Arts Alive! podcast: Actor Matthew McGee

He is perhaps Tampa Bay’s most prolific actor, appearing at professional theaters in both St. Petersburg and Tampa with regularity. Matthew McGee even turns up in Sarasota from time to time, at Asolo or one of the other thespian centers across the southern bay. Sometimes, in a single year, he’ll be doing shows simultaneously in two or more cities.

In today’s Arts Alive! interview, McGee talks about his latest project: Miracle on 34th Street: A Live Musical Radio Play, which he’s directing at freeFall Theatre (it opens this Friday, Nov. 24). He also happens to be freeFall’s Director of Community Outreach and Marketing, and is an indispensable part of the theater’s semi-regular stage company. He’s appeared in comedies, musicals, dramas, in one-man shows, drag nights and multi-media presentations.

McGee wrote freeFall’s 2021 and ’22 holiday show, The Night Before.

This conversation features a lot of holiday talk – freeFall takes the season seriously – and discussions about the other professional groups in the area (improbably, he’ll mark his first time at Tampa’s Jobsite Theater in an upcoming production of The Rocky Horror Show).

He also explains his recent, sudden withdrawal from Stageworks’ Poirot Returns, for health reasons. Up until that time he had never dropped out of a show. But, he explains, he really had no choice.

Click on the arrow to listen to the interview.