Arts Alive! podcast: Karla Hartley, Stageworks Theatre

Stageworks is the longest-lived professional company in Tampa; October will bring Season 41, with six shows ranging from the familiar (tweaked, somewhat) to the provocative. And there’s a lot going on, between now and then, at Stageworks’ home theater on East Kennedy Boulevard.

These and other subjects are in the air as we welcome producing artistic director Karla Hartley to the Arts Alive! podcast. Hartley, a veteran of Tampa Bay theater, was the designated successor to Stageworks founder Anna Brennan upon her retirement; she took the reins shortly after Brennan’s company moved into the Kennedy space, in the Grand Central area of downtown Tampa.

In January of this year, Mercury Advisors – Stageworks’ landlord – gifted the 99-seat theater, lobby and environs to the company. Value: $2.45 million.

Theater companies everywhere are struggling with escalating costs and smaller audiences … not having rent to pay was a tremendous game-changer. And the fact that the recent show The Great American Trailer Park Musical was a record-breaker, well, that didn’t hurt.

Hartley emphasizes Stageworks’ commitment to education through ongoing community programs, bemoaning the fact that the extraction of arts programs from public schools means fewer and fewer kids are learning to love the theater at a young age.

And we laugh a lot, too.

Click on the arrow below to listen to the interview.