**Note that this article was published in May 2014 and menu items/personnel may have changed in the interim.
Kimberly Wick, Wick Theatre
Boca Raton’s cultural candle shone considerably brighter this year thanks to the Wick Theatre, which opened its inaugural season with an elegant, Carbonell-nominated “Sound of Music” and continued with a show-stopping “42nd Street” and an amusing “Full Monty” from its home in the former Caldwell Theatre. The Broadway-level ambience of its lobby and adjacent Costume Museum—the only of its kind in the world, according to the organization’s vice president, Kimberly Wick—continued to create an indelible cachet for Palm Beach County theatergoers.
When you were planning the lobby’s lovely design, did the end result meet your expectations?
It is exactly what I expected. And all of the furniture is on heavy castor wheels, because our plan was to acknowledge that we’re women that like to change things. For example, for “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” the whole space was set up like the Cotton Club. The structure is a nice clean palette that we change to fit the show and make it a little more interesting for the patrons.
Having spent your career in costumes, did you find there was a learning curve when it came to producing live theater for the first time?
I don’t think serious producers that have been producing shows for 20 years would think that they know everything there is to know. We’re going to be learning for the rest of our lives. But I think that our passion and our desire to learn is one of the reasons why it’s being so well received. We make mistakes, but we’re going to learn and do better next time.
When they programmed for the Caldwell, Michael Hall and Clive Cholerton each had specific—and different—visions. What is the Wick vision, going forward?
There’s a place in our community for everything. And if you’re looking for a deep drama that brings out the thinker in all of us, then nobody does it better than Palm Beach Dramaworks. We may have done the only drama that we might do for a while [in “Steel Magnolias”], because our clients are telling us they want to tap-dance right out of the lobby. That’s what they’re looking for in this venue, and musicals are certainly where we are most well suited. It is the genre we have been working in for 40 years on the costume side of it. I think in our third season, we will have more latitude to do some newer pieces that the audience will still embrace.
To view the online version of Best of Boca, click here. You can also view the full Best of Boca feature here.
