July 21st, 2026

We are lucky enough to have a live performance theatre here in our city. Not just in our city, mind you, but right here on Venice Island.   We can easily walk there, which I love. While were aren't season ticket holders by any stretch, we have seen a number of terrific shows there and had hopes to see at least a few more.

But back in 2022, Hurricane Ian tore through Venice and, as you can clearly see from the above photo on the left, pretty much destroyed the nearly 100 year old building.  Everyone, theatre go-er or not, wondered what the future would bring regarding our theatre.  There were loads of theories and gossip, of course.  That's what always happens.

But now here we are, six years later and, after some very impressive fund raising, donations,  grants and Government assistance it appears that the Venice Theatre is repaired. Well that's what it looks like in the photo on the right, right?  

The truth is that it's only partially repaired.  There is still a ways to go.  And Tim and I found that out, up close and personal, last week when we were able to tour the building!  I adore "behind the scenes" stuff.  Our tour guide, a very personable and knowledgeable soul took us through all of the "do not enter" and "staff only" doors that I've long wondered about (I'm so nosy!)  We were even able to don hard hats (check out photo at the end to see Tim and I sporting very fashionable hardhats) and witness the part that remains under construction.  It was so much fun and quite the transformation.

Lets go backwards before we go forwards.  I will begin at the beginning. It's a very good place to start.  Our adorable little city of Venice Florida is only just now one hundred years old. So there you go, we were official in 1926. The roaring twenties!  And as such, it was a beautiful and very fun place that had quite a good number of Enormous and Gorgeous Grand Hotels for the folks with enough money to travel and vacation.   In 1927, on the exact site of the Venice Theatre, was an automotive garage (to take good care of the vehicles of those grand folks). It was called the Orange Blossom Garage.  Things were rolling along beautifully in this amazing gulf-side city filled with Mediterranean Architecture, lots of things to do, palm trees galore and a gorgeous beach.

By the time of the Stock Market Crash that changed the world in 1929, the city of Venice was already in trouble due to some iffy financial decision and mismanagement of funds. The Crash just finished it.  The city went from a thriving community of about 4000 people to around 400 virtually overnight.  It was practically a ghost town filled with huge empty hotels and so many other business closed down, including the Orange Blossom Garage.

In 1932, the Kentucky Military Institute (KMI), a military school, first rented and then bought several of the big empty hotels and the garage, among other buildings, to use as the winter quarters for their school which began to breathe new life into the city.  The KMI continued to house those building until the school closed in 1971.  The garage, which was being used as an armory, a chapel and a basketball arena, once again, sat empty.

Meanwhile, as the city had begun to revitalize itself over the years, the Venice Little Theatre, as an organization  was created in 1950 in borrowed space at our little airport which had previously been used during WWII by the Army Aircorps.   The community loved having its own live theater and eventually, in 1973, bought the old Orange Blossom Garage and slowly turned it into the Venice Theatre.

And now,  ack in current day, the Venice Theatre is actually a little campus of three separate buildings and once repairs are complete, there will be the one large stage, one smaller stage and in a separate building that will primarily be used for education, several other yet smaller stages. It is a genuine marvel!  And a serious one at that.  The folks involved are so very serious about the business of entertainment and education that in the world of Community Theatre, the Venice Theatre ranks #2 in the entire USA by the official organization that ranks such things.  Wow!  By the way, the #1 ranking community theatre in the US is in Omaha Nebraska.

Now that the history lesson is complete, I would love to share a few of the behind the scenes photos that I took:

I'll start with the under construction area which will ultimately be the main theatre.  What I neglected to get a photo of was the fly bridge which is where that massive staircase goes. It is incredibly high up and is such a lovely big space that it will be able to accommodate dozens of backdrops at a time along with catwalks, lighting and so much more:

Then some of the smaller rooms that I remembered to take pictures of (some of them I was too busy ogling instead of snapping):  

First here is the costume design studio. It is a surprisingly huge room@ One wall alone was just one sewing machine after another (with people manning several while we were there), the other three walls were lined with bin-stuffed shelving.  Every bin was labelled with such things as "sequins", "buttons" "lace"  "zippers" and far, far more.  The room was further crowded with worktables, some of which had partially completed projects laid out, mannequins in various states of dress, and rack upon rack of colours of threads. It was glorious!

One of my favourite rooms was the costume closet which is actually an entire room full to overflowing with carefully labelled and organized garments, hat, shoes and jewelry:

Another of my favorites was the Small Props room which, as the title suggests, holds small *but essential* props.  It was so quirky and fun:

One of the three building encompassing the Venice Theatre campus is the Set Design and Construction building. It is a builders paradise with a dedicated paint room, at least one of every tool ever created, storage of the pieces currently unused but possibly useable again the future and it was filled with one of my favourite scents, sawdust!

Some of the rooms I neglected to get photos of were: the backstage waiting area, where the actors and dressers wait for their cues to go on; the orchestra pit which is really just small room with a video screen so the musicians and singers can see what is going on and prepare for their turns to perform; the music directors office which has a grand piano in it - of course it does - and so many more.

We also got to sneak into the smaller theatre which is up and running and watched the builders and electricians prepare for the next show:

It was a fascinating and so very fun peek into what goes into creating these award winnning plays that the audience gets to enjoy.  I had to laugh a little bit because the tour, which was touted as a 90 minute show 'round turned out to take more than 2 1/2 hours. We were actually nearing the 3 hour tour mark and well, we all know how that worked out for Gilligan and his friends eh?

If you are lucky enough to live in close proximity to a community theatre, I urge you to, at least once in awhile, go see some of the shows.  The people who work there, hundreds (literally) of them volunteers, really do put their hearts and souls into creating some magic for their audience.  And the shows themselves are a perfect escape from our real, stressful, normal lives for just an hour or so. I believe we can all benefit from a little bit of that ;)