Take Two: ‘Scene One New Canaan LLC’ To Operate Playhouse Movie Theater

Town officials this week approved a lease with a Delaware-based limited liability company to operate The Playhouse.

The Town Council and Board of Selectmen both voted unanimously in favor of a five-year lease with Scene One New Canaan LLC.

Joseph Masher, representing the company, told the selectmen during their regular meeting Tuesday that he is sole owner of Scene One Entertainment, formerly Bow Tie Management.

“For 20 years I was the chief operating officer of Bow Tie Cinemas,” Masher said during the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “So I have extensive experience with the old Playhouse and I’m very excited to be back, and what you’ve done with the Playhouse—making it into its current iteration—it’s amazing and my goal is to make sure that it is a centerpiece, is the centerpiece of town and the beacon of Elm Street.”

According to the Scene One website, the Schenectady, N.Y.-based company currently operates six movie theaters in four states, including New York.

Selectman Amy Murphy Carroll commended Masher for his “long experience in running movie theaters and your sense of making sure that you pull in movies that pull people into the theater and balance what makes sense for our two theaters vis-a-vis other products.”

“So I think that’s super important,” Murphy Carroll said. “And then just making the experience very seamless. The current Playhouse, if you wanted to get a glass of wine, you had to wait for a bartender. You’re hopefully stocking things with grab-and-go — obviously, age appropriate. And I really have a sense from Joe that he’s going to tune it into the community and maximize the utilization of the space. I feel very optimistic that from the town’s perspective, we’re going to have consistent lease payments, and the lease is such that all operating expenses go there. So the town will have access to a movie theater that’ll be heavily used and the town will get some reimbursement for it. I’m very excited that you’re taking it over.”

First Selectman Dionna Carlson, Murphy Carroll and Selectman Steve Karl voted in favor of the lease. A draft copy shows that monthly rent will step up from $11,000 to $13,370.58 over the life of the agreement.

Closed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and available to a new tenant since later that year, when Bow Tie Cinemas terminated its lease, the Playhouse underwent a nearly $8 million renovation that came in at more than twice the original budget, rankling town funding bodies. The Playhouse reopened under CinemaLab in June 2024, with a new concession area, pub and second-floor lounge that is available to the public as well as for private events. Following financial difficulties, the town broke its lease with CinemaLab last year, and signed an agreement with the New Jersey-based company so that it will continue to operate the movie theater until a new operator is in place.

Masher said he has a good relationship with CinemaLab.

“We’ve already spoken and they’ll leave one day and the next day it opens as a Scene One theater,” he told the selectmen. 

Masher said the upstairs lounge will be open and, along with the pub on the street level, will be operated by Z Hospitality Group.

“The theater itself will have a deep cleaning and will look pristine and sparkling like it did in July of 2024,” he said. “And it’ll look like that again all the time. And we will have great food, snacks, movies and just be accessible to everyone and we’ll work very diligently to bring people back to the movies, get butts in those seats, and get people spending money in downtown New Canaan.”

On Monday night, the Town Council voted 12-0 to approve the lease following a discussion held out of the public eye, in executive session, as allowed by state law. During a public hearing before the vote, a New Canaan resident who has worked at The Playhouse since its reopening, Patty Murray, addressed the Town Council, noting that the staff there is “a very diverse group.”

“I’m really proud of what we do at The Playhouse and we are proud of supporting the community,” she said, adding: “I love this place and I love that the theater reopened and that it is trying to be such a central part of the community in what it does.”

Town Council members voting in favor of the lease were Chair Michael Mauro, Vice Chairs Janet Fonss and Hilary Ormond, Maria Naughton, Cristina A. Ross, Penny Young, Kimberly Norton, Eric Thunem, Jennifer Zonis, Lina Lee, Michael Rodgers and Heather Russell.

Karl said during the selectmen meeting that “one of the things that came up during our discussions was the fact that Joe not only can get first-run movies and time them correctly—because we’ve had some questionable, like at Christmas, maybe not the right movie there—but Joe has a real good grasp of when to put movies in, what movies to put in, a lot of variables to the different movies and access to not only first-run movies, but we’ve talked about independent movies sometimes, or Netflix, which is really exciting.”

Masher said he phoned his film buyer after the Town Council meeting “and we already made plans for upcoming stuff.”

Carlson said that she had visited another Scene One theater “and it’s a great theater.”

“So I have high expectations and I think just your experience is going to be really welcome to the community,” she said. “So thank you again for being willing to take this on. I know it’s not an easy industry.”