Smithtown theater takes aim at 'second golden age'

When Smithtown Theatre opened in 1933, a local newspaper story promised “one of the finest theatres on Long Island,” with fireproof construction and “luxurious decorations” from the firm that designed the Empire State Building’s interior.

Ninety years later, the nonprofit group that produces theater, musicals and comedy at what's now known as Smithtown Center For The Performing Arts has begun a $500,000 renovation that includes new seats, carpeting and wiring.

The stained glass windows — part of a medieval castle theme echoed in the performance space — and the massive marquee on the building at 2 East Main St. also will be overhauled. 

The Smithtown Performing Arts Council, which owns the center, started renovations during the pandemic while geared toward survival, according to the nonprofit's board president Mike Mucciolo.

But he said the focus evolved, with an eye now toward investing in the facility in a way that hasn't been undertaken for decades.

"Now it’s bringing the theater back to a second golden age," said Mucciolo, 45, an information technology professional who lives in East Islip.

Originally, Prudential Theatres and later United Artists owned the building and screened movies there.

The nonprofit bought the building in 2022 for $1.45 million. For about 20 years before that, it had rented most of the space.

But once Smithtown Performing Arts Council owned its home, it finally made sense to renovate, Mucciolo said.

Earlier this year, workers discarded rolls of threadbare carpet and rows of narrow theater seats. The theater’s subterranean dressing rooms got air conditioning and the second-floor offices got furniture bought at a discount from a Hauppauge office building that had emptied during the pandemic.  

Later this year, workers will tackle the work on the marquee, much of which has been hidden by a drop ceiling since the United Artists era.

Mucciolo suspects the movie chain found it too expensive to fix the original neon tubes. Decades later, the Performing Arts Council won't use neon either, but rather LED lights he said are cheaper but yield a similar look.   

There also are plans to display some of the treasures discovered in closets and crawl spaces amid the renovations.

They include a massive early 20th century movie projector, movie posters advertising the 1950 romance “To Please a Lady" starring Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck, and a hand-painted price list advertising smoking section loge seats for 55 cents and children’s seats for 20 cents. It included this stern reminder: “Babies in arms Not Admitted.” 

Smithtown Town Supervisor Edward Wehrheim said last year as fundraising for the renovations began that he considered the performing arts center a potential economic driver.

 "Just about every successful business district on Long Island … Huntington, Patchogue, Babylon Village … they all have a theater drawing folks to these shows," he added, pointing out how those same people would spend money at area restaurants and bars.   

The nonprofit’s latest public tax filings aren't yet available but yearly overhead is about $250,000 for paying staff and the utilities, according to Mucciolo.

He said most of that comes from ticket sales, a children’s theater program and small donations. Last year, there were 136 shows; this spring the nonprofit produced what Mucciolo said was the first Long Island run of Disney’s "Finding Nemo Jr.," a children’s musical adapted from similarly-named movie. 

That production — which ran for 10 shows, as many as Disney would allow — combined underwater scenery on the theater’s LED-lit stage screens with fish puppets the nonprofit hopes to rent to the next theater that produces the musical, Mucciolo said.

To generate revenue, the nonprofit also hopes to sell 86 balcony seats that were removed.  

“Part of the reason we’ve done the things we’ve done is to show forward progress,” Mucciolo said. “Every little bit helps.”