From Freelance Posts to First Chair: Alexa Perez’s Big Debut
By Avery Anderson
The first time I met Alexa Perez, she wasn’t in a rehearsal room. She was in a broom-closet-sized office at American Stage, poring over Facebook analytics like a social media detective. It was the kind of gig artists take to stay near the work while quietly dreaming of doing the work.
Now, Perez is stepping into the spotlight as the director of Ada and the Engine at Powerstories Theatre. Her professional directorial debut isn’t just another line on a résumé — it’s a full-circle moment for an artist who’s been building toward this for years, brick by brick, rehearsal by rehearsal.
“Alexa’s deep compassion for humanity impressed me from the moment I met her,” said Clareann Despain, Artistic Director at Powerstories. “So I was thrilled when she said she’d direct Ada and the Engine.”
Ada Lovelace, Meet Tampa Bay
If you zoned out in high school, here’s a refresher: Ada Lovelace was a 19th-century mathematician who imagined computer programming before computers existed. (While you were fighting with AOL dial-up, she’d already sketched the blueprint for Spotify.)
Lauren Gunderson — one of the most produced playwrights in the U.S. — turned Lovelace’s story into Ada and the Engine, a play that mixes history, humanity, and a dash of speculative romance.
Perez loves that it doesn’t flatten its characters into statues.
“It’s so easy for us to look at historical figures and their accomplishments and leave it there,” she said. “What I love about Lauren Gunderson’s writing is she really took all of these people and humanized them. We get to see what makes them tick, what makes them excited, what scares them.”
And yet, despite Gunderson’s popularity, this script rarely gets staged. Perez doesn’t get it either:
“I honestly couldn’t tell you why more people don’t touch it, but they should. They absolutely should.”
The Long Road to “Now”
Perez’s path hasn’t been a Broadway-montage fast track. Think less jazz hands, more juggling part-time jobs, staged readings, and rehearsal calls. She cut her teeth assistant directing (sometimes in spaces so small the audience literally became part of the action). She took a fellowship at American Stage. She directed at USF. She kept showing up.
“The biggest thing I learned is you can’t get into a room if people don’t know you exist,” Perez said. “When that perfect project does come along, you’re thought of — and then it just keeps going from there.”
That persistence — plus a healthy shove from the people who believed in her — turned “gig life” into this debut.
“As one of her mentors, this is the moment we celebrate,” said Erica Sutherlin, Artistic Executive Director of The Studio@620. “Now, her turn and time has come for her directorial debut. Well deserved! She’s ready and has a support system to see her through.”
The Stakes
For Perez, directing Ada isn’t just professional validation. It’s personal.
“It’s kind of crazy to think about how my life was so different a couple of years ago,” she said. “But it’s truly where I’m the happiest and I just feel very grateful and just overwhelmed with support.”
A Debut with Ripples
Perez jokes this interview was her “first press thing,” but her debut already feels bigger than one production. It’s a signal of who’s next in Tampa Bay theater: women, artists of color, and leaders who’ve been grinding backstage now stepping into the light.
Because if Ada Lovelace could dream up computers before electricity, Perez can dream up a future where Tampa Bay stages reflect more voices, more risks, and more full-circle stories.
And she knows exactly how she got here.
“Keep showing up. That’s what got me here,” Perez said.
That hope is the ripple effect — from Ada’s 19th-century dream, to Perez’s debut, to whoever walks out of Powerstories ready to start their own.
Claire Farrow
Avery Anderson