Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts StoryJam

When you toil in the fields of story—honest work by the way—you sometimes get a chance to help grow something vital and important. IDEAS is a team of passionate creators so when we got a chance to help the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts create the next chapter in their story, it was an all hands on deck moment. This is personal for me. I moved to Orlando in 1971 and since then, I’ve watched the intrepid performing arts community here struggle, triumph, wax and wane. Here’s the truth—creativity can’t be stopped, it can’t be tamed and it can’t be institutionalized but it can be encouraged, fed and given oxygen.

This week, we get to engage 40 or so local people in a StoryJam about The Center.  We are on the brink of something that will transform us and it won’t be only because (through some courageous leadership) we’ve got a world-class venue coming out of the ground. The meaning of that word “center” is going to be fully grown. This is a chance to help create a heart, a nexus of energy and a new model for the world about how arts and expression meet everything about being a human. This is going to be a powerful story and one I am particularly feeling blessed to be able to help shape. First because this is my home and my 14 year old is a performer who will grow into her chosen profession nourished by it. Second, because authoring the “next way things are done” is what we do in Orlando. We’ve  done it with location based entertainment, with immersive training, with advanced biotechnology and we’re going to do it again for the arts in their broadest forms. And now, I have some rehearsing to do…