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Arts Alive! podcast: Lisa Marone, St. Petersburg City Theatre
St. Petersburg City Theatre is the oldest continually-operating community theater in Florida. In 2025, it will celebrate its 100th anniversary.
It very nearly didn’t make it. As Board Vice President Lisa Marone explains on today’s Arts Alive! podcast, the mighty winds of Hurricane Milton peeled open the roof on the theater building at 4025 31st Street S. and let in a lot of rain. Copious amounts of rain.
This resulted in several of the concrete-block structure’s rooms taking on water, with collapsed ceilings and warped furniture. The stage got very wet, too.
The roof was barely five years old.
It’s just the latest challenge for the nonprofit, community-based group, which in 2017 nearly shut down because of financial hardships. Through fundraising and other grassroots forms of community support, that crisis was averted, and other repairs to the now 66-year-year-old building were instigated.
READ MORE: Vintage St. Pete: St. Petersburg Little Theatre
The show, of course, must go on, and Marone explains that the young people’s theater show Macabre Cabaret will be performed in the (unaffected) theater lobby, and December productions of White Christmas and a staged reading of A Christmas Carol remain in the plans.
Meanwhile, damage assessment continues, and volunteers are being sought for Cleanup Day, Saturday 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
Marone also discusses her family’s Pass-a-Grille home, which was inundated with storm surge during Hurricane Helene.
Click on the arrow to listen to the interview.
