Theatre Three suffers extensive storm damage
A community cleanup effort is underway at Port Jefferson's Theatre Three, one of the many Long Island businesses damaged by flooding during Sunday night’s storm.
“I got here at 9 a.m.,” said Barbara Morris, 82, who showed up to mop floors that had been submerged under roughly 4 feet of water. “I’ll stay here until they tell me to go home.”
Jeffrey Sanzel, Theatre Three’s executive artistic director, said he left the building Sunday night around 10, just as the torrential rains were beginning. The next morning, the water in town was so high that streets were barely navigable and the theater’s staffers could not access the building. By that evening, though, the water had receded enough that performers — in a true “the show must go on” moment — were able to rehearse for an upcoming production of “Matilda the Musical.”
“Fortunately, it didn’t affect the mainstage,” Sanzel said of the water. “If it came up that high, then the world has bigger problems.”
Theatre Three’s problems are big enough: “Our Second Stage area of the Ronald F. Peierls Theatre and Griswald's Cafe,” and its workshop, costume shop, costume storage and children's theatre storage areas, “were all under 4 to 5 feet of water,” explained a post on the venue’s GoFundMe page. “Many items have been destroyed, including some of our bigger ticket items. This includes items behind our bar area as well as electrical equipment used for all of our shows in the theatre.”
Among those larger items were two washing machines, a dryer, refrigerator, bar cooler and electric oven. Once water and mud get into the fans and inner workings of a big appliance, “it’s just dead,” Sanzel said. “And of course, these are things we need to function on a day-to-day basis.”
The theater posted a call for volunteers on its Facebook page, which is how Morris, a Farmingville retiree, heard the news. A longtime Theatre Three patron, Morris said she has seen nearly 40 shows there in just the past two years, including one-acts, children’s productions and repeat viewings of “A Christmas Carol,” “The Producers” and “Something Rotten!”
“They’re just a terrific group of people here,” Morris said. “So it’s like, ‘Pay it forward.’ ”
Sanzel said that by 11 a.m. Monday, roughly two dozen people had arrived toting their own buckets and paper towels and other cleaning supplies. “We’re going to mop 20 times, 30 times, 40 times — and then we’ll start all over again,” he said. He also noted that Theatre Three had launched a GoFundMe. As of Tuesday afternoon, they were more than two-thirds of the way toward their goal of $30,000.
The cleanup effort will mostly likely continue on Wednesday.
“The generosity has been incredible,” Sanzel said. “If it weren’t for the community support, we would never get through these things.”
Theatre Three has been down this road before. A storm in 2018 wrecked the venue's electrical equipment, including its lighting and sound boards. At the time, Sanzel estimated the damage would cost $50,000 to repair.
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