Located in the East End of the Hamptons, The Southampton Playhouse has enchanted audiences for nearly a century. A cultural hub for the local community and a moviegoing destination for seasonal audiences who flock to the site over the summer, the Playhouse reopened its doors this February after a prolonged closure that began with the onset of the pandemic. The Southampton Playhouse currently features four auditoriums, including the only Imax theater within a 50-mile radius of its community. The cinema is equipped with a 35 mm projector, a lounge area, a podcasting studio, and an event space where high-profile names have stopped by for special Q&A sessions.
Helping lead a new era for the Southampton Playhouse are its executive director, Maria Ruiz Botsacos, a 30-year industry veteran with prior experience at Film at Lincoln Center, and its artistic director, Eric Kohn, whose tenure at Indiewire included roles as chief film critic, senior editor, and VP of editorial strategy. Their long-standing ties to the film industry and connections with some of the world’s most influential filmmakers have elevated the Playhouse into one of the most dynamic and unique moviegoing venues in the country. Boxoffice Pro spoke with Ruiz Botsacos and Kohn about the cinema’s history, its role in the community, and ambitions to stand out on a national level.
The Southampton Playhouse reopened its doors this year, but its history dates back nearly a century. What sort of legacy have those roots left in your community?
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: The theater originally opened in 1932. In fact, we have the same marquee from 1932 in impeccable condition. It was closed during the pandemic, but it reopened in February 2025.
Eric Kohn: Because it has nearly a century of history, there’s a great deal of enthusiasm among people who have grown up going to the movie theater. We’ve met people who worked here in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. They all have different kinds of relationships to it, which is a great starting point for building a movie theater that can have both a traditional status in the community and offer something new.
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: The playhouse has been the cornerstone of the community for many decades, and we’ve heard countless incredible and joyful memories from many people of every age. Most recently, we had Maria Cooper Janice come in to participate in our Gary Cooper Festival and share her childhood memories of coming to the East End.
It’s never an easy time to get into the exhibition business, but we’re living through particularly challenging times. What was it about the opportunity to join the Southampton Playhouse that really motivated you?
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: What stands out to me the most is the dedication of our board to hosting events and providing access to our community. They are truly committed to providing rich cultural opportunities year-round. I know many people refer to “the Hamptons,” or the East End, as locals call it, as a resort, but there is a wonderful year-round community composed of many interesting people who are hungry for culture. Eric and I are really enthusiastic about that—just having a destination for parents to take their young children on a quiet February evening. Yes, we’re living through challenging times in exhibition, but we’re finding a lot of enthusiasm here, and it’s been great serving as an anchor for this community.
Eric Kohn: One of the few solutions to the challenges facing exhibition today is to really double down on the local level. Because regardless of what’s happening nationally, you have your people and your base, and any theater in a small town with a faithful audience that’s been going there for a long time that’s just showing the same movies as hundreds, if not thousands, of theaters around the country is really missing the point of where we should be right now.
What was most exciting for me in joining on the curatorial side is that because we’re building something new, we can be many different kinds of options at once. We can show big movies, but we can also program repertory series. We recently had both Jesse Eisenberg presenting Zombieland and Julianne Moore reading from her children’s book. But we also had How to Train Your Dragon on Imax, and a local adoption agency came to give a talk on how to train your pet. We’re doing all these unique things that could only happen in our theater, while having the only Imax auditorium for 50 miles. We’re privileged in the sense that we have this extraordinary technological foundation to build upon, but we also have the opportunity to try new things and experiment.
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: Audiences are very appreciative of the access that Eric has created via the Playhouse. We’ve taken great advantage of the hunger they’ve felt after losing their beloved theater. It’s a really good two-way discussion with the community, and we’ve achieved some exciting outcomes by partnering with other local cultural organizations. We recently collaborated with the Southampton African American Museum, and we’ve conducted two activations with them, which have been highly successful.
Eric Kohn: The work we did with the Southampton African American Museum around Sinners helped establish that movie in our community. When I saw it early, it was really important for me to engage local stakeholders and explain it to the community, knowing that over time, word of mouth would spread. However, I wanted to ensure we had their support by opening weekend. We’re doing that with a variety of different organizations. Southampton is a small part of the eastern end of Long Island, and it serves as our base. But the East End of Long Island is a really big place, with a lot of different types of people. Thirty percent of it is Spanish-speaking, so we’re leaning heavily into figuring out how to serve that audience as well. That mentality enables us to engage audiences who haven’t been moviegoers in this area in the past.
These are the opportunities that are available to nonprofit, independent cinemas—that dexterity to cater your programming to local groups.
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: Let’s not forget we have this gorgeous Imax theater, which allows us to expand our programming. We had the opportunity to show Jaws on Imax, a movie originally shown at the Southampton Playhouse in its first rendition. People were overjoyed to come back and see it in Imax for the first time. We also have educational documentaries that Eric has put together, and we’ve hosted many students and their teachers. We’ve embraced the educational community here, and with Eric’s help, being an educator himself, I think we’ve had a really unexpected creativity that feels so welcome and refreshing by the educators.
Eric Kohn: There are 700 kids in Southampton High School, and a lot of them are interested in the arts, and we want to be more than a movie theater for them. We aim to be a cultural hub for the entire East End of Long Island. We also want to achieve national resonance due to the resources available to us in the area.
One of the things I’m particularly interested in exploring is how we can create an on-ramp for individuals who are serious about movies and other related forms of media, allowing them to develop their entire careers from an early stage using the resources we can provide. We also aim to bring more production back to the area. We’re already discussing what the grant writing process will entail around that. Often, such opportunities arise for people after they’ve entered college or after completing their education. We want to start at a much earlier phase in people’s lives, where we can essentially invest in someone’s career and give them the kind of endorsement they need to feel like they’re on the right track at a very young age. Because I think right now, more than ever, that’s the kind of guidance that people really need.
I need to ask the question, because I know our readers are asking themselves right now: How does an independent nonprofit cinema get an Imax?
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: Richard Gelfond, the CEO of Imax, is a Southampton resident, and it stemmed from his determination to have one of his theaters in the area. He jokes that he tried to put an Imax in his home, but he ended up spending the money on the kitchen instead. He was the one who helped the Playhouse build this state-of-the-art Imax theater. We truly appreciate everything he has done for us. Our Imax auditorium is the biggest of the four we have, with a capacity of 161 seats. We’re about to inaugurate a 35 mm projector in the auditorium next door, and we also have this great flex space where we can host panels and live events.
Eric Kohn: The Imax is a great Trojan horse. Everybody knows the brand, and it’s so effective at getting people to go to a movie theater rather than waiting for it to be available at home. We’re the only Imax for 50 miles, so it’s a great driver for just getting people in the door. There aren’t a lot of Imax screens at independent nonprofit theaters, especially a place like ours that offers other kinds of programming opportunities. To explain ourselves to the broader community, we rely on Imax to deliver the goods, and then we work on our side to introduce people to everything else we have on offer. I’m on the ground a lot, introducing screenings to people who thought they were just going to see a new release, and then suddenly the artistic director pops up with a microphone, inviting them to subscribe to the email newsletter. We have a lot of cool stuff going on, and we’re always in the process of cultivating an audience that wasn’t aware all this other cool programming was available to them.
We want to be local and national at the same time. It’s not just about having [a premium auditorium], it’s about having a clean theater, comfortable seats, and pre-roll that engages you with the programming. You can’t just take that stuff for granted. We’ve all been in soulless, enormous movie theaters where the staff has no idea what’s playing. Our staff is an integral part of our crew; we conduct thorough staff screenings, so they can engage with a comprehensive knowledge base to inform people who walk in. This approach enables us not only to sell them popcorn but also to develop a relationship with them as moviegoers. You need a dependable audience, and we can’t rely on the studios to give us good movies all the time, either. We want to ensure that we have other types of programming available, as there may be weeks when, even if the movies are of a certain quality, the audience itself may not necessarily want to see them.
We’ve been hosting a Mystery Movie Mondays series, where we offer a surprise screening every week for just $5 per ticket. I love this kind of thing; at festivals, I’ve always loved secret and surprise screenings. Now, it’s really hard to do that because the trades always figure out what they are in advance—but that doesn’t happen in small communities like this. The feedback from our audience has been great. We’ve even had movies that people haven’t been into and left early; they still said they were happy they were there, because for five bucks, why not roll the dice? We’re going to lean into that more and more, especially as we build out our membership.
You reopened the Playhouse in February of this year. How did the experience turn out?
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: It has always been our goal to be open year-round. I refer to the local community that lives here as the year-round community, so February was an opportunity to open in a little more intimate setting with that group before the start of resort season. We had a fantastic February with some great events, including an open house for the community. We invited all the first responders we could reach who were available and not otherwise occupied. We were able to embrace the school district. Eric and I went out and did a road show through the cultural hub here, and we met a wonderful man at the Southampton Arts Center who brought in a group of 12 individuals with physical challenges. They were so excited to visit our theater.
Eric Kohn: It’s funny, because when I was a critic, I was very cynical about certain types of bigger movies sometimes, because they weren’t up to the kinds of standards I was developing watching a wide array of international cinema around the world. And while I still have that eclectic taste, seeing examples like the one Maria just cited has been really phenomenal as a reminder that even when there’s a movie you don’t personally like, it can have a dramatic effect on someone else.
You’re both long-time professionals in this industry, but this is your first time coming into running an independent, nonprofit theater. As relative newcomers, what are some areas you think could be improved in this business?
Eric Kohn: What I’ve learned is that you really need to understand the rules of engagement with studios. They can be amazing partners, and at the same time, they have their priorities, and you have yours. We align in the sense that we want to support the studio films we’re showing, but we also want to ensure that as a mission-driven nonprofit, we’re making space for all the things that give us a distinctive identity.
From an operational standpoint, having four screens is fascinating. At CinemaCon, I was walking around and telling people I had four screens; they would say things like, “I’m sorry,” because they had eight to 12 screens they’re trying to program. Now, from my standpoint, people are overwhelmed with options at home. I think it’s better to have fewer, but we still need to make space for the big new releases. To achieve this, we need to determine the optimal operational approach that accommodates everything else we want to achieve. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot: how to ensure that, as an audience member, our theater can meet your needs while also doing right by the studios in line with their expectations.
Maria Ruiz Botsacos: It’s all about trust. Eric and I have been able to bring in the relationships we’ve formed over the last couple of decades working in this space. Although it’s a new venue, it’s the same people they’ve been accustomed to working with. When we tell them we have something we want to put together, they trust our word. That was really apparent when we had Tony Gilroy come in for a conversation. A colleague put her trust in us to help bring him in.
Eric Kohn: Tony Gilroy is one of the best screenwriters out there—Rogue One, Andor, the Jason Bourne movies, Michael Clayton—but I wasn’t sure if we’d have an audience who would be familiar with someone with that background. It turned out that because of the way we positioned it, there were people who wanted to hear from Tony Gilroy without even knowing his work because they wanted to hear from an established storyteller like him. We positioned it in the way we do for all of our artist talks, where I asked Tony to share a clip from a movie that inspired him. For him, it was It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which was very unexpected to a lot of people. That’s how we figured out a formula to make the event worthwhile, no matter who you were. Having said that, there was a guy who drove 200 miles to get to the theater because he was such a big “Andor” fan, and I found out because I’m on the Andor subreddit, and I saw his post about it. The idea of hosting an event with a fan service component, while also incorporating a high-brow storytelling element, is something that epitomizes the approach I think we want to take on the programming side of things.
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