Final act for Players Centre?

The party for the unveiling of The Players Centre for Performing Arts' 89th season Jan. 4 included another revelation.

Players Managing Director Michelle Bianchi told those gathered at Gold Coast Eagle Distributing the last show of the upcoming season (scheduled for March 26-April 14, 2019) might be the final one at the current Sarasota theater.

Bianchi and The Players board of directors is optimistic their theater at 838 N. Tamiami Trail is close to selling, a sale that would lead to the start of construction of Phase I of the group's new $30 million complex that will anchor the Waterside Place hub of the new Waterside at Lakewood Ranch community. The current theater is listed at $9.5 million.

"Schroeder-Manatee Ranch will be building in the first quarter of 2019 and we want to be building simultaneously," Bianchi said.

But a lot needs to be accomplished before The Players can break ground at its new site.

"I am hyperventilating," Bianchi told the crowd.

Players Artistic Director Jeffery Kin told a few hundred potential benefactors they could help in several ways. "One ways to assist is to bring friends and family to the theater," Kin said. "We invited you to see what a little community theater can do."

At the Jan. 4 event, The Players gave those invited a taste of the theater group's talent. The Players Kids group sang as did other performers.

"We need something like The Players in Lakewood Ranch," said Angela Massaro-Fain, who joined the group's board last August. "And I don't think everyone knows it is coming yet."

Massaro-Fain and her husband, John Fain, sold Grapevine Communications last April, and she hopes to lend her expertise in helping The Players reach the Lakewood Ranch community.

Roxie Jerde, the president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, addressed the crowd, saying, "This is a group that is of the community and for the community," she said. "We know this will be successful."

Jerde announced a $1 million gift from the Muriel O’Neil Fund of the Performing Arts through the Community Foundation in June.

If the sale of current theater means the theater can finish its upcoming season there, Kin said they will find a way to perform.

"We will make sure we are there for you," he said.