American Stage plays pop up in unusual places around Tampa Bay

For the past three seasons at American Stage, plays have been popping up in some pretty unusual spaces, thanks to innovative off-site programming.

Instead of sitting passively in the comfy seats at the theater’s home base on 163 3rd St. N in St. Petersburg, “Beyond the Stage” audiences have been invited to stand in a pit at Jannus Live!, sit in straight back chairs at the Historic Bethel AME and hike the trails of Boyd Hill Nature Preserve to see plays that push the boundaries of traditional storytelling.

“People are looking for exciting, immersive cultural experiences,” Anthony Gervais, the current producer of Beyond the Stage, says, pointing to the successes of The Dalí Dome and the Van Gogh exhibitions that offer 360-degree digital art experiences.  

“Theater goers want that same immersive experience.”

This season’s Beyond the Stage bill launched Oct. 2 with a play that has odd baked into its title: “Weird in St. Pete.” 

Written by American Stage artistic director Helen Murray, “Weird”  debuted last year at FloridaRama, an interactive gallery where audiences wended their way through a maze of wacky art installations to meet well known (and not so well known) characters from St. Pete folklore, from Mary Reaser, who died of spontaneous combustion, to Beat writer Jack Kerouac who died at St. Anthony’s Hospital. 

This year, Gervais promises the show is  “back and weirder than ever,” with some new characters and a new setting: the Duncan McClellan Gallery’s sculpture garden. 

“Weird in St. Pete,” directed by Stephen Riordan, runs through Oct. 19.

For “The Magi,” running Dec. 4-21, American Stage audiences will return to the theater, but the show is offered in its lobby, cabaret-style.       

“It’s a holiday show that doesn’t scream Christmas…but it’s a great story,” says Gervais who directs the retelling of O. Henry’s short story “The Gift of the Magi,” this time starring a husband-and-wife band. The book is by Murray with music ad lyrics by Eli Pafumi.

In February, Beyond the Stage will return to its most popular off-site venue: Boyd Hill. The series has already presented three plays—labeled “Tales by Twilight”—along the Boyd Hill trails: Don Zolidis’ “10 Ways to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse,” which Gervais directed; Ron Fitzgerald’s “The Diaries of Adam and Eve”, based on a short story by Mark Twain, directed by Dylan Barlowe; and Gervais’ “Don’t Feed the Animals,” also directed by Barlowe and which featured David Warner (former Creative Loafing Tampa Bay editor-in-chief)  as a turtle.

Gervais again has written this year’s Boyd Hill play: “Fairyland: A Midwinter Night’s Dream,” a variation on Shakespeare’s midsummer romp, which uses some of the original text but offers its own celebration of the preserve. No talking turtles, but plenty of other surprises. “Fairyland” runs Feb. 12-March 8. 

Also look for the return of Beyond the Stage’s summer cabaret series and more new play readings under the rubric of Fresh Ink.

Origin story

Beyond the Stage started in 2022 with a holiday pop-up show. No show was scheduled to run in December of that year on American Stage’s main stage, but Murray, who had just come aboard as the theater’s new artistic director had a play available that perfectly fit the season: “Wonderful Life,” which she had co-adapted with Jason Lott from the classic holiday film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Performed by Matthew McGee, the play was offered at four different places around Pinellas: Coastal Creative, The Studio@620, The James Museum and Gulfport’s Catherine A. Hickman Theater. 

“People loved seeing a professional actor outside the usual theater,” Anderson said. “The popularity of that pop-up show sowed the seeds of what was to become known as Beyond the Stage.”

In 2024 Anderson left American Stage to work as director of marketing and communications for Long Wharf Theatre, which began an even more drastic version of Beyond the Stage a year earlier. Leaving its fixed space in New Haven after 57 years, the historic Connecticut theater now stages all of its plays “off site” (in a boatyard and even in people’s houses). Last April, Anderson left Long Wharf to return to Florida to launch Tampa Bay Arts Passport, a subscription-based organization that also offers unique ways to connect artists and audiences, including a book club. 

American Stage’s first use of its Beyond the Stage label—“immersive story-telling in non-traditional spaces”—began during its 2023-2024 season which included a full program on its traditional stage but also offered Nasim Soleimanpour’s provocative “White Rabbit Red Rabbit” at four off-site venues: Historic Bethel AME (the oldest predominantly African American church in St. Petersburg), The Factory, WADA ArtsXchange and the Woodson African American Museum.

Beyond the “Beyond” programming, American Stage has also explored new storytelling formats.

For “White Rabbit Red Rabbit” performances, for example, four actors were asked to read a script they had never seen before. And “Puppy Love,” although performed last year on the theater’s main stage, was hardly your father’s (or mother’s) traditional play format: Actors read Hamlet as puppies were introduced on the stage. Murray got the idea of adding puppies after watching a Netflix holiday show that featured 12 puppies released into a beautifully appointed living room with eggnog, a fire going and Christmas tree. 

“That’s all it was, puppies decimating this beautiful scene,” says Murray. “It was like a dopamine shot. It made me giggle.”

Science experiment double feature

Does it really matter where you see a play?

To test out the difference between watching a piece of theater on a traditional stage and in an unusual spot, last year I went to see American Stage’s production of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” first on American Stage’s proscenium stage and then a few days later down the street at Jannus Live. Same cast. Same script. Same production. 

It was like watching two different plays.

Both performances of “Hedwig,” a musical about the pain of rejection and the power of inclusion, had its merits. The performance on the traditional presidium stage certainly was more intimate—the performers were just a few feet away as we watched them go through their emotional turmoil of trying to find their place in the world. At the end of that performance I caught sight of a man, who had come to the theater by himself, wiping away tears. But when the play was moved to Jannus, something else entirely emerged: The show exploded into a totally immersive—and strangely meta—experience.

The play, after all, is set at a concert venue and there we were … at a concert venue (or as the actor who welcomed us to Jannus called it, a “shitty, little alley.”) As Hedwig was telling us her tragic, but ultimately redemptive story, we, the audience, didn’t have to imagine that she was addressing an audience at a concert. We were at a concert. I sat in the bleachers set up in back, but the bulk of the audience stood right in front of the stage, at times waving their lighted cellphone in the air, swaying to the music, just like concert fans, not playgoers.

Often the age of the theatre goers at these less-than-traditional settings skew younger, says Gervais. 

“Younger audiences want experiential work,” says Murray. That certainly was the case for those who stood in the pit to watch “Hedwig” at Jannus but also for the Boyd Hill productions, which all have required some vigorous hiking to follow the action through the park preserve.

“Spaces become a character in the play,” says Murray.

“Every Beyond the Stage production is about community partnership,” she adds. “Whether it’s a gallery, a bookshop or a school, we’re open to how that looks. We love the challenge of ‘How do we put something into this space and make it impactful?’”

A show endangered

Ironically, as the Beyond the Stage programming has been flourishing, American Stage’s original off-site production, Theatre in the Park, has been facing some financial strain. The outdoor performances held every Spring at Demens Landing Park began in 1986 with Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” 

But in 2024 the popular event, which in recent years has mounted mostly musicals, reported a shortfall of $160,000 after the production of “The Beauty and the Beast.” In July 2024, the theater launched a “Save the Park” fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $500,000 to continue the park productions. Last Spring’s show “Hair” also experienced a financial shortfall. But, on the theater’s website, Murray declares, “we are closing in on our $500,000 fundraising goal, which has enabled us to continue planning our production for the 2025-2026 season!” 

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This article appears in Oct. 2 – 8, 2025.