Gulfshore Playhouse: A story of resilient leadership

By Dr. Timothy Habbershon
Managing Director
Fidelity Center for Family Engagement

On March 2, 2020, Gulfshore Playhouse, a professional theater company in
Naples, Florida, held their most successful fundraising gala to date. They
topped a million dollars on that night for their annual campaign and
established important momentum for the ongoing capital campaign to build a
new state-of-the-art professional regional theater. As Kristen Coury, Founder,
CEO, and Producing Artistic Director described it, “We thought the pathway
ahead was paved with gold.”

Kristen and the Playhouse community had no idea how appropriate the
“Roaring into the 20s” gala theme would end up being.

Two weeks later, on Monday, March 16, Kristen stood on the hill of their
outdoor amphitheater and informed 32 employees (over three-quarters of the
company) that she had to lay them off. I remember the board meeting when
Kristen and our chair brought the decision to us. No one could have imagined
this reality.

Over the next four years, I watched Kristen’s leadership from my dual
perspective as a board member and an entrepreneurship professor. I watched
her navigate COVID, lead the first company in the country to get permission
from the actor’s union to offer indoor live theater during the pandemic,
continue a capital campaign, which ended up raising over $30 million that
year, break ground on a new building, and navigate a major construction
project through three hurricanes.

At some point in 2023, I told Kristen I wanted to put my professor hat on and
interview her and the leadership team about their amazing, resilient journey.
So we began a conversation that has carried through to early 2025.