Orange Blossom Award: The Quiet Coalition Behind a Theater Dream
by Avery Anderson
Today’s Orange Blossom Award goes not to an individual, but to an unlikely coalition — four Tampa Bay theaters that came together this fall to help a much smaller organization make a very public case for its future.
Dunedin Public Theater is barely two years old — volunteer-run, without a building, operating in venues around the city. The dream is bigger: a fully equipped, 325-seat theater for a city that currently has none.
Last month, that dream needed a lift.
The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art had mounted a major retrospective for Florida visual artist and playwright Jeff Whipple. As part of the exhibition, Dunedin Public Theater wanted to bring scenes from his plays to life — a simple idea complicated by the fact that the organization does not yet have an acting company. So they had an idea, what if we asked nearby theater comapanies to lend a hand.
What happened next is the reason for today’s award.
freeFall Theatre, Stageworks Theatre, TampaRep, and the St. Petersburg College Theatre Department each stepped in, contributing actors, rehearsal time and support to stage Whipple’s work. TampaRep went further, performing an entire one-act.
Whipple later wrote that the audience was “engaged and laughing” throughout, calling the ovation “tremendous.” For Dunedin Public Theater, the night was more than a success — it was evidence.
“It was absolutely fantastic,” board chair Elizabeth Brincklow said. “People were just incredibly, incredibly happy with the way the whole evening went.”
The timing added a layer of gravity. Minutes before Brincklow moderated Whipple’s talkback, the long-awaited feasibility study for a Dunedin theater facility arrived in her inbox. The findings were decisive: 94 percent of residents in Dunedin and the surrounding area want this theater built. The study deemed the project “viable and sustainable.”
For a city already known for its visual arts and music scenes, the absence of a theater has been a longstanding gap. Brincklow notes that the idea has surfaced for decades in “different pockets” of the community — people imagining similar futures but not yet talking to each other.
The November collaboration suggested something has shifted. Companies that normally run on tight calendars and tighter budgets made room for a project that wasn’t theirs, simply because they believed the region is stronger with Dunedin at the table.
That momentum is carrying into the present. The organization’s upcoming Nutcracker Tea, featuring looping cellist and composer Liz Glushko, sold out immediately — though audiences can still hear her perform from the Fenway Hotel lobby bar. And with winter programming underway and year-end fundraising ahead, Brincklow says support of any size matters.
“Whether it’s a dollar or way more… it shows the desire to have the Dunedin Public Theater in Dunedin.”
The Orange Blossom Awards were created for moments like this: the behind-the-scenes acts that don’t make headlines but fundamentally shape what a community can build.
This time, the honor belongs to the four theaters that helped a young company show its city what’s possible.
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.
Other Orange Blossom Stories:
December 1
Avery Anderson