Theater gets ready for its next act: surviving Milton

VENICE — Venice Theatre employees know a little about hurricanes. They know how to endure them and how to recover from them.

And now they know how to withstand them.

Where once Hurricane Ian dimmed the theater lights for a while, leading to a $25 million fundraising campaign, staff and the building were ready for Hurricane Helene in early October.

“I felt like Helene was the first time we were completely buttoned up, where there was no leaking into the lobby, and that we got through Helene without any damage,” said Camille Cline, Venice Theatre’s director of advancement.

After the city emerged from Hurricane Helene, she saw the theater as a beacon.

“Of getting through it, and resilience,” she said. “That was what struck me, and maybe as a symbol of hope, in a way. Yeah, you might take a few steps back, once in a while, but it felt really good to come through Helene.”

She lavished credit on the organization’s board of directors, its staff, its volunteers and the construction firm, which made sure they were “sealed up and that we had sandbags and that everything was safe.”

After some interior water damage was cleared up prior to theater season, Cline said, “everything’s been sealed up really well. But also, we’re at that stage with the theater that they’ve poured the last of the concrete and that’s curing, and now the next thing that will go in is the steel.

“While we were in the process, between layers of concrete, everything was kind of in flux.

“Now we are past that first foundation phase,” she said. “The next thing will be going vertical, rising.”

With the Raymond Center having fewer seats than the damaged Jervey Theatre, Venice Theatre already is operating at a loss of between $200,000 and $250,000 per month.

At the organization’s annual meeting in June, theater leaders unveiled a $4 million operating budget. Cline said a lot of the revenue comes from sources other than ticket sales.

“Advancement is responsible for $2.5 million of it,” she said. “Usually it’s responsible for only a quarter ($1 million). And that’s not even counting what we need to raise to build. It’s just to keep the lights on and to keep operating as we are.”

Now, here comes Milton.

“If anything happens where we miss even one day of performances or one day of rehearsals ... classes being postponed; anything that causes a disruption is just adding more zeros onto that $200-$250,000 per month.”