Arts Editor: A new twist in the search for a new Sarasota Players home

The saga of finding a new home for the Sarasota Players continues. The area’s oldest performing arts organization, which will begin its 95th season this fall, was talking with the city of Sarasota about taking over the Payne Park Auditorium. Realizing the building can not structurally support a theater, it proposed building a new, 17,000 square foot, two-story venue adjacent to it. But neighborhood association leaders and nearby residents raised objections to taking up more green space in Payne Park for another building.

Instead, Sarasota City commissioners proposed a potential new site for the theater building – a vacant lot on U.S. 301 just a block away from the auditorium, which the theater would still get to use. But it could be a complicated negotiation process because City Manager Marlon Brown said that site could be worth $3 million to $4 million in the real estate market, far more than the Sarasota Players would likely want, or be able, to pay and still have funds to build the new venue. Stay tuned.

Responding to funding cuts

Embracing Our Differences reports that some volunteers stepped up and launched a $25,000 matching gift challenge to help make up for the loss of Sarasota County tourist tax grants that the organization lost in a recent vote by the Sarasota County Commission. The Chalk Festival will likely have to charge visitors for entry into this year’s exhibition to make up for its vetoed grant. The festival runs in downtown Sarasota Nov. 8-10. And leaders of WSLR and Fogartyville Community Arts and Media Center, are appealing to their listeners and patrons to share their concerns with commissioners, who also rejected their tourist tax grant. In all, commissioners vetoed roughly $112,000 in grants to the three organizations, while approving $2.1 million grants to 35 other groups.

Celebrating a lost icon

Architect Victor Lundy’s building for Galloway’s Furniture store has been lost for years. The one-time round glass-enclosed building, which let passersby see what was on display from U.S. 31, was long ago covered up and turned into a Visionworks store. But the building, which is adjacent to the Sarasota Art Museum, could be returned to its former glory. One of the first steps is a new exhibit that opens this week at the museum, showcasing what was there, what it looks like now, and what it might take to restore it. Visual arts writer Marty Fugate writes about the “Modern Masterpiece Uncovered: Galloway’s Furniture Showroom by Victor Lundy” exhibit, which will be on display July 28-Oct. 27.

New plays on stage

Florida Studio Theatre wraps up its summer mainstage season with Friday’s opening of the comedy “The Outsider” by Paul Slade Smith. It’s about a man who becomes the unlikeliest, but perhaps, best candidate for governor, and the pressure he faces to change everything about how he looks, speaks and presents himself. The theater describes it as a political comedy that’s not about politics. It runs July 24-Aug. 18 in the Gompertz Theatre. And Tree Fort Productions Projects is presenting a rare summer showcase of the new play “We Are Still Tornadoes.” It’s a stage adaptation by Lou Harry of a book by Michael Kun and Susan Mullen about two best friends who exchange letters as they take different paths in their first year after high school. It runs July 26-28.

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