From Apprentice to Director
How John Perez Is Expanding the Reach of American Stage
Arts Passport Podcast
If you’ve ever wondered how theatre actually reaches people—not just subscribers, donors, or opening-night crowds, but students, families, and first-time audiences—the answer often isn’t onstage.
It’s in classrooms. Cafeterias. School gyms. After-school programs. And increasingly, it’s in the hands of John Perez, the newly appointed Director of Education at American Stage.
Perez’s rise to the role is the kind of full-circle story arts organizations love to talk about—but rarely get to live. He began at American Stage as an acting and production apprentice, moved through teaching and outreach roles, spent time as an elementary school educator, and has now returned to lead the department responsible for one of the theatre’s most expansive—and impactful—arms.
“It’s wild,” Perez said. “I’m still wrapping my head around it.”
American Stage’s Education Department may operate with a small staff, but its reach is anything but small. The department runs youth and adult classes across acting, musical theatre, improv, voiceover, and more. It leads Write On, a playwriting initiative embedded in Pinellas County schools. It coordinates student matinees and talkbacks. And it produces the long-running School Tour, which brings professional theatre directly into schools—often for students seeing live theatre for the first time.
This spring, that tour will feature Polka Dots: The Cool Kids Musical, a high-energy, anti-bullying show centered on tolerance and acceptance.
“For many kids, this is their first—or only—experience with professional theatre,” Perez said. “Sometimes access isn’t about interest. It’s about opportunity.”
One of the department’s defining features is its reliance on local working artists as teaching artists—actors, directors, and performers actively working in the Tampa Bay theatre scene.
That choice is intentional.
“There’s something powerful about learning from someone you can then see onstage,” Perez explained. “It makes the work feel real. It makes the path visible.”
That visibility cuts both ways. Perez described attending a local production and realizing one of his former students was now leading the cast. Moments like that, he said, remind him that education work isn’t abstract—it’s cumulative.
Perez also credits former Director of Education Jose Avilés with shaping both the department and his own approach to teaching. Avilés emphasized cultural responsiveness, care-centered pedagogy, and trauma-informed practices—values Perez plans not just to maintain, but to deepen.
Beyond American Stage, Perez has become a familiar name across the Tampa Bay theatre community. In the past year alone, he performed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at ThinkTank Theatre, directed Enough! Plays Against Gun Violence, led readings for Third Play Fest, and continues to balance directing, performing, and teaching alongside his full-time role.
It’s a pace he admits requires occasional five-minute decompression sessions alone in his car—but one he wouldn’t trade.
For Perez, arts education isn’t about training future professionals—though that happens too. It’s about building skills that last beyond the stage: collaboration, confidence, empathy, and communication.
“Theatre teaches people how to be human,” he said. “That’s the point.”
As American Stage looks ahead to another season of classes, school partnerships, summer camps, and touring productions, Perez sees education not as a supporting program—but as infrastructure.
The quiet engine that keeps theatre moving outward, into the community, where it can actually do its job.
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KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- John Perez is the new Director of Education at American Stage, returning after beginning his career there as an apprentice
- American Stage Education reaches students, adults, and schools across Pinellas and Hillsborough counties
- Programs include youth and adult classes, Write On playwriting outreach, student matinees, and School Tour
- This spring’s School Tour features Polka Dots: The Cool Kids Musical, focused on acceptance and anti-bullying
- Teaching artists are working local performers, strengthening the regional arts ecosystem
- Education work centers life skills, access, and community—not just performance training