Spencer Meyers News

Rage! Sex! Betrayal! Bloody Murder! Sounds like the makings of a good time right? What if the good time is focused on a retelling of myth, lore, and just pure rock & roll.

The 2023-24 season is Jobsite's 25th year of bringing the Tampa Bay area exciting, engaging live theater experiences between the Jaeb Theater and Shimberg Playhouse as the Straz Center's official resident theater company.

Avenue Q, a musical comedy featuring puppets controlled by human actors premiered off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in 2003. Opening to rave reviews and claiming Tony Nominations for Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Book all of which it won and several nominations in the acting categories, Avenue Q proved to be a juggernaut of its time. Having assumed much praise for its approach to racism, homosexuality, and internet pornography Avenue Q proved that even puppetry can be fun for adults.

The show opens with a Ghost Light center stage. As most shows of a Brechtian nature go, characters of nondescript fashion layout the evening events in the manner of Prologue. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, or as it is subtitled “The Parable Play,” tells the story of the rise of Arturo Ui a fictional Chicago Mobster as he ruthlessly tries to control the Chicago vegetable market despite opposition. A political satire based on Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Nazi Germany prior to the events of World War II.

These are the things that helped get us through a tough year.

This is the last chance to vote for the 2021 BroadwayWorld Tampa Awards! The 2021 Regional Awards honor productions which had their first performance between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021.

Time is running out to vote for for the 2021 BroadwayWorld Tampa Awards! The 2021 Regional Awards honor productions which had their first performance between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021.

“WHAT BECOMES OF A CHILD THAT STARVED FOR AFFECTION?” -M.C. IN SHOCKHEADED PETER “YOU’VE GOT TO BE CRUEL TO BE KIND, IN THE RIGHT MEASURE. CRUEL TO BE KIND, IT’S A VERY GOOD SIGN....” -NICK LOWE FROM “JESUS OF COOL” ALBUM (1978). Once every so often audiences of a theatre-going persuasion are treated to something a little out of the ordinary. Something that may just have to be experienced before allowing it to fully sink in. Jobsite revels in the strange, the unorthodox, the Masterclass of all things twisted and warped; and these are some centralized moments of Shockheaded Peter or its namesake Der Struwwelpeter. Having personally never heard of Der Struwwelpeter or William Maloney’s The Worst of Everything, I had no idea what I was in store for. Which made this particular show more zany, exciting, and mentally stimulating than most seen as of late. From every angle, there was something to watch, something to leave our mouths agape and make you just think what the hell?

Based on a notoriously deranged German children's book, it's a theatrical marvel...but will audiences get it?

While Jobsite's production of DOUBT, A Parable, is temporarily suspended in light of the current national health crisis, the resident theater company of the Straz Center is not delaying the release of their new season.

Actors Spencer Meyers and Derrick Phillips wear a lot of hats. And pants and shirts and even blouses with holiday vests in A Tuna Christmas, the second in a series of fun, comedic plays set in the fictional town of Tuna, Texas, the third-smallest town in the state and a two-man Christmas play at Straz Center, opening December 11. Spencer and Derrick play 22 different roles in this quirky trilogy filled with quick wit, southern charm, and bite.

After a 14 year hiatus the bad boys of Shakespeare took to the stage and command the stage they did. For the next 90ish minutes the audience was thrust into a world of side-splitting head over heels laughter. Jobsite's Artistic Director David Jenkins entered the space with a hilarious curtain speech. One of the most memorable moments was when he said, "We are in a small space, so if you're talking and thinking you can't be heard you can… and if anyone came with a child shut the little bastard up and let them fend for themselves." Introducing the facts that over the next hour and a half the audience will be thrust into a world unknown to some, a place of Elizabethan England; Stratford on Avon to be exact, and thus he went forth and introduced all of the players that would be seen that evening.

Jobsite Theater continues their 20th Anniversary Season with another 'greatest hits' return! They've dusted off their trunks full of everything from skulls to skirts and daggers to dinosaurs for a revival of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] running Mar. 15 - Apr. 7 in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center, where Jobsite is resident theater company. Having shrunk Willy's wit and wisdom into manageable morsels of madness, they tear around the stage in doublets and Converse on a riotous romp through all 37 of Shakespeare's plays plus the sonnets all in an hour and a half.

Jobsite Theater continues their 20th Anniversary Season with another "greatest hits" return! They've dusted off their trunks full of everything from skulls to skirts and daggers to dinosaurs for a revival of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] running Mar. 15 - Apr. 7 in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center, where Jobsite is resident theater company. Having shrunk Willy's wit and wisdom into manageable morsels of madness, they tear around the stage in doublets and Converse on a riotous romp through all 37 of Shakespeare's plays plus the sonnets all in an hour and a half.

Jobsite Theater kicks off their 20th Anniversary Season with the groundbreaking, Obie and Tony Award-winning cult-hit rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing Aug. 17 - Sep. 9 in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center where Jobsite is resident theater company.

Jobsite Theater kicks off their 20th Anniversary Season with the groundbreaking, Obie and Tony Award-winning cult-hit rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing Aug. 17 - Sep. 9 in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center where Jobsite is resident theater company.

Jobsite Theater kicks off their 20th Anniversary Season with the groundbreaking, Obie and Tony Award-winning cult-hit rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing Aug. 17 - Sep. 9 in the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz Center where Jobsite is resident theater company.

Caryl Churchill's farcical, gender-bending, timey-wimey Cloud Nine is a hilarious comedy that will leave you with loads to think about. Churchill likes to mix things up get rid of any preconceived notions about gender, sexuality, romance, or "lifestyle!" Cloud Nine mocks colonial and sexual repressions in a farce that employs racial and gender cross-casting to make its points.

Pitch-perfect, pitch-black humor and fine performances bring this literal skull-bashing production to life.

Jobsite Theater, resident theater company of the Straz Center, completes the pitch-black Irish comedy trilogy set in rural west Ireland just in time for St. Patrick's Day this year with Martin McDonagh's A Skull in Connemara, which runs Mar. 17 - Apr. 9, 2017, in the Straz's Shimberg Playhouse.