the past few years, sharing dressing rooms and elevators, offices for lighting supervisors, and other security measures down to easily reached emergency police communication.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
The $2 million 449-seat Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre was a relatively quick success with light comedies, musicals and an occasional drama such as Vanities in January 1979 with Sally Field, Tyne Daly and Gail Strickland. Reynolds directed sometimes along with Dom DeLuise and Charles Nelson Reilly. But the draw was his ability to lure many of his acquaintances and their acquaintances to perform, names like Martin Sheen, Sarah Jessica Parker, Julie Harris, Carol Burnett, Shelley Berman, Farrah Fawcett, Eartha Kitt, Vincent Gardenia, Elliott Gould, Marilu Henner, Alice Ghostley and Ossie Davis.
One of its goal was training young talent — 140 apprentices who earned their Equity cards in classes sometimes taught by Liza Minnelli, Sheen, Reilly and DeLuise.
But eventually intermittently unenthusiastic reviews and fiscal challenges threatened its survival. In 1989, Reynolds eased the venue to executive producer Richard Akins, who operated the theater until 1996 when financial problems closed it. Reynolds sold the theater for $2 million to real estate developer Otto “Buzz” Divosta. He in turn leased the property to Ohio-based Carousel Dinner Theater in late 1996. When that incarnation stumbled, Divosta sold the property to media kingpin Lowell “Bud” Paxson, who donated it to Christ Fellowship Church in 1999.
In 2001, local citizens like Milton and Tamar Maltz formed the non-profit Palm Beach Playhouse Inc. who purchased the building for $2.67 million. They, in turn, completely renovated the building for a reopening as the Jupiter Theatre in February 2004.
Following a successful capital campaign, the 28,000-square-foot theatre was renovated in February 2003 and re-named the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in recognition of a $7 million contribution from the Maltz Family Foundation during a $10 million fundraising drive. In 2007, it built its Goldner Conservatory for young artists. It expanded and moved its set building operation to a bigger off-campus site
Most visibly, in October 2014, the company completed a $2.5 million expansion, renovation and overhaul to expand the lobby, create an upstairs club level lounge and event space, and added 62 premium seats, bumping capacity to 617 seats.
Photo by Jason Nuttle
SOMETHING’S COMIN’
The theater is always looking ahead to expand beyond what Kato avers is “I think we’re the biggest well-kept secret.”
“The one thing that I learned over the pandemic was the fact that we are serving a community. Our mission is educate, entertain, inspire, but that doesn’t end with that. It ends with our community. For me, the question is, how do we reach more of our community? There’s a whole younger group of people who don’t come here. A lot of the Island things, the Jingle Jams, all of those kinds of things, they’re going to bring young people to the theater.”
The company will continue to reach out to patrons in broader projects from in-depth community conversations about Ruth and Woolf, backstage tours and master classes. When the musical Frozen is produced on the mainstage in January, The Island will house related extras such as drinks, merchandise and a simulated blizzard.
Like other local theaters seeking national attention, the theater is planning this fall to issue a lush book defining the venue, its past and capabilities. The book will be sent to producers and theaters throughout the country, making it a seductive option for plays-in-progress and musicals hopefully enroute to Broadway echoing programs like La Jolla Playhouse in California and the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta and qualifying for “enhancement money” for its groundwork as well as a credit in upcoming Playbills.
As with so much at the theater, Kato and his staff meticulously examine options and logistics akin to smoothly running a corporate business — as much as the uncertainties of theater can allow.
“There are a multitude of objectives that are all happening at the same time. I always refer to myself as the conductor of the orchestra,” Kato said. “I have all these departments, all of these ideas, whatever, and it’s my job to make sure that everything is in harmony, that everything’s working together. It’s tricky. It’s complicated. Then on top of that building buildings and learning infrastructure and governance and it just goes on and on.”
One keystone is planning. “Our strategic plan, which has been the same for 10 plus years, has been three objectives. One was to be able to do pre-Broadway shows, which we couldn’t do from the Burt Reynolds scale, which was not his fault. That was just the zoning of the day. The buildings weren’t allowed to be built as big.”
Kato added, “The second objective was to double the size of our conservatory. So that’s upstairs. That hasn’t been done yet, although we are still teaching classes. We want to be able to serve 1,200 (slots) a week. We are doing 600 a week. One kid may take three classes.”
The third was diversifying the content.
Those are the guiding goals in the final year left on his current contract. He plans another eight years “and then I’m going to be finished here. I’m passing the torch.”
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