Riverside Theatre’s Comedy Zone, an all-important element to Vero’s nightlife when the season’s higher brow cultural events are plucked from the calendar, gets even more rumpus-like with the introduction of a summer theme, starting this weekend. Now through the end of August, Riverside’s Summer Nights performances indoors will be enhanced by bar games such as corn hole outdoors under the oaks, with craft beer, wine tastings and live music before and after the comedy shows. It all guarantees the already rowdy evening an added endorphin release for all. Summer Comedy Zone performances are twice nightly on every other Friday and Saturday.
The start of summer is also the theme for Main Street Vero’s fourth Friday street fair this weekend. The Sweet Summertime Street Party and community bike ride is a three-hour outdoor trial-by-fire for cyclists to get acclimated to the hot days ahead. Collins and Co., a band people will recognize from Waldo’s, Blue Star Bourbon bar and Kilted Mermaid, will be set up at one end of the Main Street main drag, 14th Street north of S.R. 60.
The ride is sponsored by the Vero Riding Club, which organizes group rides at various skill and stamina levels through its website; several include cruisers and hybrids.
Sunrise Theatre’s black box is hosting Vero’s Theatre-Go-Round Saturday night in a revue of Broadway music with a three-course dinner for $45. The Fort Pierce stage is a first for the company, and if it goes well, Sunrise may want the shows on a monthly basis, says veteran producer Jon Putzke. TGR, as he calls it, has already expanded from its home base at the Quilted Giraffe to include shows at Grand Harbor, Oak Harbor and the Bistro in Stuart, and he’s talking to the Moorings about a series of shows next season.
Putzke, who knows the history of Vero’s theater scene better than almost anyone, in the early 1980s used to run a dinner theater in what was then the Sheraton Resort, an early incarnation of the late Surf Club, now a pile rubble about to become luxury oceanfront townhomes.
After staging a summer season of musicals at Riverside Theatre, he went on to create Encore Alley, a theater in the building now housing the Vero Beach Book Center. That lasted four years, and Putzke dabbled in other professions before starting Theatre-Go-Round in 2007. For the past few years, Putzke with his wife Marg has been staging dinner theater at the Quilted Giraffe on Sunday afternoons, often to sell-out audiences, he says.
Meanwhile, Jon and Marg’s son Brandon Putzke has figured out a way to beat the summer doldrums: he beats a drum instead, with a couple hundred kids and top professional percussionists and instructors from around the state and country. Vero’s Treasure Coast Percussion Camp, which takes place the week of June 15th at Vero Beach High School, is a tradition that originated here in 2005 with 25 students and last summer involved 165 kids and a faculty of eight plus four guest clinicians.
Putzke has added two guest clinicians in anticipation of an even bigger crowd this year. He says that in addition to his customary invitees – former and professional drummers who live in the area and want to refresh their skills — he would love for the public at large to sit in and observe.
One particular guest instructor this year would be fascinating to watch: Joe McCarthy is founder, drummer and band leader with Afro Bop Alliance Big Band, which won a 2008 Latin Grammy for Latin Jazz Album of the Year and a nomination for a Grammy in the same category. His play-along series is in the curriculum of University of Miami and Berklee College of Music. He just finished 20 years as a percussionist for the U.S. Naval Academy Band, playing with the Academy’s wind ensemble and Next Wave Jazz Band.
Other guest artists are longtime percussion professors at major universities, some of them now working for drum and stick manufacturers.
Brandon Putzke says if the public shows enough interest in sitting in on the classes, he will happily try to move at least one clinic to the school’s Performing Arts Center. Call 772-696-2857 to log a vote of enthusiasm. This camp is a rare experience in a small town like Vero and draws kids from as far away as Sarasota and Miami.
While the heat has a lot of people avoiding the stove, McKee Botanical Gardens is teasing them out of their own kitchens and into the Gardens’ air-conditioned Richardson Education Center for another in its series of cooking classes June 7, this time on vegetarian Indian cuisine. The afternoon class is taught by beachside home chef and caterer Urvi Upadhyay. Born in Gujarat, India, and raised in the U.S., Upadhyay infuses her classes with lessons on India’s regional cultures as well as cuisine. Her classes are always popular, McKee warns, so sign up early and bring a little extra cash for her spice boxes so you can make the dishes at home.
