New Home for Sarasota Players

Reaching Its Centennial

By: Jay Handelman - Feb 09, 2026

 

As it prepares to open a new home in Payne Park Auditorium later this year, the Sarasota Players is putting a renewed focus on the shows it stages and reconnecting with the community that has helped it near a centennial celebration.

Theater leaders also are working to battle a perception in some corners that Sarasota’s oldest performing arts organization actually shut down when it moved out of its longtime home on U.S. 41 in 2021.

“I go out and people say, ‘Oh, I used to go there as a kid’ and I’d ask why don’t you come now. Or they say they thought we went out of business. I hate to say that, but we hear that a lot,” said Amy Gorman, the theater’s director of development.

For the last five years, the company has been operating out of a converted Banana Republic store inside a fading shopping mall where there is no signage about the theater. The theater had spent significant funds and time on finding and designing a new permanent home, which took attention away from the heart of its operations – productions and education programs. Those are the priorities of a revamped board of trustees and staff leadership.

“For a long time, the focus of the leadership became, ‘We need a new space,’ ‘We need a new complex,’ and there was almost a myopic focus on that portion of the work to the detriment of the other components that needed to be addressed,” said Katie Weiss, who recently became chair of the board of trustees. 

 “We need to look at how we engage the community and make sure our programming is responsive to what the community wants to see from The Players,” she said in an interview with ArtsBeat.

Weiss said the recent changes were driven, in part, by the theater’s staff, which felt the organization needed new direction. The theater went through three artistic directors in a three-year period before the board eliminated the position and created a committee of staff, trustees and community members to select shows and directors and designers.

One of the first actions of the new board was to restructure the operation, eliminating the position of CEO that had been held since 2021 by William Skaggs, who has left The Players. Thayer Greenberg, who has been running the increasingly popular Players Studio education and training programs for about two years, was named managing artistic director. And Jason Ellis, a frequent performer in area community theaters, was named Operations Director.

“The Players has gone through so many iterations over the years,” said Greenberg, who grew up in Sarasota, performed at the Sarasota Players and Venice Theatre and graduated from Booker High School’s Visual and Performing Arts Center. “Last summer, a lot of board members stepped down and new board members came in. They spent five months observing and seeing what was going on and the need for some structure.”

Greenberg said she engaged in some deep conversations with board members about “what things could look like,” and board members noted the success and growth of the education programs since she took over and thought she could bring that “consistency, community and collaboration” to the broader organization.”

Weiss has seen Greenberg’s work first hand because of her own children, who participate in  Players Studio classes and performances. Her husband, Ethan Weiss, another Booker VPA graduate, has returned to the stage in such shows as “Cabaret” and “Rent.” The family connections continue with Ethan’s mother, Diane Weiss, serving as vice chair of the board.

“She’s a good partner in crime and she has exceptional experience in development and board management,” Katie Weiss said of her mother-in-law, who co-founded the Forty Carrots Family Center in Sarasota.

Katie Weiss said Greenberg “has unique capabilities for someone who would qualify themselves as an artist. She is operationally astute, can put together a strategy, understands the dynamic interaction between artistic work and financial work.” And the board appreciated that she has “a history with the Players and a history and sentiment for the community.”

Where will the Sarasota Players go?

The Players home in the Crossings at Siesta Key shopping mall has been considered a temporary stop while the company looked for a more permanent home. The move was triggered by a decision made by former theater leaders in 2016 to seek funding for a new theater complex they proposed for the Waterside development in Lakewood Ranch. At one point the estimated cost topped $30 million. 

But shortly after Skaggs took over, those plans were dropped. Little money was raised for the project. The Players sold its longtime home on North Tamiami Trail, across from the historic Sarasota Municipal Auditorium, in 2018, for more than $9 million. It leased back the building for a couple of seasons until the COVID pandemic made producing new shows impossible.

After moving into the shopping mall, the board initiated efforts to move its operations to the Municipal Auditorium, but the Sarasota City Commission rejected that proposal. City leaders later suggested an alternative space in the smaller Payne Park Auditorium, which opened in 1962 as a community center that was popular for many years for live music programs and dances for the mobile home park that once surrounded it. More recently it was used for offices and storage by the city’s parks and recreation department.

The Players initially hoped to use the building for just part of its operations. They proposed building a roughly 17,000 square foot addition. But commissioners rejected that plan because the structure would encroach on public land in Payne Park. In the interim, the Players also created a subsidiary for-profit operation called The Stage at Payne Park that was assigned to raise money for construction and operation of the facility and to oversee scheduling with other community partners.

In 2024, the city approved a 30-year lease for the Players to use the existing building with some interior renovations and improvements for $100 a year, plus $1 from every ticket sold for performances and programs.

What will Payne Park Auditorium look like?

Weiss said, depending on construction, the new theater could be ready to open in August or September. It will easily accommodate about 209 chairs, but the theater might be able to hold more depending on the show and how seats are configured, Greenberg said. That’s far more than the current seating of about 130.

The current theater space in the mall is configured for in-the-round performances – with the audience on all sides, and Greenberg wants to continue that for “for most of our shows. I think the round lends itself to awesome immersive theater.” But the seating can also be configured for more of a thrust stage, with seating on three sides surrounding an extended stage platform.

Sarasota Jewish Theatre will continue to rent space and stage time from the Players, and Greenberg said other arts groups will be welcome, depending on schedules.

The company has been selling out many of its productions during roughly two-week runs, but it will need to sell more tickets to fill all the seats in the new space.

“The important thing is audience engagement, making sure when they come to the theater that they have comfortable seats and it looks nice and it’s friendly and welcoming,” Greenberg said.

What she programs in future seasons will be designed to reach a broad audience.

“I like to say a sprinkle of something for everyone. There’s theater that audiences want to see and there is theater that people need to see, like ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Rent,’ with powerful messages. And ‘Seussical’ last year was fun, with kids in the audience with their parents. We still want stories with hope, that bring positivity. People come to the theater to get relief and they want good theater.”

 Building support

Weiss said the Sarasota Players also needs to focus on development, fundraising and to “double down on rebuilding relationships to make sure we have a donor population that feels our missions and that they can truly be a part of this institution.”

She has been impressed in talking to people around Sarasota about her new role with the theater that “everyone has a history with the Players. Sometimes they saw shows with their parents when they were kids. One board member got free tickets from a patron in a restaurant where her mom was working and it stuck with her and motivated her career in the arts.”

Gorman, who joined the staff as director of development less than two years ago, said the theater needs to raise its visibility. And community theaters like the Sarasota Players struggle a bit more than professional arts organizations in attracting wealthy patrons.

“Let’s face, it in Sarasota and Manatee counties there are 4,800 non profits. You might feed the animals first, or help the homeless first. Arts and culture is more on the bottom and then patrons are generally giving to the larger professional organizations,” she said.

The theater company celebrated 96 years of performances and training programs with the “Play On” fundraising gala Feb. 7, featuring performances from student and mainstage productions.

The event shows “that we’ve never been gone,” Gorman added. “We’re here. Come celebrate with us on the road to 100. We’re moving to our centennial.”

Reposted courtesy of ArtsBeat