Local News
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA THEATER
17 May 2024
There’s a thunderbolt of realization the moment you set foot in the new, three-story lobby of the Sugden Theatre: This is what this building was meant to be. Even with workers on their knees adding grout to the tiles and plastic still protecting all the Kizzie Theater seating, the expanded theater looks as though it had been built for this incarnation: • A wide sash of staircase that guides balcony ticketholders up to an open second story to the right and center. (An elevator, for those who choose it, is on the right side of the lobby.) • A customer service desk on the left side, behind the box office, which has been moved to the front of the building, its window facing Fifth Avenue South. Farther down, on the other side of the lobby, is another expansion: the refreshment bar. It’s double the size of its predecessor and has the ability to hold snacks and salads for the people who frequent the theater for rehearsals and classes. • Wood and subtle leaf-print wallpaper dominate the decor, but much of it has been given over to glass, which now stretches from the floor to near the ceiling, with full-length windows turning the lobby’s west side into a panorama of passersby. For those who want a closer look, the side steps have been built up to become a single-level pillared porch for fresh air and drinks outdoors. • Above it all, a blunted crescent of third-story windows floods the space with light. That first glimpse may be an emotional moment for some people when they learn those windows have been there, waiting for this moment, since the building’s inception in the mid-1990s. They were part of the design by its local architect, the late Andrea Clark Brown. Her vision for the Sugden included the roof-height ceiling and the second-story theater access. Making every view a good one Everything about that first impression says this theater is planning for bigger and better, and the mainstage, renamed the Kizzie Theatre, bears it out. The building had been engineered for a mainstage balcony, and it now has one with 144 seats. There are even some paired side seating wings for those who want to a) limit their conversation to one seatmate, b) be seen by the audience below or c) get the full span of Peter Pan flying over the audience, a possibility with the higher ceiling. The first-floor seating has changed, too. “We even drilled out the concrete,” said Bryce Alexander, CEO and executive/artistic director of The Naples Players. Several seats were removed from each side to create safe walkways to the stage for actors entering it, a common device in its musicals. That also eliminated inadequate views. “Those bottom corners were terrible seats,” Alexander acknowledged. “So we brought in everything. And then we brought these seats up a little bit so that they are significantly improved.” The result is the end of the neck-craner seats of the first two rows; the incline has been reduced and they will have a view straight onto the stage. This configuration will sti...