Jane Horwitz's Backstage: Bethesda Theatre to Operate as Rental Theater

The financially strapped Bethesda Theatre will no longer program its own works and will operate only as a rental house for the time being. The theater has been dark since the "3 Blonde Moms" stand-up comedy show in June. The "Forever Tango" touring show will light up the space briefly, Oct. 27-Nov. 1.

"Our plan is to do more rentals for now and take less risk in the shows before we figure out what the ultimate direction for the theater should be," says Tom Baum, president of the nonprofit Bethesda Cultural Alliance, which owns the theater. Baum is also a top executive at the Bozzuto Group, which restored the theater, a 1938 art deco movie house, when it built the Whitney residential development above it. (Bozzuto received roughly $3.5 million in state and county funding and tax credits and spent $11.75 million of its own money on the theater.)

Ray Cullom was executive director of the Bethesda Theatre until he left in March to become managing director of the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn. He programmed the Bethesda on behalf of Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment. He says the theater has not yet recovered from the financial hit it took in April 2008, when it had to cancel its own new production of "Smokey Joe's Cafe" after the theater sustained damage from a burst water pipe in the Whitney apartments above. The Bethesda Cultural Alliance has been negotiating with insurers ever since over a claim based not only on physical damage but on lost income from the show.

Baum says the insurance delay "has placed a great strain on the theater . . . sort of a one-two punch with the economy and the flood."

The shows at the Bethesda have been mostly middlebrow, off-Broadway-bred entertainments such as "Menopause: The Musical," "Men Fake Foreplay" and "My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish and I'm in Therapy." Some did better than others. Cullom found it tough to fill 650 seats on a weeknight. But he believes he was on a path to finding a formula that would, after a couple of years of experimentation, start to do just that.

The programming relationship with Nederlander ended by mutual agreement in the summer, says Baum. "Economically it was not in either of our best interests to continue," he adds. He says Montgomery County requires that the Bethesda Theatre must be a "cultural venue" and he says he's not giving up on the idea of a theater that presents small professional touring shows. But it is, he notes, "a different concept than any other theater in Montgomery County . . . and it requires a certain vetting out, trying some different shows and getting the right mix. . . . I absolutely believe that it's a viable concept, but it's in a terrible economic time to prove that."

'Sophisticated' Dancers

Get out your dancin' shoes, if you dare. Maurice Hines will be in town next week to teach master classes and hold auditions for Arena Stage's spring production of Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Ladies" (April 15-May 30), and he says his standards are high.

The free master classes will be held Tuesday, Oct. 13 at Howard University starting at 12:15, and at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts at 3:30. (E-mail résumés and headshots to Amrita Mangus at amangus@arenastage.org or call 202-554-9066, Ext. 286.) Hines says he'll focus on jazz and hip-hop in the classes. "If they can get through that, then maybe we'll ask them to come to the auditions," he says.

Hines cautions that he doesn't teach people how to dance in his classes. "I teach a master class, which means you have to come in there knowing some stuff. It's not a teaching thing. I do choreography."

The open, non-Equity dance auditions for "Sophisticated Ladies" will be Oct. 14 at the Lincoln Theatre. Arena's casting director, Daniel Pruksarnukul, Hines, and "Sophisticated Ladies" director Charles Randolph-Wright are looking for dancers of all ethnicities with strengths in jazz, ballet and tap. Registration for men starts at noon, auditions from 1 to 3. Women register at 2 and audition from 3 to 5. (E-mail résumés and headshots to Jamil Jude at jjude@arenastage.org or call 202-554-9066, Ext. 284. Walk-ins welcome.)