Best Of 2021

Jeff Klein

Klein is making his mark onstage, but he brings the funny in different ways. “Outside A Comedy Club,” was a sketch series featuring comedians milling about before and after shows. He received a BOTB a few years back for his “Wigs & Wit” creation, a live show pitting comedians versus drag queens in a battle of jokes and dance moves that still runs today. And his current video series, “Beer With A Queer” (spoiler: Klein is gay), with a variety of guests such as 102.5 The Bone’s Mike Calta, lets straight people ask uncomfortable questions over a brew and some laughs. Klein has a number of ways of delivering comedy, and he’s throwing a little bit of everything at Tampa Bay. jeffkleincomedy.com

Best of the Bay 2021 Arts & Entertainment: Creative Loafing Tampa Bay's 2021 readers and critics pick the best in local theater, poets, museums and so much more.

Best of the Bay 2021 Arts & Entertainment


Winner: M. Catherine Wynkoop

Runners-Up: Jadyn Mills “Lend Me a Tenor,” Eugenie Bondurant

Tony Krol

As we interviewed Tampa Bay’s Black artists for our Spring Arts Preview, Tony Krol’s name kept coming up. Krol worked with several Black artists in 2020, created murals with them, provided space for them to show their work, and brought them into conversations about curation. The collaborations introduced Tampa Bay to the Black Activist Photographers and New Roots Art Collective. They brought us Tampa’s Black Lives Matter street mural, “Cultural Currency” at Peninsularium, and “Black Storm” at Cafe Hey. Krol knows that Tampa’s diversity is one of its greatest assets, and he’s making sure that diversity is well-represented in Tampa’s art galleries and streets. mergeculture.com

Elizabeth Brincklow

Brincklow was born with an unfair advantage. You see, her mother Martha taught “arts and ideas” to generations of students at Dunedin High School. This cultural cocoon launched her to the FSU School of Theatre and the study of mime in Paris. Imaginative gigs in D.C. and NYC forged her keen skills. But the trail she’s blazed across disciplines with major artists over the past three decades since returning to Pinellas County is unmatched. She strategically developed St. Pete’s cultural scene, crafted Creative Pinellas’ grants program and shepherded Dunedin’s Public Art Master Plan and implementation of significant installations. brincklow-arts.com

Winner:Naked Came the Florida Man” by Tim Dorsey

Runners-Up: Dogs of the Burg” by Urban Dog Studio, “Curveball at the Crossroads” by Michael Lortz

Winner: Mayven Missbehavin

Runners-Up: Femmes and Follies, Janinie Fatone-Butler