Category: Music & Arts

Emerald Coast Theatre Company (ECTC) is proud to announce that founders Nathanael and Anna Fisher have been awarded The Florida Theatre Conference 2023 Distinguished Career Award in the professional category.

In 1986, the Florida Theatre Conference began recognizing individuals in the state of Florida that had made a contributing effort in the area of Community Theatre, Professional Theatre, University/College Theatre, Theatre for Youth, and High School Theatre. Each year the Board solicits names from the general membership for these awards. Over the years, these awards have been given to persons in the state of Florida that have made a difference in their area.

Nathanael and Anna say, “We are so honored to receive this recognition from the Florida Theatre Conference! We have always seen ECTC as a land of opportunity…opportunity for creative people and for the children, families, and adults of our community.”

Nathanael and Anna were honored at this year’s Florida Theatre Conference Award Ceremony in Winter Haven Florida at Theatre Winter Haven Mainstage Theatre on November 4, 2023.

President of The Florida Theatre Conference Marci Duncan stated, “Emerald Coast Theatre Company gives professionals an opportunity to create and shine. We honor you for your dedication to excellence in the state of Florida.”

A special thanks to ECTC’s Major Sponsors of the 2023-2024 season: Grand Blvd at Sandestin, St. Joe Community Foundation, Howard Group and Visit South Walton.

To make a tax-deductible donation, volunteer or learn more about Emerald Coast Theatre Company, call (850) 684-0323 and visit www.emeraldcoasttheatre.org. Engage with ECTC as well on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

As the holiday season approaches we are getting ready for three heartwarming experiences for our community to come enjoy, connect and feel the magic of the season. A Jingle Jangle Christmas Music Revue, Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus and the beautiful Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.

Multiple adaptations of A Christmas Carol have been a part of ECTC history since the very beginning. Our first professional production was a three-person adaptation written by Nathanael called A Dickens Christmas. We can still hear the incomparable Darla Briganti bellowing the lines as Marley’s Ghost, vibrating the verbiage in an eerie, ghostly cadence. Some years later that same adaptation was done with four actors including an accomplished violinist. Fast forward to Christmas 2020 and ECTC presents Barlow’s version of the classic with the inimitable Bruce Collier at the helm as Scrooge. Some of the things we love about this version is that 5 actors play all the characters in the story. Barlow does a beautiful job of highlighting the personal trauma that Scrooge experienced as a child which explains his hardened heart. There is also an incredibly touching scene where he faces his past and his hard heart melts, as does ours as we experience it anew alongside him. It’s the turning point, the character arc, the part of the story we long for in all humanity.

Marci Duncan is our guest director for this production so although the story may be familiar, there are new actors and a new director telling it from a different perspective. It’s going to be everything we need and want out of a traditional holiday offering. So, don’t “Bah, Humbug” this opportunity to experience live theatre, even if you have seen the production before!

In celebration of this show, we thought we’d share with you our top 10 most recognizable and descriptive quotes from the story to get you in the spirit before coming to the show.

10. “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
9.“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
8.“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!”
7.“Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
6.“But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time…as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely”
5.“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year…”
4.“While there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.”
3.“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused!”
2.“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”

So much of the Christmas spirit is captured in some of these lines and reflected in this redemptive story come to life on stage. We hope you will join us this season as we “honour Christmas” in our hearts and in our community. With all the joy we have this season we wish you the happiest of holidays and leave you with our number one, and what we know is Tiny Tim’s number one quote:

1.“God bless us every one!”

~ ANNA AND NATHANAEL FISHER, EMERALD COAST THEATRE COMPANY

By Anna Fisher, Associate Artistic Director, Emerald Coast Theatre Company

In my hazy childhood recollections, there’s one Christmas memory that is a little more clear than the others. It was 1980, and five year old me had requested what, in my mind, was quite an unachievable Christmas list: a dollhouse with tiny furniture, pink ballet shoes with a fancy carrying case (Barbie if possible), and a Kermit the Frog plush with long velcro arms. Each one of these items in itself was a lofty hope, a faraway dream that perhaps with enough nice behavior might materialize on Christmas morning. I went to sleep on that eve with visions of Kermit dancing in my head, maybe even wearing those pink ballet shoes with the tiny elastic bows at the top.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that all three of those gifts–and more–were waiting for me the next morning: the pink ballet shoes and vinyl case that I know my Mom had to drive to Fort Walton to find, the Kermit plush and the sweet, two story dollhouse that my Dad had been building in secret for the past month. It was joy upon joy, and I remember spending hours that day and the days afterwards playing with each gift to my heart’s content. I even brought my pink ballet shoes for show and tell on that first school day back from Christmas break.

The gifts I treasure now are more intangible, and one of the greatest gifts I receive as an adult is realization. The most dynamic illustration of this is in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. A timely visit from those Three Spirits is just the terrifying realization that Scrooge needs to turn his life around. What feels like a nightmarish inventory of his life becomes the Christmas gift that he didn’t know he needed. The realization that the most wonderful parts of life don’t carry a price tag, that time with your family and friends is more precious than gold, and that life is short and each moment is a gift in itself. One of the gifts of becoming older and wiser is that we often come to these realizations through the spirits of experience and circumstance, which hopefully land more gently than Scrooge’s visitations.

When I think back upon that glorious Christmas morning full of so many beautiful things, it’s not the pink ballet shoes or the dollhouse that I remember the most. It’s the feeling that I was special and loved and important to my family. That feeling is why we give gifts to the people we love, and put so much care and effort into choosing and wrapping and situating it just so under the tree. Once we come to this gift of realization, we understand, just as Scrooge does, that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

My grown up Christmas list now looks much more like the eponymous song, with wishes like world peace, kindness and unity. It feels like any wish is possible during the holiday season when the air becomes electric with that almost textured magical quality. If I was to define that feeling I would say it comes from all of us being a little more generous and a little more hopeful.

It’s the feeling I know you’ll have when you come to see any of our holiday shows at Emerald Coast Theatre Company this season. In addition to A Christmas Carol, our talented Junior Company teens are performing Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus. We are also offering A Jingle Jangle Christmas musical revue, complete with all of the warmest holiday classics.

There’s a little bit of that magic sprinkled into each of these shows and each one is a gift of shared experiences with family and friends. I hope you’ll take a moment to spend with us in real time this holiday season, because one of our greatest realizations is that you are the heart of ECTC.