Gulf Coast Life: Arts Edition

During the Covid pandemic, retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Michael Troop got into audio production and that led to him pitching an idea to Bryce Alexander from the Naples Players to recreate, from the ground up with professional and amateur actors, and full sound design, old-time narrative radio shows from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s and the Naples Players Repertoire Radio Theatre podcast was born and i...

Southwest Florida-based singer/songwriter Melinda “Blou Note” Daniel performs live in the WGCU studio.

Players Circle Theater’s summer performance season continues with a production of the Tony-nominated one-man comedy, “Say Goodnight Gracie,” about the marriage and professional partnership of George Burns and Gracie Allen, whose groundbreaking comedy act evolved across vaudeville, radio, film, and television. We will talk with actor Pasquale LaCorte, who stars in the show, and Players Circle Theat...

Southwest Florida-based singer/songwriter Melinda “Blou Note” Daniel performs live in the WGCU studio.

The Bridging the Gap Center for the Arts will host an immersive pop-up art experience titled “In Living Color: A Juneteenth Art Experience,” featuring Southwest Florida-based artist Richard Bravo. Ahead of the event on June 19, 2026, at McCollum Hall, we talk with the featured artist and Bridging the Gap founder and Executive Director Sonya McCarter.

Southwest Florida-based artist Christian De Jesús has a solo exhibition titled “UN-MASKED” opening June 5, 2026, at the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center. His unconventional work tends to explore heavy themes of life, death, the complexity of the human condition and the weight of our choices. We will talk with the artist ahead of the show’s opening reception.

The fourth annual Fort Myers Fringe culminates, May 31, 2026, with a special closing performance of “Josephine: A burlesque cabaret dream play,” honoring the life of dancer, singer, actress, spy, and civil rights activist Josephine Baker. We will delve into the performance in a conversation with the show’s co-creator and star Tymisha Harris.

Players Circle Theater closes its seventh season with a production of Bernard Slade’s multi award-winning romantic comedy “Same Time, Next Year.” The play is about a man and woman who carry on a decades-long clandestine affair, meeting just once a year. It is less about the affair itself, and more about exploring how people change over time. We explore the play in a conversation with the director...

The 16th annual Fort Myers Film Festival will deliver five days of film screenings, filmmaker panels, and celebration. The festival, which runs May 20-24, 2026, will include 81 selected feature, documentary, and short films from all over the world. We’ll get a preview of the festival in a conversation with Fort Myers Film Festival founder and Executive Director Eric Raddatz. We’ll also talk with m...

The fourth annual Fort Myers Fringe will bring a roster of top nationally and internationally touring independent, experimental, and alternative artists to Southwest Florida for a wide variety of performances including deeply personal storytelling, boundary-pushing comedy, live music, and shows specifically for kids and teens. We will get a preview of the festival with founder and organizer Bill T...

A solo exhibition of works by Southwest Florida-based painter, illustrator, writer, and designer Kathleen Kinkopf opens May 1 at the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center. Ahead of the opening, we’ll talk with Kinkopf about her striking works, often described as “magical realism” with highly detailed realistic imagery infused with dreamlike symbolism and fantasy elements.

The Naples-based nonprofit House of Gaia hosts the “Bee Gaia Bloom Art Show” April 25, 2026, featuring works created by artists within the neurodivergent community. House of Gaia Founder and Director Lulu Carter joins us to explore the sensory, multimedia exhibit and the organization’s broader focus on arts education, social inclusion, community building and kindness.

The Bridging the Gap Center for the Arts will host a murder mystery dinner theater event, April 25th featuring the first public performance of the comedic play “Devil Ain’t Got No Tail in Grandma’s House,” written by Veronica Barber, who is the mother of Bridging the Gap founder and Executive Director Sonya McCarter.

Players Circle Theater is putting on a production of the one-woman play “I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti,” based on the bestselling book of the same title by Giulia Melucci. In the show, Giulia regales audiences with tales of her dating life all while actually cooking a three-course meal on stage. We’ll explore the play in conversation with actor Amanda Ladd and director Bob Cacioppo.

Laboratory Theater of Florida is performing a provocative reimagining of Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar,” set not in ancient Rome, but in the dark parking lot of a derelict apartment building. The show maintains the original Elizabethan language but condenses the play to about 90 minutes. It maintains the iconic monologues and soliloquies in a way that places heavy emphasis on the timeless themes of...

The featured artists chosen to create four new large-scale public murals in downtown Fort Myers through the fourth annual Southwest Florida Mural Festival were announced this week. We’ll talk with artists, festival organizers, and co-founders of Artsemble Underground Cesar Aguilera and Brian Weaver to learn more about the festival and their broader mission of making art more accessible and transfo...

Players Circle Theater is mounting a production of playwright Amy Herzog’s Pulitzer-nominated family drama “4,000 Miles,” about a grieving young man and the bond he develops with his 91-year-old grandmother during an extended stay in her West Village apartment. We’ll delve into the show in a conversation with Players Circle Theater Artistic Director Bob Cacioppo and the stars of the show, actors C...

Actor, playwright, director and educator Frank Blocker is performing a run of his one-man show “STABILIZED NOT CONTROLLED” this month in the Norris Center Auditorium in Naples. We talk with Blocker about this tour-de-force performance in which he plays all 17 characters.

Florida Repertory Theatre in downtown Fort Myers recently announced the line up of shows for their 2026-2027 performance season, including both adult and family-friendly comedies, a psychological thriller, a documentary, and plenty of music. We’ll get a preview of the upcoming 20th season and explore their production of “Little Shop of Horrors” that opens later this month in a conversation with th...

The Cape Arts Network (CAN) officially launched on Feb. 13, 2026, as an independent community-based organization with a mission to uplift, support, and foster long-term growth of the arts and culture sector in Cape Coral. We hear from founding President Amy Ginsburg and founding Treasurer David Acevedo.