Community takes the center stage
Playhouse runners are finalists for Central Floridian of the Year.
Roy Alan and Heather Alexander started out with 50 metal folding chairs and a dream. Today, they run a theater that not only entertains but strengthens the sense of community in Winter Park, especially for underserved groups.
“I don’t think in the early days we thought we would be able to build something that was so important to so many people in a deeper way than just coming in and having two hours of entertainment,” Alexander said during a recent Orlando Sentinel podcast.
For their work in enhancing their community and building bridges between different segments of the population, Alan and Alexander are finalists for the Sentinel’s Central Floridian of the Year award.
Married since 1992, the couple founded the Winter Park Playhouse a decade later, starting out with a simple series of cabarets. As they found their footing, they realized there was a need for feel-good entertainment – Alexander calls the Playhouse “the forget-your-troubles” theater. “We are the place people come to for escape,” she said.
Today, they reach not only fans of musical theater but schoolchildren in poor neighborhoods and senior citizens with health problems through a variety of programs. And if those members of the community can’t get to the theater, Alexander and Alan bring the theater to them.
In 2008, when recession hit and school funding was slashed, the couple vowed to keep arts education available to children. They quickly realized the cost of buses and lunches, with the work of arranging chaperones and parental permission, would make it difficult to bring students to the theater. So they started an in-school program called REACH — Relevant Educational Arts for Children.
By the end of this school year, more than 80,000 students mainly in Orange and Seminole counties will have participated — either by watching a performance of “Schoolhouse Rock” or attending musical-theater classes.
For many in the poorer schools served by the program, it’s their first exposure to the performing arts. And the educational benefits from studying music are welldocumented.
“It increases their math skills, their selfconfidence,” said Alan, who serves as the theater’s artistic director. “It’s an incredible benefit to these kids.”
At the other end of the age spectrum, the theater has reached out to senior citizens — especially those with limited mobility or transportation options. They bring in seniors to their musicals by the hundreds.
“Any matinee weekday, you will see two buses unloading in front of Winter Park Playhouse,” said Alexander, the executive director.
But, as with the children’s programs, the Playhouse also brings performances to the community.
“Again, it’s trying to uplift people with the beauty of music and musical theater,” Alexander said.
The Playhouse brings its own sound system and accompanist to senior-citizen housing for those unable to leave their residence — the host just has to provide the space.
Both outreach initiatives are funded primarily through grants and sponsors. The number of people served depends on the nonprofit theater’s income, which is part of Alexander’s sense of fiscal prudence: “No debt, ending the year in the black, making sure we’re super-responsible with these people’s dollars because it is a community organization.”
The two are proud that rather than relying on one or two large corporate donors, they have a wide range of personal support across Winter Park and beyond.
“We have always been a grassroots organization,” Alexander said. “Most of our donors give between $100 and $1,000. That’s the real deal.”
That sense of community extends to the relationships that have been made through the years: Patrons are greeted with hugs at the theater door, Christmas cards are exchanged, and tears are shed when a longtime theatergoer dies.
“A lot of original subscribers — we know their kids’ names,” Alan said. “It just became this great family.”
And beyond the lights and the greasepaint, Alexander said, that’s what it’s really about.
“We aren’t doing it for any glory,” she said. “We’re doing it because we love what we do and we want to serve all the time.”