Grove playwright William Hector and a troupe of local theater talent present eight original plays May 8-11 at the inaugural Coconut Grove Theater Festival.
Coconut Grove Theatre Festival founder and lifelong Grove resident William Hector has a vision for the future of his hometown.
Despite the loss of the storied Coconut Grove Playhouse, which sat empty for the past 19 years, Hector thinks the robust creative and commercial ecosystem of the Grove could be just the place to incubate a thriving theater district.
“There is such an appetite for culture in the Grove,” he says.
Hector’s inaugural Coconut Grove Theatre Festival, which runs from May 8-11, will include eight staged play readings at the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove, activating the space with new work written and directed by a who’s who of Miami theater talent.
His plans for the festival came together during a conversation with Irene Munroe, his fourth-grade substitute teacher at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Day School. Munroe heads the Arts and Culture Committee at the Woman’s Club.
With the help of two other staff members, he launched a $40,000 fundraiser that is just a few thousand short of their goal. Hector says he talked to every business in the Grove to get buy-in, brought on the Coconut Grove BID as a sponsor, and even turned to Coconut Grove Arts Festival artistic director Camille Marchese for advice.
Steve Capellini, co-owner of Atchana’s Homegrown Thai Restaurant, was especially supportive and donated food to the launch party and fundraiser at the Woman’s Club.
“We are happy to support William and his team in their effort to bring theater back to the Grove. The unfortunate plight of the Playhouse over these past many years has left us sadly lacking in local productions, and we very much look forward to attending,” he says.
Capellini and Hector first met when Capellini contacted the playwright to offer his restaurant as a possible location for a theater performance. Hector believes there’s a need for both traditional theater spaces, like a black box theater, as well as non-traditional spaces like Atchana’s.
“Sometimes getting [audiences] into an art gallery or a bookstore is easier than getting them into a theater,” Hector observes.
What benefits audiences also benefits the business community. The Grove offers restaurants, shops, community, atmosphere, and walkability.
“People have just sat for 60-90 minutes at a play. They want to eat, they want to drink, and if they have to drive to it, they may be like, I just want to go home,” Hector says.
“It’s like there’s water pouring out of every show that no one’s catching, and if you just put a cup there, you’ll start to fill it up,” he adds.
Playwright and Grove resident Alejandro Rodríguez, whose play “When the Sea Wall Cracks” will be staged at the festival, agrees that a night out at the theater has to be worth the effort. And the Grove delivers, he says.
“Going out in the Grove is spectacular anyway, and I think what theater in the Grove does is bring substance to it,” Rodríguez says.
“It feels (like) there is a playhouse-sized hole in Coconut Grove and the Theatre Festival in a really thoughtful way is making an offer to start to fill that cavity,” he adds.
Rodríguez was writing “When the Sea Wall Cracks” while on another job in Minneapolis when his friend, the festival’s managing director Ariel Cipolla, called him frantically, asking if he had a new play on hand to replace another play that fell through.
The timing was perfect.
In the future, Hector says the festival will develop an open submission process, but for the inaugural run, they culled playwrights and directors from their friendship pool, uniting talents whose material would showcase a range of Miami voices. To match writers with directors, they hosted a speed dating-type event.
“It’s kind of nerve-wracking and exciting to share a newborn play with the audience and hopefully the audience will feel that energy of ‘we’re the first ears on this play,’” Rodríguez says.
His show is about a daughter and father living together in a generational divide that soon becomes an actual divide after a major hurricane. It includes not only colorful Miami characters, but a live musical score. “I call it a sonata for Miami.”
The playwrights and directors are connected to other companies and theaters around the city like Zoetic Stage, South Florida Theatre League and Miami New Drama. They include Brandon Urrutia of the alt-theater company LakehouseRanchDotPng and theater stalwarts like writer Vanessa Garcia and director Victoria Collado, who work together as Abre Camino Collective.
Collado thinks theater directors from the region should come to the festival to go “shopping.”
“It’s an incredible showcase of our local talent who are at the top of the game and only getting better,” she shares.
Hector calls the line-up “a Continental Congress of theater in South Florida.”
Plays range from “Liberty City Vignettes,” written by Lolita Stewart-White and directed by Hattie Mae Williams, about a 14-year-old girl who lives in the Liberty City public housing project Pork and Beans to “The Feral Spinster Society,” written by Andie Arthur and directed by Melissa Almaguer, a humorous play on an Ohio suffragette in 1912.
The pared-down format of the productions – the plays will be read by actors without a full stage set – will let audiences focus on the story and not other elements like the set design or lighting, Rodríguez says.
He also says it also gives the writers a chance to learn when and how the audience responds to different moments of the play. Of the intimacy this set up provides, he adds, “You’re getting a meal served by a chef in a kitchen.”Coconut Grove Theatre Festival. May 8-11, 2025, The Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove, 2985 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133. Tickets are $20 a show and with purchase of seven, the eighth is free. Details and tickets at cgtfest.com.
