Cape Cinema in Dennis going on hiatus while it deals with financial shortfall
Cape Cinema in dennis is going on hiatus, closing its doors sunday while the nonprofit searches for ways to improve its finances amid declining attendance and revenue losses, according to the president of the nonprofit.
president of the board of directors Eric A. hart said Tuesday that the theater, a summer mainstay on the Cape, needs to raise $100,000 to ensure it can continue to operate this year. hart has scheduled a public meeting at the theater for may 18 to ask the community how best to achieve that goal.
“it’s a combination of many things that cause us to feel like we needed to hold our operation, reorganize, raise money, and hopefully get restarted again in a month or two,” said hart. “We want to work our way through this process and hopefully in the end come out on the positive side.”
The theater will host a live show with musician Teddy Thompson on Thursday and a screening of metropolitan opera’s performance of puccini’s “madame Butterfly” on saturday. Then the 371-seat art house theater will close until organizers figure out a way to pay the bills, hart said.
issues plaguing theaters nationwide have affected the small art house cinema in dennis. Recent strikes by writers and actors have reduced the number of suitable films, and attendance declines have sharply reduced revenues. Cape Cinema, like other movie houses, has not fully recovered from the economic upheaval of the Covid era.
hart owned the theater for 37 years before becoming president of the board of directors. The only other theaters offering art house films on the Cape are located in Chatham and provincetown, he said.
in the past, Cape Cinema could expect strong attendance during the summer which would make up for lower revenues in the off season. “But now you are talking income that is probably half of what it was four or five years ago,” he said.
Cape Cinema now has just two fulltime employees and two volunteers — down from 8-10 full-time and part-time employees in years past. in the near term, Cape Cinema will need more volunteers to ensure its financial survival, he said.
“We’re going to have to find more sustainable things to do in ways to raise money, in ways to keep this place viable,” hart said. “it’s a daunting task.”