The Playgoer: Florida Stage Folds

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Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Florida Stage Folds

Founded in 1987 (relatively recently for a major regional theatre) Palm Beach's Florida Stage dedicated itself to new writing, and made a good run at it.

Now they're bankrupt and shutting down . For good.

They're claiming Madoff fallout, but looks like they had other problems, too.

A nice appreciation of the company--and roundup of local reactions--on the blog, South Florida Theatre Scene.

1 comment:

C.L.J. said...

Thanks for the link!

A lot of the shortages in Palm Beach really do come back to Madoff. Florida Stage lost backers, Ballet Florida lost even more. A producer of another company was telling me that the day after the Madoff story broke, one of his long-time supporters (who had just donated $10k) called to ask for his donation back - it turned out that it was the only actual cash he had - Madoff had "made off" with the rest.

And we're still seeing ticket sales evaporate as people remain unemployed, and retirees lose their benefits - or have them reduced.