Plans are being made to accommodate the Arlington theater groups that share the Clark Street Playhouse in Crystal City, which faces imminent closure.
The theaters have been preparing for a crunch for some time, because Clark Street eventually will be demolished to make room for residential development. The demolition was expected in the fall but has been continually delayed, according to Chris Henley, artistic director for Washington Shakespeare Company, the primary resident of the space.
“Once the property officially changes hands, there will be about a nine-month clock before we’ll have to vacate the building,” Henley said this week. “That’s a nice buffer to have, but at this point it’s all very unclear about how quickly that’s going to happen.”
The county has been working to find a new home for the theater; it originally investigated the former Signature Theatre space on Four Mile Run Drive. But that space now will be used by Arena Stage for a scene shop and studios, according to Norma Kaplan, executive director of the county’s Cultural Affairs Division.
Instead, Arlington plans to renovate two warehouses across the street from the space for the Washington Shakespeare Company, Kaplan said, a project that probably will cost from $1.5 million to $3 million. The county is seeking an architect for that project but won’t have a timeline on its completion until then. The new space has much potential for the Shakespeare group, Henley said.
“It’s a little bit smaller of a space, but that’s not going to kill us,” he said.
Arlington also is planning to build a new black box theater in the Virginia Square/Ballston area to further accommodate the area’s companies.
“All of our companies want to expand their seasons, but they’ve been locked out of doing that because there are no more spaces left,” Kaplan said.
If there is a gap between the demolition of Clark Street and the construction of the new facility, the Shakespeare Company will be forced to share space with the companies that use Arlington theaters, such as American Century Theater, Keegan Theater and Teatro de La Luna, which could mean shorter seasons for each.
“I expect there could be some kind of season or two gap,” Henley said.
