Orlando arts scene draws closer after Pulse
A playwright leaves fiction behind, using interviews instead of imagination to craft his next work.
Thousands of miles from Orlando, an artist senses his next show can be used for emotional healing.
A composer searches for notes that will pay tribute to a battered city’s spirit.
Local theater executives ponder the shows they will stage — and see them in a new light.
A year later, these are ways the Pulse nightclub massacre still reverberate across the Central Florida arts scene. Although a flurry of benefit concerts and other productions provided an immediate artistic reaction, the emotions and
issues stirred by the tragedy have added a new, and poignant, layer to Orlando’s creative culture.
“I think there’s more of a feeling of responsibility to work together, utilize the community and make art that’s significant in some way,” said Orlando playwright-director David Lee. “I’ve noticed it in myself and others. The desire to give has grown stronger.”
Lee interviewed responders, survivors and others whose lives were affected by the shootings to write “OTown: Voices from Orlando” using real people’s words.
“I found it to be very healing for me,” Lee said. “I just wanted to keep writing.”
The show premiered in an abbreviated form during the Orlando Fringe Festival in May. The full-length version will debut at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center, 812 E. Rollins St., Orlando. Tickets are $20 at eventbrite.com or at the door.
Proceeds from the Fringe performances were donated to the 49 Fund, an endowed scholarship for local LGBT students, administered by the Central Florida Foundation. Sunday’s show will benefit the onePulse Foundation.
The opening monologue from “O-Town” will be read by actor Peg O’Keef at the city’s official Pulse commemoration ceremony on Monday. Although “OTown” is by nature reflective, it isn’t designed to be sad.
“I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘I’m not sure I can do this. Is it depressing?’ ” Lee said. “I’ve tried to structure it in a way that is uplifting and healing.”
The word “healing” is frequently spoken when talking with arts leaders about their reaction to the events of Pulse. Music is often said to soothe the soul, and the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra has commissioned a work to commemorate the tragedy. Executive director Chris Barton said the piece was early in its development and it’s too soon to say when it will be ready to be performed in public.
But right now, at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum in Winter Park, Central Floridians can see firsthand how Pulse has influenced an artist’s current work. Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Martinez’s first solo museum show, “American Memorial,” is on view at the Rollins College institution.
In his exhibition, Martinez explores how public memorials can express grief, but also defiance and love. Hearing about Pulse affected the direction of the exhibition.
“It was in my mind for sure, and I brought up with him that his show would be particularly resonate here,” said curator Amy Galpin. “We decided to focus on the memorial aspect, but in general. I wasn’t ready for something literal.”
Realizing the public would make the connection as well, the artist and Galpin worked together on a piece that allows museumgoers to share their own ideas on grief and mourning.
“That has an authenticity in the context of the show,” Galpin said.
Theater producer-director Adam Graham also was looking for a less-than-literal way to honor Pulse’s place in the community as a gayfriendly nightclub, as well as the shooting victims. His Red Fish Theatre settled on “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” a musical Graham said embodies “freedom of expression and freedom to be what you want to be.”
“That feeling of being accepted, of being comfortable where you are — that’s what Pulse was to a lot of people,” Graham said. “And that’s Hedwig’s story. She just wants to be herself. We thought it would fit the mood of the community.”
Graham will stage “Hedwig” in collaboration with AntiGravity Orlando later this summer in Kissimmee.
Some theaters found already scheduled plays took on a new meaning. Mad Cow Theatre, in downtown Orlando, will present “The Amish Project” in August. Chosen before the Pulse massacre, the play is set after a mass shooting in a small Pennsylvania community.
“How grief, rage and forgiveness interact is what informed our choice of ‘The Amish Project,’ ” said executive director Mitzi Maxwell. “Little did we know that our own tragedy was just around the corner.”
Because audience members will undoubtedly have Pulse on their minds as they watch, the theater is augmenting the play with additional programming.
“We will bring together community experts on how we as individuals and a community can process our grief about this violence and our own feelings associated with the shooting at Pulse,” Maxwell said.
For the long term, Lee says, the tragedy has broken down barriers between cultural organizations — a process started when major arts institutions banded together in July to present a one-night benefit at Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
Old rivalries and differences evaporated after the shooting, Lee said, while new connections were forged as communication between arts groups increased.
“There are people who know each other and work together now who never had before,” Lee said. “Everybody’s ego just kind of went away. I’m hoping long-term we see more of that in Orlando… I know I’ve hugged a lot of people I haven’t hugged in a long time.”
“I know I’ve hugged a lot of people I haven’t hugged in a long time.” Orlando playwright-director David Lee