Kudos for CFCArts and Ritz board members, new homegrown Broadway star, Fringe friend
It’s time for a round of congratulations and cheers for cultural happenings around Central Florida and beyond this spring and summer. I know that boards of directors are not the most exciting topic — but boards aren’t supposed to be exciting. What they are is critical; it’s ultimately up to board members to keep an organization on track.
So congrats to Kathryn Townsend and Sarah Reece, elected to the top two posts on the board of the Ritz Theater at the Wayne Densch Performing Arts Center in Sanford. As president and vice president respectively, the women will oversee the theater’s 2023-24 season.
A 35-year resident of Seminole County, new president Townsend is a former music teacher who retired in 2017 from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. After a long tenure as president of the Seminole Cultural Arts Council, she has been a member of the Ritz Theater board since 2020.
Reece, recently retired from Orlando Health, has been a board member for 20 years and is a past president. She also serves as a city commissioner and vice mayor of Altamonte Springs.
Sanford Mayor Art Woodruff will serve as the theater’s secretary, and Stephen Nelson continues as treasurer. New to the board is Dr. Stephen Gelovich, who has acted in several productions at the community theater — which this summer will celebrate 100 years since its original opening night: Aug. 2, 1923. Find out more about the centenary birthday event or the board at ritztheatersanford.com.
Meanwhile, Central Florida Community Arts has also announced new board members, including Florida State Rep. Anna V. Eskamani (D-Orlando), a champion for the arts. Joining her is Orlando Health’s Sara Osborne, who is senior director, Community Benefit, there. In that role, she oversees grant programs and assesses needs in under-resourced communities.
New board member Luis Sousa-Lazaballet has had a passion for theater, dancing, and “anything related to what happens on a stage” since his childhood, he says.
“I want to support an organization that fosters this type of freedom, joy and self-expression for everyone,” Sousa-Lazaballet wrote. “CFCArts is making the arts accessible and affordable to all, and making the dreams of many a reality, and I want to be a part of that mission.”
The fourth to join the board is Jed Prest, a principal at Baker Barrios Architects who also has served as vice chairman of the Orlando Historic Preservation Board and as a member of the Board of Zoning Adjustment for Orlando’s National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Turning away from leaders to performers, here are two with Central Florida ties who each have something to celebrate.
Many here know of Jasmine Forsberg, a graduate of Timber Creek High School in Orlando, who, as a child, acted at Orlando Repertory Theatre and Winter Park Playhouse, among other places. She was in town last fall, bringing the house down at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts on her first national tour, playing Queen Jane Seymour in the hit musical “Six.”
Now she has another first to her credit: Forsberg is making her Broadway debut in “Here Lies Love,” David Byrnes’ disco-infused look at former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos and the people’s revolution that drove her and her husband from power in 1986.
Forsberg, who has Filipino heritage, spoke with me in October about that aspect of her life in regards to performing with the multicultural cast of “Six”: “To be a woman of color alongside five other women of color every night … Wow! I am forever grateful to the people who came before me and opened those doors,” she said.
In an interview with Broadway World, Forsberg extrapolated on that sentiment and how it feels to be part of an all-Filipino cast that includes theater luminary Lea Salonga and — in another Orlando connection — Jaygee Macapugay, a performer back in the day in Walt Disney World’s old “Tarzan Rocks” show.
“It is an absolute dream come true, not just to be making my Broadway debut, but making my Broadway debut alongside an all-Filipino cast,” she tells the website. “Making Broadway history with them is an experience that I genuinely never thought could have happened, and here we are, telling this story on the biggest stage in America, and it’s just thrilling.”
Finally, a congratulatory shout-out to storyteller Paul Strickland, whom Orlando Fringe festivalgoers know from such funny shows as “90 Lies an Hour,” 13 Dead Dreams of Eugene,” “Away, Now” and this year’s “1nce Upon a Lie.”
Strickland, who often works with partner Erika Kate MacDonald, has been chosen as one of the featured tellers of tales at the National Storytelling Festival this October in Jonesborough, Tennessee. His tall tales (with more than a ring of truth) often involve his “Ain’t True and Uncle False,” who dispense homespun wisdom from their home in the mythical but all-too-real Big Fib Trailer Park.
Strickland has won multiple Critics’ Choice Awards at Orlando Fringe, among his honors at other festivals, and he “absolutely credits Orlando Fringe and the Orlando arts community in general with helping him find his voice as a storyteller,” he writes.
Find out more about the storytelling fest, organized by the International Storytelling Center, at storytellingcenter.net/festival.
Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more arts news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/arts, and go to orlandosentinel.com/theater for theater news and reviews.
