BWW Q&A: Heather Alexander Talks The Winter Park Playhouse 2025-2026 Season

The Winter Park Playhouse is a professional musical theatre affiliated with Actors' Equity Association and The National Alliance For Musical Theatre.

This well respected 23 year old cultural gem sits in the heart of Winter Park Florida and features a Mainstage Season of Off-Broadway shows and Regional Premieres. Additionally, there is a monthly Spotlight Cabaret Series where proceeds in part go back directly to the artist.

The Playhouse also hosts an annual Florida Festival of New Musicals that is a workshop for new and emerging musicals that have never been staged. It is the only festival of its kind,  specifically for developing musicals, in the southeastern region of the country. 

The NEW 2025-2026 season will be performed off-site at a nearby professional theatre - Orlando Shakes - while the current location is being renovated into a beautiful new 175 seat theatre. This newly renovated theatre will open in August of 2026. 
Heather Alexander is originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Heather is
the Executive Director and co-founder of The Winter Park Playhouse, which is
celebrating its 23 rd year in 2025. She received her Bachelor’s of Business
Administration from the University of North Florida and has been a proud member
of Actors’ Equity Association, the professional union of actors and stage managers,
since 1992. Heather has worked in the entertainment industry for 35 years and has a
variety of stage, commercial, industrial and television credits including the co-host
of The Florida Lottery’s Flamingo Fortune Game Show.

What prompted the change in performance location for your 2025-2026 season?

We changed our performance location for the 2025-26 season because we are undergoing an exciting renovation of our theatre home in Winter Park. Orange County generously awarded the Playhouse and City of Winter Park a TDT cultural facilities grant to purchase and renovate our building. We wanted to continue to provide a season of quality professional theater programming for our patrons, so we rented a theater at Orlando Shakes and are producing five Mainstage Musicals and monthly Spotlight Cabarets there through April 2026.

When do you expect to get back into your current location and what will the renovations look like for the new theatre?

The project completion date is scheduled for the end of May 2026 and we hope to have a grand opening in August of 2026. The renovations are really going to enhance the art and the patron experience. The theater itself will be completely gutted and revamped with 50 more seats, two aisles instead of one, a traverse aisle, a larger stage and upgraded lighting and sound system. The building's façade will be replaced with a new lighted sign over a permanent awning and new, energy efficient windows. The lobby will get a refresh with new floors, paint and ceilings and there will be a designated cabaret space where the administrative offices used to be. The restrooms will be gutted and expanded.

What does this new season artistically look like? Are the musicals similar in scale to those you currently produce? Is the audience capacity more or less?

We wanted to keep the patron experience as familiar as possible while we are performing off-site, so we are producing the same type of upbeat and joyful small cast musicals. We like to give the patrons unique entertainment opportunities, so four out of the five musicals are titles they haven't seen in the region before. The theater is intimate and there's not a bad seat in the house. The audience seating capacity is 124, which is the same as our current Playhouse capacity.

What can you say about the future of The Winter Park Playhouse?