Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach is an Excellent Entertainment Venue

The Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts is the major performing arts facility for the people of Palm Beach County. A group of local arts patrons began raising money for the facility in 1968 and, ten years later, plans were made to build a new arts center. However, it took 14 more years to gather enough money for the venue, with funding coming from the general public, a number of private corporations, and the city of West Palm Beach. The scope of the project was continuously expanded, but it eventually opened in September 1992 and welcomed thousands of guests to its first week of free concert performances.

The Grand Opening Concert featured a star-studded line up of entertainers including Burt Reynolds, Lily Tomlin, Faith Prince, Ella Fitzgerald, Leontyne Price, Isaac Stern, Roberta Peters, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, and the Florida Orchestra.

The facility is named for a prominent geologist who spent his winters in West Palm Beach. Friends and family members of Kravis gathered in excess of $7 million for the project and donated it to the fund in order to have the venue named for this philanthropist from Iowa.

The architect for the attractive building was Eberhard Zeidler of Toronto, Ontario, who has designed a number of notable landmarks throughout the U.S. and Canada. The building includes 4 theater spaces: Dreyfoos Concert Hall, which seats about 2,200 guests; the Marshall E. Rinker Sr. Playhouse, a more intimate theater that seats 349 patrons; the Gosman Amphitheater, an outdoor venue that seats 1,400 and includes seating on the grass; and the Cohen Pavilion, which includes a banquet hall, several practice rooms, a dance studio, a recording studio, and a few lecture halls.

The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach hosts a large number of performances each year and their annual schedule is quite diverse. Patrons can expect to purchase tickets for everything from classical concerts by local and visiting professional orchestras to ballet and other dance performances to concerts by top names in a variety of contemporary genres, including pop, rock, jazz, blues, and more. Theatrical performances include professionally-staged operas by some of the world's best opera companies, Broadway-style musicals featuring popular stars of the stage, and cutting edge new plays that are appearing on stage for the first time at the Kravis Center.

The Kravis Center sponsors a number of community outreach programs, including Kravis-on-the Road, which brings arts education to local schools; ArtsCamp, a two-week-long summer camp experience in the performing arts for kids age 9 to 11; and the S*T*A*R Series, which brings local children to the theater for a variety of performances. The Family Fare series also allows families to come to the theater together to enjoy family-appropriate plays and concerts.