Stageworks adding ’boutique’ events to the schedule

Tampa’s trendy Channel District includes a plethora of condominium and apartment buildings – one of which, Grand Central at Kennedy, has 400 units and a restaurant/bar on the ground floor. Grand Central also happens to be home to Stageworks, the city’s longest-lived professional theater company.

September will introduce a new Stageworks initiative, Act 2, a series of 20 or so “boutique” events and programs more or less unrelated to the season of plays (read about the upcoming season here). All are open and available to the public.

Cabarets. Dancing. Music. Games. Film screenings. Aerials. These are what Director of Operations Heather Krueger calls “fun, off the beaten path” stuff, and there’s a serious element of strategy behind them.

Stageworkers Heather Krueger, left, and Karla Hartley.

“We’ve been in this building for 13 years now,’” she explains, “and there are still people who live here who don’t know what we are, or that we’re even in their building. So we’re trying to engage the community in a way that will bring those who maybe who aren’t interested in our six mainstage plays into the door, and realize who we are and what we do …

“And maybe take an interest in our mainstage shows. And the fact that we’re a real theater. And that we’re here at all.”

Stageworks was founded in 1983 by Tampa theatrical pioneer Anna Brennan. She retired around the time the company began renting the space in Grand Central, hand-picking longtime co-captain Karla Hartley as the next artistic director.

In 2023, the landlord gifted the 99-seat theater, lobby and environs to Stageworks, lifting the worry of “making the rent” from Hartley’s shoulders in the aftermath of the belt-tightening mandated by the pandemic.

Still, resting on laurels was not considered an option.

In their final semester, 2024 senior marketing students at the University of Tampa put Stageworks under the microscope.

“Every theater in the world is trying to figure out how to get young people in the building,” Hartley explains. “So I figured, don’t ask me, go ask a young person. And they came to us that they felt standup comedy was the gateway drug.”

Earlier this year, Stageworks began hosting nights with the local group Bayshore Comedy.

“So we started with some standup stuff, and then we said ‘OK, how can we be a more well-rounded entertainment space for other people?’ For people who may not be interested in plays and musicals, but they want to come out and do something fun. They want to do it downstairs from where they live, so if they get boozy they don’t have to drive anywhere. That was the goal.”

Stageworks is applying for a liquor license from the state, Hartley confirms.

For Krueger, the way forward is all too clear. “We’re surrounded by all these high-rise apartment complexes filled with people who are looking for something interesting to do.”

Although the full schedule is still being tweaked, the opening event (Sept. 17) will be a Disco Dance Party, with ‘70s dance hits galore, karaoke and more (costumes, Krueger insists, are encouraged). Oct. 10 brings a screening of the 1981 horror film The Evil Dead, Spooky Trivia Night happens Oct. 29, and Nov. 22 has been earmarked for “The Green Room” (open mic night, UT Edition).

Bayshore Comedy is confirmed for a monthly show.

On the drawing board, a Speakeasy (“Stageworks Underground”) in partnership with Ybor City’s Aerial Dragons, a lecture series, jazz nights, salsa lessons, cabarets, a spa day and a whisky tasting.

“And we have a ‘sip n paint’ with a tequila company,” Krueger conforms, “those type of things that aren’t necessarily theatrical at all. But are interesting and are fun to do in this cool, unique space that we have here.”

Find out more (and get tickets for the confirmed events) at the Stageworks website.