Celebrating the stage

Curtain Call marks 20 years of theater

Politicians, performers and playwrights recently gathered to celebrate Pompano Beach’s oldest professional theater company, Curtain Call Playhouse.

Speaking from the elegant stage of the new, $17.9 million Pompano Beach Cultural Center, founder and artistic director Kris Coffelt told a capacity crowd that she marked the evolution of Curtain Call — via hundreds of shows and youth programs — as an honored place in Pompano Beach’s cultural lexicon.

“Recently I was honored withmy name permanently inscribed on a plaque, alongside others, on this very building,” Koffelt said of the plaque noting current and former members of the city’s Cultural Arts Committee.

Mayor Lamar Fisher issued a proclamation noting 20 years of drama, musicals and comedies— aswell as the company’s ongoing camps, which offer dramatic arts instruction and performance opportunities to local children.

Fisher also credited former vice mayor George Brummer for the new venue, which features an art gallery and digital arts studio.

“What you are sitting inwas his vision,” Fisher said of Brummer, who was an early but retired in 2014. “Thank you so much, buddy.”

“In these days of cuts to education an to the arts,” Fisher said, “children deprived of theater gain exposure through Curtain Call, celebrated here today.”

And was.

Outside the 5,000 squarefoot theater with as many as 650 retractable seats, guests in cocktail attire enjoyed hors d’oeuvres and beer brewed by Pompano Beach’s year-old craft beer brewer, 26 Degree Brewing Company.

Vocalists, a pianist and costumed characters foreshadowed what was to come: seven fully staged vignettes from 20 years of shows. what celebration

eroberts@tronc.com it