Orlando Shakespeare Theater

Tucked into Loch Haven Park alongside Orlando’s other cultural institutions, Orlando Shakespeare Theater has been staging professional theater since 1989, when UCF professor Stuart Omans started the company as a way to bring classical work to Central Florida audiences. Nearly four decades later, “Orlando Shakes,” as most locals call it, still operates as a nonprofit in formal partnership with the University of Central Florida, a relationship baked into its legal name, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Inc. It has grown well past its namesake playwright too, producing new musicals and contemporary dramas alongside Shakespeare’s plays each season, so a given year might include a gothic classic like Dracula and a modern comedy in addition to the traditional canon.

The company’s home, the Lowndes Shakespeare Center, holds multiple stages under one roof, which lets the theater run several productions across a season rather than one show at a time, unusual for a regional company of this size. That output has earned real outside notice. The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout once called the company “outstanding…spectacular…Broadway worthy,” adding that it “deserves to be far more widely known outside Florida.” For a theater operating well outside New York or Chicago, that’s a meaningful line to have in print, and it’s the kind of endorsement regional companies rarely earn from a national critic.

Beyond the mainstage shows, Orlando Shakes runs an active education program, bringing student matinees, camps, and classroom outreach to kids around Central Florida who might not otherwise get exposure to live professional theater. It’s a substantial part of the company’s stated mission alongside producing the plays themselves. The box office at the Lowndes Center keeps regular weekday hours in the afternoon, and ticket prices span a range, from rush seats in the high twenties up to premium packages for the bigger musical productions, so there’s usually something that fits whether you’re a student catching a matinee or planning a full evening out with dinner beforehand.

What makes Orlando Shakes worth a visit isn’t only the Shakespeare in the name, though the company handles the classics with real skill. It’s that this is one of the few Central Florida venues producing a full season of professional theater year round, right in the middle of a park that also holds the Orlando Museum of Art and Orlando Family Stage. If you’re building an arts focused afternoon, Loch Haven Park is one of the more walkable, concentrated cultural corridors the city has, and Orlando Shakes anchors it as a working nonprofit theater company with nearly forty years of history behind it, not a seasonal or touring operation passing through town for a single run.