Central Florida arts lovers joined Rollins College faculty and students Thursday afternoon to officially open the Winter Park campus’s latest addition: A new $8 million building devoted to theater and dance.
With it comes the Sally K. Albrecht Studio Theatre, a new 1,900-square-foot performance space for the region that in part, will house student productions previously staged in the college’s now-demolished Fred Stone Theatre.
“We now have the facility that matches our reputation and academic quality,” said Rollins president Grant H. Cornwell in remarks, as he proclaimed the building’s opening “a new era” in arts instruction at the college.
The new building, named the Tiedtke Theatre & Dance Centre, sits on Chase Avenue behind the venerable Annie Russell Theatre and next to Keene Hall, which houses the college’s Department of Music and the Tiedtke Concert Hall.
“It creates a theater mini-campus on the Rollins campus and gives theater its due among the liberal arts,” said Thomas Ouellette, theater professor and producing director of the Annie Russell.
During his remarks, Ouellette dedicated the day to the students, who he said demonstrated “herculean levels” of patience and flexibility as the new building was constructed.
Classes and performances took place in various rooms all over campus while work continued on the new 16,165-square-foot centralized building, for which the ground was broken in November 2021.
Cornwell recalled that when he was chosen president in 2015, students inundated him with a “sheaf of letters” clamoring for a new theater facility. Acknowledging the grand opening was “a long time coming,” he said with a smile: “Eight years later, here we are.”
In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Ouellette said the theater department’s own ingenuity and self-reliance may have left a false impression that getting a new facility wasn’t imperative.
“I think theater people are so resilient and so creative that for the last 25 years with a bunch of string and fabric, we’ve been doing damn good work,” he said. “So it didn’t look like we needed it.”
But the project moved into high gear when donors stepped in to help.
Philip and Sigrid Tiedtke, who own Enzian Theater in Maitland and founded the Florida Film Festival, donated the naming gift of $5 million. The Tiedtkes have a long family connection to the college: their daughter is an alumna, Philip has served as a trustee since 2009, and his father was a trustee before him.
Albrecht, for whom the building’s theater is named, donated $1 million to the project. Best known as a composer and conductor, Albrecht graduated from Rollins in 1976 after studying musical theater.
Ouellette called the theater that bears her name “the true heart of the building” and said students and faculty had given it a nickname akin to the nearby Annie Russell Theatre, known affectionately as “the Annie.”
“Already, we have dubbed it ‘the Sally K,'” he said. Unlike the 90-year-old Annie, which is a traditional theater, the state-of-the-art Sally K can be configured in multiple ways for different types of productions. It seats 100-120 audience members.
Other amenities in the building include a bright and airy dance studio; a design and technology laboratory, with blackout shades so theatrical lighting can be explored within; a costume shop; professional dressing rooms; and an “acting and directing laboratory,” named in tribute to the Fred Stone Theatre, which housed often-experimental and student-led theater for about 80 years. The aged building was knocked down in 2018 after suffering hurricane damage.
“We worked in that building up until the day it was condemned,” Ouellette told the Sentinel. “We’re not wimps.”
The new building changes the game completely.
“We’re in a different stratosphere,” Ouellette said. “Maybe theater people are prone to being theatrical but there is some truth in that.”
While the building will improve current students’ experiences, Ouellette has high hopes the state-of-the-art center will attract wider interest among future college-bound students, especially people of color.
“That’s my goal,” he said. “I hope this is a good recruiting tool. It should be.”
Rollins College has recently become part of the William Daniel Mills Apprenticeship Program, which provides educational opportunities to young adults, particularly people of color, interested in a career in theater.
The new Tiedtke Theatre & Dance Centre will benefit participants in that apprenticeship program, as well, Ouellette said.
A decorative fountain will be installed in front of the center in the next few months, returning a water feature to the area. A previous fountain, beloved by students, was removed to make way for a statue of Rollins alum Fred “Mister” Rogers in 2021.
On Thursday, all eyes were on the future.
“Imagine the generations of students who will benefit from this magnificent investment,” said Cornwell.
A jubilant Albrecht put it more succinctly before she, Philip Tiedtke, Cornwell and Ouellette cut the ribbon to open the new facility as onlookers cheered: “What a day!”
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