Theatre 99 leaves the peninsula for Mount Pleasant after its building sells

After 21 years at 280 Meeting St., Charleston’s improv comedy theater is moving over the bridge.

Theatre 99 will perform at The Venue MTP, 627 Johnnie Dodds Blvd., in Mount Pleasant, with free parking, the theater’s website says. The site says shows resume Wednesday, Oct. 28. SCBIZ had reported in September that the troupe planned to relaunch Oct. 21, with regular shows Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights.

The move was not the troupe’s choice. The landlord sold the 1918-era Meeting Street building, forcing Theatre 99 out, SCBIZ reported. A city board rejected a late 2025 proposal to demolish the building, and the buyer plans seven luxury residences, according to SCBIZ.

The troupe looked in North Charleston, Park Circle, Tanger Outlets, West Ashley, Mount Pleasant and downtown, SCBIZ reported.

“The combination of rent and upfit is kind of impossible, if you want to sell tickets in the $20 range,” co-founder Greg Tavares told SCBIZ. The old space had about 130 seats, according to SCBIZ. “Every seat above that is new money. Every seat below that is contraction,” Tavares said.

The Venue MTP opened in January as an arts and culture hub supported by the town of Mount Pleasant, SCBIZ reported. It sits in the Plaza at East Cooper shopping center, anchored by an Aldi, and has a larger theater, a smaller black-box space still being built out, and a beer and wine license. Its executive director, Keely Enright, a theater director and producer who ran the former Wolfe Street Playhouse downtown, also uses the space for her own productions, SCBIZ reported.

Tavares, Timmy Finch and Brandy Sullivan were the troupe’s original founders and cast, according to SCBIZ, and Theatre 99 produced more than 4,000 shows at 280 Meeting St.

“Theatre 99 isn’t a place; it’s people,” Sullivan told SCBIZ. “We’re just the same people going somewhere else because our building was sold.”

Tavares did not rule out another theater of its own someday. “We may rent a space in the future and do another brick and mortar, but it’s going to have to be a real lucky moment,” he said.