Organizers hope to revive Coconut Grove’s theater scene by staging a festival of new works by local playwrights at the Woman’s Club in May 2025.
Live theater is coming back to Coconut Grove in 2025 – but not to the place where you’re thinking.
If all goes as planned, the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove will host the Coconut Grove Theater Festival in the spring – the first series of theatrical performances in the Grove, organizers say, since the Coconut Grove Playhouse closed in April 2006.
Local playwright William Hector, who has proposed staging pop-up theater in vacant retail storefronts to revive the Grove theater scene, approached the Woman’s Club about partnering on a series of new plays. The four-day event will feature eight local writers working with eight local directors to put on eight plays, from May 8-11.
“Theater has a such a rich history in the Grove,” said Hector, a University of Miami theater graduate who grew up in the Grove attending events and summer camps at the playhouse. “I want to create the kind of community event that I, as a writer, want to have here. You need people who are willing to take the leap with you.”
The festival will feature two plays a day, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, with essentially a long intermission. In between, theatergoers can dine out locally and visit local shops, bringing new business to the neighborhood, Hector said.
“Because the Grove is so walkable, you can have a festival that activates the community,” Hector said.
Rather than fully staged productions with sets and backdrops, the eight plays will be theatrical readings by actors performing new works by eight writers. The playwrights, who have been selected but not yet announced, include longtime professionals with national theater experience and recent theater graduates, Hector said.
Victoria Collado, who directed the interactive play “The Amparo Experience” in Miami, will direct one of the plays.
“It feels like the start of a new era,” Collado wrote in a message to the Spotlight. “This festival will hopefully not only carry on the tradition but bring in a new renaissance of performing arts to the area.”
Hector’s idea is innovative but not without precedent for the Woman’s Club.
Architect Walter DeGarmo designed the Woman’s Club with an indoor performance space and an outdoor amphitheater. The clubhouse opened in 1921.
The outdoor theater was razed as development encroached. Only the interior auditorium remains. It has been renovated in recent years with the intent of attracting a theater event like the one Hector proposed.
“In the early days, the Woman’s Club was the center of arts and culture. Our mission is the bring theater back to the Grove,” said Irene Munroe, co-chair of the arts and culture committee at the club. “We want to fill the void left by the closing of the playhouse.”
Collado said she hopes the festival will become an annual event that will lay the groundwork for more theater in the Grove and boost local businesses.
“I hope that it attracts more arts to the Grove community and that it builds bridges with the already thriving culinary industry and community,” Collado said.
The Grove has theatrical bona fides. The Coconut Grove Playhouse staged the U.S premiere of “Waiting for Godot” in 1956 and went on to host countless other performances and musical events until the final curtain dropped in 2006.
Since then, competing plans and interests have stalled a renovation, leaving the fate of the 1927 theater in limbo. The Woman’s Club intends to make up for lost time.
“We haven’t had a place to bring performance art back to the community, and we feel (the Woman’s Club) is the perfect spot,” Munroe said.
Now begins the challenge of fundraising. Festival organizers will hold a fundraising event at the Woman’s Club on January 23 to raise $40,000 in support of the festival. That includes salaries for the playwrights, directors and actors.
“This is real,” Hector said, “and it’s something people really want.”
