Upcoming Programs at the Rotary Club of Clearwater
February 22
Fred Simmons hosts Zev Buffman, veteran show business impresario who had a major role in the creation of the touring Broadway theater market, working in show business for 60 years with high-caliber stars like Elizabeth Taylor. Mr. Buffman was recently appointed as CEO of Ruth Eckerd Hall. He has identified a dozen priorities for the hall, which seats about 2,100. At the top was renovation of the Capitol Theater in downtown Clearwater, which has been run by the hall. Other priorities include instituting vocational training in technical theater (lighting, sound, set and costume design and construction) at the Marcia P. Hoffman Performing Arts Institute, which is part of the hall; and enhancing the Broadway series.
Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, where his father owned movie theaters, Mr. Buffman moved to the United States as an exchange student in Los Angeles and got work as an actor in the 1950s, playing small parts in movies such as The Prodigalwith Lana Turner and The Ten Commandments. He started his career as a producer at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami and promoted touring Broadway series at half a dozen Florida venues, including the Broadway in the Sunshine series at Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg and a series at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, now the Straz Center, in Tampa. In 1988, he sold his Florida operation to Pace Theatrical Group, which eventually morphed into what is now Broadway Across America. He is the producer who persuaded Elizabeth Taylor to make her Broadway debut in The Little Foxes, and produced Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1982. Mr. Buffman also helped found the Miami Heat and was team's first general partner.
February 29
Steve Carlisle hosts Jennifer Parramore, the St. Pete/Clearwater area Film Commissioner. She'll update us onn all the movies that have been filmed in our area recently.
March 7
Alan Bomstein hosts Hal Bodley, Senior Correspondent for MLB Network and MLB.com
March 28
Bob Clark introduces David Patterson, recently retired Tampa Bay District Manager for the US Postal Service.