Orange Blossom Award: Katherine Yacko, The One Who Shows Up

Katherine Yacko in Jobsite Theater’s Macbeth. A performance that reminded audiences exactly how dangerous — and precise — Shakespeare can be in the right hands. Photo credit: Stage Photography of Tampa.

by Avery Anderson

There are artists who build careers.
And then there are artists who build ecosystems.

Katherine Yacko has spent this year doing the second — often quietly, often in rooms where credit isn’t the point, and often while pregnant.

She shows up first as a theatregoer. Not occasionally. Not selectively. She makes it a mission to see every professional production in Tampa and St. Pete, and as many surrounding shows as gas will allow. That kind of attention changes how a field functions. People who see everything don’t just have opinions — they have context.

From there, Katherine moves through the community as connective tissue. She serves as an artistic associate with Jobsite Theater, a pre-reader for Powerstories, and an adjudicator for Broadway Star of the Future and Florida Thespians — roles that quietly shape what work gets supported, developed, and seen next. She’s stepped into creative teams as a director, assistant director, and dialect coach at Jobsite, Stageworks, Richey Suncoast, LAB, Off-Central, and USF, bringing rigor and care wherever she lands.

Katherine Yacko and Landon Green at the theatre — where Katherine is as committed an audience member as she is an artist, making it a mission to support nearly every professional production across Tampa Bay. Photo credit: Landon Green.

She’s also done the visible work. Onstage, she’s earned praise for performances including Lizzie the Musical, The Boy Who Loved Batman, and Jobsite’s Macbeth. But even her acting feels less about spotlight and more about service — strengthening the story, the ensemble, the room.

Her husband, Landon Green, wrote, “She is an indispensable member of our artistic community.” What that misses — and what this year made impossible to ignore — is how much of that labor happened while she was carrying a child.

Not as a footnote. As a fact of the work.

In a year when burnout has hollowed out so many institutions, Katherine Yacko kept showing up — reading scripts, guiding artists, supporting theaters, sitting in audiences, doing the unglamorous work that holds a scene together — all while preparing to bring new life into it.

She didn’t have a loud year.
She had a sustaining one.

For the care, the consistency, and the invisible labor that keeps Tampa Bay theatre alive, Katherine Yacko receives an Orange Blossom Award.

What Are the Orange Blossom Awards?

A month-long series from The Arts Passport celebrating the people and organizations whose quiet, steady work strengthens Tampa Bay’s arts ecosystem. No applications. No campaigning. Just community-driven recognition, released daily in December.