Editor’s note: Did you know that the Wick Theatre and Costume Museum in Boca Raton was originally the home of the Caldwell Theatre? December marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of that theater company, which folded in 2012. Here is its history.
In December 1975, the 90-seat Caldwell Theatre Company opened on the campus of the College of Boca Raton (now Lynn University), under founder and artistic director Michael Hall.
Four years later, the theater moved to a 225-seat space in the old Boca Raton Mall, which was razed in 1989 to make way for Mizner Park.
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It then moved into the former Levitz Plaza on Federal Highway in the north end of Boca Raton, where it operated for about 15 years with 20 full- and part-time employees.
But Hall’s ambitions quickly outgrew the 14,000-square-foot Levitz site, which offered limited production opportunities and required a lot of artistic tricks by technical director Tim Bennett to make sets fit in the small backstage space.
So, in 1991 the theater kicked off a capital campaign to raise money for its own freestanding building. The theater originally was to be built south of Levitz Plaza, but a land swap with a realty company moved the project north.
“Hopefully, this will create a new energy with our audience, sort of the old ‘you build it and they will come,'” Bennett told the Post in 2006.
The 28,000-square-foot Count de Hoernle Theatre, at 7901 N Federal Hwy., opened with a production of “Doubt” in December 2007. Because the theater owned the land — thanks in part to a $1 million donation from the Countess de Hoernle — the company was spared the expense of rent.
“We can put that money back into programming,” Hall told the Palm Beach Post in 2006.
Its relatively small 345-seat auditorium — only 42 seats larger than at the Levitz site — was deliberate, Hall said at the time. “People love that intimacy. There won’t be a bad seat in the house.”
After Hall retired in 2009, artistic director Clive Cholerton took over.
Cholerton pushed an even more ambitious lineup of productions than Hall, though audiences didn’t respond as he had hoped.
Debts began to mount as the theater also faced a number of financial challenges, including the rocky economy, the real estate crash and a lack of adequate parking that was later resolved.
Facing foreclose and $5.8 million in debt, the Caldwell was forced to close in April 2012. At the time, it was the longest-running professional theater in Palm Beach County.
The playhouse lay vacant until Marilyn Wick decided to move her Pompano Beach Costume World museum into the space and also revive the theater.
“The theater and the museum will go hand in hand,” Wick said at the time. “This is kind of a perfect little dream for me.”
She opened the revamped facility in September 2013 with a production of “The Sound of Music.” It has been going strong ever since.
Previous reporting from Palm Beach Post staff writer Alexandra Clough and former writers Hap Erstein, Leslie Gray Streeter and Michelle Mundy contributed to this story.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.palmbeachpost.com ’
