Orlando Family Stage

Orlando Family Stage carries one of the longer institutional lineages in Central Florida theater, tracing back to 1926 when the Orlando Little Theatre began operating under the City of Orlando’s Recreation Department. Over the following century the organization went through several iterations and names, most recently operating for about twenty years as Orlando Repertory Theatre, or Orlando REP, before rebranding to its current name, Orlando Family Stage. Through all those changes and rebrands, it has held onto one central distinction: it’s Florida’s only professional theatre built specifically for young audiences and the families who bring them.

That focus shapes everything about the programming. Rather than staging adult repertory work with the occasional kids’ matinee tacked on, Orlando Family Stage builds its full season around productions meant to be a child’s or a family’s introduction to live theater, from shows aimed at toddlers and their caregivers up through material written for older kids and teens. It’s a genuinely different model than most regional theaters, which tend to treat youth programming as a side offering rather than the entire organizing mission of the company itself.

The organization is a registered Florida nonprofit, listed under Florida’s Division of Consumer Services with registration number CH2676, and it operates a Theatre Academy alongside its performance season, offering classes and arts based learning programs that schools and families around Orlando can plug into outside of just buying a ticket to a mainstage show. That educational arm has become as central to the organization’s identity as the stage productions themselves, reaching students well beyond the theater’s own seats and into classrooms across Central Florida through school partnerships.

Orlando Family Stage sits inside Loch Haven Park, in the same cultural corridor as Orlando Museum of Art and Orlando Shakespeare Theater, which makes it easy to build a full day of Orlando’s arts scene without moving the car between stops. The box office keeps standard weekday hours from nine to five, and shifts to a performance day schedule on weekends, opening around midday and staying open through the final curtain call. For families looking for an actual introduction to live theater rather than a screen based alternative, this remains one of the few Central Florida venues built around exactly that purpose, carrying a century of institutional history behind it even under its newest name. Tickets can be purchased directly through the theater’s own box office or ticketing portal, and school groups can book field trip matinees separately from the regular public performance calendar, which is a big part of how the organization reaches so many students across the region each year.