Gulf Coast Life Arts Edition

We’ll hear a selection of jazz classics performed live in studio ahead of the “Halloween Retro Dance Costume Party” on Oct. 30 at the Spatini Teabar on Sanibel Island. Concerts at the venue raise funds to support students studying jazz at FGCU’s Bower School of Music & the Arts through the Sanibel Jazz Society, LLC.

Players Circle Theater opens its 8th season with a production of the Broadway farce “The Nerd.” Through comic chaos, physical comedy, and escalating absurdity, the play poses the surprisingly relatable question “What do you owe someone who once did you a great favor, especially when that person makes your life miserable?”We’ll explore the play in a conversation with director Bob Cacioppo and actor Ted Wioncek.

The Florida Philharmonic kicks off its third season with a concert celebrating the mystery, magic and macabre of Halloween with a program titled “Masquerade: Symphony of Shadows.”The concert features well-known works by composers from the Romantic Era along with more contemporary pieces by Emmy award-winning composer Anthony DiLorenzo. We’ll get a preview in a conversation with Maestro Richard Stoelzel and Concertmaster Ming Gao.

Players Circle Theater kicks off it’s 2026-2027 performance season this month with the Broadway farce “The Nerd.” The season also includes a holiday show, a comedy, a romantic comedy, a one-man historical drama, a musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell and the regional premiere of the sci-fi drama “Marjorie Prime.” We’ll explore the season ahead in a conversation with Bob Cacioppo and Ted Wincek.

Laboratory Theater of Florida is mounting a production of playwright Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman.” It is simultaneously a dark comedy, crime procedural, and psychological thriller about a fiction writer being interrogated after a string of horrific child murders bear a striking resemblance to his own disturbing short stories. We will explore the show in a conversation with cast members Ryan Adair and Christian Rivero.

We listen back to our show from 2025 featuring Emmy-nominated jazz trumpeter, vocalist and composer Benny Benack III performing live in studio with musicians from the FGCU Jazz Combo.

In October, the Marco Island Center for the Arts will present a workshop production of the weirdly funny love story “Chameleüns.” We will explore the play in a conversation with co-authors Frank Blocker and Rochelle Burdine along with the actors and real-life married couple Dixie and Patrick Huey.

Florida Repertory Theatre opens its 29th season with “Forever Everly: The Everly Brothers Rockumentary.” The show is a multimedia theater experience combining documentary film, biographical storytelling, and music performed live on stage and in synchronization with archival concert footage. We will talk with the performers and creators of the show, Jared Mancuso and Nick Gallardo.

Southwest Florida-based artist Beth Carter Bell has a new exhibition coming to the Grand Atrium gallery at Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center in the downtown Fort Myers River District titled “Diaphanous Vision.” Ahead of the exhibit’s opening reception, Sept. 4, we take a deeper dive into the show and the Data-A aesthetic in which works in the show are grounded.

The Cape Coral Art Center is featuring a retrospective exhibition of works by Pine Island-based painter Zan Lombardo titled “Larger Than Life Watercolors” in reference to the large-scale watercolor scrolls that Lombardo is perhaps best known for. We’ll have an encore presentation of our recent conversation with Lombardo about her unique artistic practice, what inspires her paintings, and the evolution of her work over time.