Same Stage, Different Group

A dramatic change has taken place on Marco Island’s artistic landscape. 

The Marco Island Center for the Arts has expanded its mission to include a newly created project dubbed the Arts Center Theatre, which will utilize the Marco Town Center space formerly occupied by The Marco Players theater group. 

Announced this week, the new venture comes on the heels of The Marco Players’ decision, earlier this year, to cease operations after more than two decades of staging productions on the island. 

The Center for the Arts has been bringing a wide variety of arts to its community through visual arts exhibitions and live performing, engaging educational programs for adults and children and assorted other events since 1970. 

Hyla Crane, the Center’s executive director, said the ACT has been added to the organization’s programming palette because if it weren’t, “there would be a real chance that there would not be a community theater with its own home here on Marco Island.”

“We learned that the previous tenants of the space, the Marco Players, which we honor and applaud, including their artistic director, Beverly Dahlstrom, and their team that produced theater on Marco successfully, bringing great joy for many, many, many years, were not going to renew their lease in the space and there did not appear there were plans for there to continue to be a community theater with its own venue on Marco Island,” said Crane.

A new organization will likely mean some changes, relative to what the community has become accustomed to with The Marco Players, simply because different people are running things, explained Crane.

“But what we can assure our community who love theater and enjoy being able to go on the island with regularity is we will be offering a very entertaining season, along with some programming that could be very different,” she added. 

The 2022-2023 ACT season will consist of six productions, but the new group will also explore opportunities for working with other organizations on such things as co-productions. Crane said discussions are already underway with two Marco theater groups, the Island Theater Company and the Sisbarro Acting Studio youth theater program.

Crane said the center thought long and hard and researched matters before deciding to expand, after learning of the Marco Player’s demise. 

“The Marco Island Center for the Arts was approached with the possibility of adding both producing community theater as well as presenting other live theatrical entertainment in the space and the decision of the board was to move forward,” she said. “Marco has enjoyed having a community theater at that site and we were of the opinion that it would be a loss if it were not offered there.”

A community reception to announce the upcoming season program will be held on July 11th at 6:00 PM at the Center for the Arts, which is located at 1010 Winterberry Drive. 

For more information about the Marco Island Center for the Arts, visit marcoislandart.org or call 239-394-4221.