American Stage, one of the area's oldest theater companies, has named Jim Sorensen its new managing director.
Sorensen, who is the associate managing director of Sarasota's Florida Studio Theatre, will come on board with American Stage April 4. Sorensen will oversee administrative operations, which includes generating revenue through ticket sales and fundraising campaigns.
Expect changes. Sorensen, who helped found freeFall, calls that company a "game changer" for the theater community. Changes beget change, it seems, and Sorensen says he's committed to change at American Stage as well.
"Todd Olson brought the theater a long, long way," he says of the former artistic director, who left American Stage in May 2014 after 11 years. Stephanie Gularte replaced him in February 2015. Sorensen will partner with her and the board of directors on long-range planning initiatives for the nonprofit theater.
“I look forward to working with producing artistic director Stephanie Gularte to take American Stage into a new era with powerful, visceral, relevant theater for Tampa Bay audiences,” said Sorensen. “We have such a vibrant arts community here in St. Pete, and I can’t wait to help it grow and flourish.”
Gularte says she's ready to take that next step.
“Jim brings a wealth of valuable experience from working at several reputable professional theaters around the country,” she says. “His combined talents in production and theater administration, along with his commitment to this region, make him a tremendous asset to American Stage as we embark on a new stage of growth and development.”
Sorensen wants American Stage to entertain and challenge its audiences.
"In my evolution as a theater administrator, I've grown to appreciate theater that really, truly challenges as well as entertains. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they have to do a little bit of both," he says. From a financial side, theaters must compete not only with other theaters, but other experiences.
"There are so many alternatives for your entertainment dollar these days," he says, and while he talks with understanding about the need to bring in audiences, he also praises Gularte for taking chances that he says will give people a compelling reason to spend those entertainment dollars at American Stage.
"Stephanie is choosing things that are going to be riskier," Sorensen says. Those choices, he says, will help compel people to spend their dollars — and hours — at American Stage. For Sorensen, theater means an experience that can't be replicated elsewhere, and, he says, every theater experience should be memorable.
"I've seen so much theater that I've slept through, that I didn't even remember two days later what I had seen," he says, adding that he means "slept" figuratively only. "That's an expensive nap: Theater that didn't change me, that didn't make me think."
Instead, he says, he believes all theater should offer "stories that are shared are only in that space, in that moment" and should consist of "work that actually makes you remember it.
"I want theater that does something to you. I'm not saying that that wasn't done at American Stage recently, but I'm excited about the possibilities."
Change, he acknowledges, may not always be easy.
"We will probably alienate people; we will probably piss people off," he says "but as long as it's delivered in the most professional possible way, you can do just about anything."
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2016.