The grand opening of the brand-new Winter Park Playhouse is scheduled for next week.
You’d be forgiven for experiencing déjà vu when reading that sentence, because Winter Park Playhouse has been producing musical theater for almost 25 years at its homey Orange Avenue theater.
But after the space was almost sold in 2024, Winter Park Playhouse’s founders partnered up with the City of Winter Park and won an $8 million grant from Orange County that not only let the playhouse stay in the now city-owned building, but also allowed the theater to refresh and rebuild from the ground up.
“I promised our patrons we would keep the character, and we would keep all our antiques and our beautiful old furniture,” said Winter Park Playhouse executive director and co-founder Heather Alexander.
Other than that, virtually everything is new. The place was “stripped down to the studs,” Alexander added.
The theater itself has been expanded from 123 seats to 171. A loft has been added to accommodate live bands without losing space on the now-larger stage.
“And then behind the stage we've got [an] all new rehearsal hall with mirrors and a union-approved floor, dressing rooms with restrooms and showers, which we've never had, and a laundry room for the first time,” said Alexander.
The restoration happened thanks to an Orange County Cultural Facilities Tourism Grant, funded by the county’s Tourism Development Tax. Often called the “bed tax,” the TDT is collected at area hotels. Alexander described a rigorous, protracted grant application process. Among its requirements was “you had to prove that you attract the visitor market,” said Alexander, noting that Winter Park Playhouse brings about $2 million a year into the local economy.
“At least 20 percent…of our patronage comes from outside the five-county area,” Alexander said. “We've got an amazing number of bus groups and visitors who come in from all over the country and the world. Our Florida Festival of New Musicals is a fabulous international event, and we have writers and their families and friends coming in each summer. Based on where they live, they almost exclusively are out of Florida.”
Winter Park Playhouse’s 2026-2027 season kicks off in August with a show called “Never Can Say Goodbye: The Beehive 70s Musical.”
Alexander described the show as a “fabulous high-energy 70s musical [with] seven fierce women singing the songs of the 70s. It’s going to have a lot of movement and a lot of music and a live band.”
“We actually chose the title appropriately, because we don't go down without a fight – we thought we might be saying goodbye, but here we are,” said Alexander.
