As the Arts and Culture Center/Hollywood approaches its 50th anniversary in 2025, it has already had a season of important milestones, ranging from new leadership, to an expansion underway, to contributing to ending the city’s 20-year drought of professional, live theater.
Under new CEO Jennifer Homan, who started last fall, the Center has rapidly embarked on a series of first-time accomplishments in an effort to expand its reach to the community.
Local live theater kicked off this past weekend at the Art and Culture Center Hollywood’s Central Performing Arts Center, with Thinking Cap Theatre’s “Lovesong,” opening Saturday, Oct. 19 through Sunday, Nov. 3.
Nicole Stodard, Ph.D., is the artistic director and founder of Thinking Cap Theatre, and is directing the production. The Fort Lauderdale troupe will perform its 15th season this year at the Hollywood Performing Arts Center.
Stodard was also hired this year as the director of theater programming and operations for the Center.
The first play of its season, “Lovesong” was written by Abi Morgan, a Welsh playwright who was the screenwriter for the 2015 film, “Suffragette.” It explores aging, memory, mortality and long-term love, with high production values, including in-house projection and choreography, says Stodard.
The play stars all local actors, with Peter Wayne Galman and Deborah Kondelik as a couple when they are old and Nathaniel Heustis and Abbie Fricke playing the same couple when they were young. The theme is how love endures over time.
According to Stodard, “Lovesong” examines the love story of one couple at two different stages of their life together, their youthful beginning and their twilight years. It’s a play about true love, the power of memory, the value of legacy, and the meaning of life.
Stodard first wanted to produce the play in 2020, but, she says, the pandemic interfered.
The company’s first Thinking Cap Theatre production at the Center was in August with an innovative staged reading entitled “A Baby, A Birdcage and the Ballot Box,” performed on Monday, Aug. 26, Women’s Equality Day. Stodard had unearthed old scripts, which she used to create the theme to mark the 100 year anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution giving women the right to vote.
“The suffragist reading was the first time that professional theater had been produced at Hollywood Central PAC,” says Stodard.
The playlets, written from 1912 to 1917, were originally performed in ladies’ parlors, according to Stodard. “The Parrot Cage,” by actress Mary Shaw, has influences of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 “A Doll’s House.” In Shaw’s play, birds with clipped wings are chained to their perches and one squawks, “Let me out, I want to be free!”
“I found many plays that were quite funny and pointed and surprisingly relevant to today. During the pandemic, I hoped one day to produce a live performance. When we did this spring, we got feedback that people are really stunned that the themes in these plays resonate so much 110 years later,” says Stodard.”
It’s just part of the innovative programming she’s planning for this season.
At the end of October, Stodard will lead a four-week writing workshop for emerging playwrights. Entitled “Animal Encounters?”, participating playwrights will learn how to write experimental theater. Homan says the level of writing experience attendees have doesn’t matter and beginners are welcome.
“Animal Encounters” will be conducted with weekly Zoom workshops from Tuesday, Oct. 22 to Monday, Nov. 11. Rehearsals will be done by ZOOM, according to Stodard, with two in-person rehearsals in which the playwrights will work with the actors. The presentation of the work will be from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 23 at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center
Homan says that Thinking Cap Theatre and other theater programming will be a boon to the center and to downtown Hollywood.
“There were always theaters in (Hollywood) and lots of commercial development and housing downtown. Our purpose is to attract people to come out of their apartments, go out to dinner and see a show,” says Homan.
Stodard mentions The Hollywood Playhouse, which had been around for 40-plus years, and was shuttered in 2003.
The site of Hollywood Playhouse, built in 1960 on Washington Street in a residential neighborhood, is now the Real Church (Iglesias Real). And the Hollywood Boulevard Theatre and Florida Playwrights’ Theater, both located on Hollywood Boulevard, “were gone by 2000,” according to Andy Rogow, artistic director of Island City Stage in Wilton Manors. He held the same role at the Playhouse for four and a half years, just before it closed.
Homan was hired after a national search, which saw 225 candidates applying for the job. The position opened when Executive Director Joy Satterlee retired after more than 20 years at the Art and Culture Center/Hollywood.
She wants the expansion of the theater program to be part of the center’s synergy.
Internship and scholarship programs in theater are planned along with hands-on training in the field.
“We are offering advanced internship programs to recent college grads (or those still in school) in arts technology . . . . Too many people graduate without the experience and skills to get jobs,” says Homan. “We have the money to offer theater management internships for one or two semesters and we are getting funding to teach set design, costumes, stage direction and choreography.”
And it won’t end there, she says.
“We will find opportunities for recent and emerging grads to find gainful employment and get into the workforce by giving them projects to put on their resumes.”
Some teens and young adults will get help with tuition, too, from the new “Jennifer Gardella Scholarship.” Gardella was a South Broward High School student, “She was very shy and had a learning disability. Her involvement with theater helped her a lot,” says Homan.
The Hollywood resident passed away from cancer in October 2020. Her mother, Pam Gardella, is honoring her memory with a scholarship, which was launched in September 2024, according to Homan.
“Last year we gave away $15,000 in theater programming scholarships. We want to double it this year to $30,000,” says Homan.
Stodard notes that TCT is eager to present diverse programming in its new home. Previously, the theater company performed at: Empire Stage, Muse Arts, Nova Southeastern University, its own space The Vanguard, and Broward Center for the Performing Arts, she says. One of its last productions was at MAD Arts in Dania Beach.
“This move is an exciting one for TCT that promises to introduce our work to new audiences, and we are thrilled to be part of restoring professional theater to the City of Hollywood,” says Stodard.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Lovesong”
WHERE: Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center, 1650 Harrison St., Hollywood
WHEN: 6:15 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 16 (Fort Lauderdale) and 2 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19 (Miami)
TICKETS: $45
INFORMATION: Call (954) 610-7263 and
https://thinkingcaptheatre.org/shows/lovesong-a-play-by-abi-morgan/
