Arts & Culture

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 Taylor, who is also the founding Producing Artistic Director for Theatre Conspiracy. We will also highlight Theatre Conspiracy’s upcoming summer offerings, which include a blend of intimate theater and live music events.

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.

Every two years, the City’s Public Art Committee hosts an exhibition of the work created by the artists who have received Arts & Culture grants during the preceding two years. This year’s Biennial show is being hosted by the Alliance for the Arts and will feature work by 15 visual artists and two local filmmakers.

“I’d like to have a chance to go to Broadway and beyond; maybe do movies and other things like that,” said JJ Freitas outside Fort Myers Theatre recently. Freitas has taken two big steps in pursuit of those lofty goals. First, he traveled with Fort Myers Theater to the Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta in January. It’s the Super Bowl of student-driven musical theater.

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.

Naples modernist Mally Khorasantchi is featured in this year’s Florida Contemporary art exhibit at The Baker Museum. Each of her compositions in Florida Contemporary is a highly personal reaction to something that happened during Khorasantchi’s life. That’s particularly true of the artist’s four-panel oil-on-paper collage, “Rhapsodie in Blue.”

The city of Fort Myers maintains an Arts & Culture Grant program. For 2026, City Council has made $150,000 available for payment of grants. The city is accepting digital applications now through May 15.

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.

A local Ukrainian organization is gearing up to celebrate its 35th anniversary.

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.