Here's a fun party trick: name something in Orlando that's been around for 100 years.
Not Disney. That opened in 1971. Not Universal. Not I-Drive. Not even that one restaurant your grandparents swear has "always been there."
Give up? It's a children's theatre.
Orlando Family Stage, the professional Theatre for Young Audiences tucked into the Loch Haven Park arts district, traces its roots all the way back to 1926, which makes it older than almost every cultural institution, tourist attraction, and strip mall in the metro area. It has operated under seven different names, survived a world war, nearly gone broke, and reinvented itself so many times that its story reads less like an institutional history and more like a very determined cat working through its nine lives.
And right now, in its centennial season, it's thriving.
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Seven Names, Zero Quit
It all started in 1925, when a group called the Orlando Little Theatre Players decided that downtown Orlando needed some drama, the good kind. On February 3, 1926, they staged a few short plays at the Beacham Theater on Orange Avenue. Nobody in that audience could have guessed they were watching the birth of a century-long institution. Honestly, the actors probably couldn't have guessed it either.
By 1934, the group had incorporated as Orlando Little Theatre and launched what would become a beloved tradition: an annual Christmas Pageant, first produced in 1932. Then World War II showed up and shut everything down from roughly 1942 to 1946. The theatre went dark. But it came back, because that's what this organization does.
In 1959, the troupe moved to Montana Avenue and started going by Orlando Players Little Theatre. Through the 1950s and 1960s, it hummed along on volunteer energy and local talent, getting a little more ambitious with every season. Then Walt Disney World announced it was coming to Central Florida, and suddenly Orlando wasn't a small town anymore. The theatre decided it shouldn't be small, either.
In 1968, it rebranded as Central Florida Civic Theatre and started planning a real, permanent home in what is now the Loch Haven Park arts district, right alongside the future Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando Science Center, and Orlando Ballet. In 1973, the company cut the ribbon on the Edyth Bush Theatre, giving it a proper main-stage home for the first time. Two years later, the Tupperware Children's Theatre followed.
That second building, a stage built specifically for kids, turned out to be the most important thing the company ever did. They just didn't know it yet.
The "Oh No, We're Broke" Era
Fast-forward to the late 1990s. Central Florida Civic Theatre was, on paper, doing great. A second performance venue, the Anne Densch Theatre, came along in 1990, giving the company more room to stretch. In 1997, the company started running a full Actors' Equity Association season, union actors, professional productions, the whole deal.
Behind the scenes? Not so great.
Jeff Revels, who joined the organization in 1995 and is still its artistic director today (more on that later), has called this period an "existential crisis." Here's what was happening: the children's classes and youth shows were packed and profitable. The adult-oriented mainstage shows? Some of them were playing to a lot of empty seats. The kids' programming was essentially keeping the lights on for everything else, and the math wasn't mathing.
The board and leadership had to stare down an uncomfortable question: What are we actually good at?
They looked around. The answer was sitting in the front row, probably wearing a juice-stained shirt and clutching a stuffed animal.
It was the kids. It had always been the kids.
Orlando Family Stage Before It Had the Name: The REP Years
In 2000, the company made its biggest bet. Central Florida Civic Theatre officially became Orlando Repertory Theatre ,"the Rep," and went all-in as a professional Theatre for Young Audiences.
This wasn't just a name swap. It came with a partnership that gave the move real muscle: the University of Central Florida's MFA program in Theatre for Young Audiences set up shop at the Rep, embedding graduate students directly into the company for hands-on training in production, education, and administration. Only a handful of arrangements like it exist anywhere in the country, and it turned Orlando into a genuine destination for people who wanted to build careers making theatre for kids.
The programming sharpened fast. School field trips. Weekend family shows. Summer camps. Classes that became a primary revenue driver. The Rep started serving tens of thousands of Central Florida students each year through matinee performances and tours, becoming the default "where are we going on the bus today?" answer for schools across the region.
And the company started making new work, commissioning original plays and adaptations that reflected diverse communities and tackled real stuff. One recent project, developed with UCF professors and mental-health professionals, produced ten short plays about teen mental health, paired with a teacher curriculum designed to help classrooms have those conversations safely.
The Rep also became a host venue for organizations like the Orlando Fringe Festival, further cementing its spot in the Loch Haven Park ecosystem.
For two decades, the model worked beautifully. But the name? The name was a problem.
Why "Orlando Family Stage" Was the Obvious Move Nobody Made for 20 Years
Let's be honest: "Orlando Repertory Theatre" sounds like a place where you'd watch a very serious production of Chekhov while wearing uncomfortable shoes.
It wasn't that. It hadn't been that for ages. The company didn't run a rotating repertory schedule. It didn't keep a standing company of actors. And for a parent Googling "fun things to do with kids in Orlando," the name did approximately zero work communicating that this was a place where a six-year-old could see a show about pirates and then beg to sign up for camp.
After years of knowing this was an issue and more than 18 months of actually doing something about it, stakeholder interviews, audience surveys, a full brand audit, the board voted unanimously in early 2023 to go with: Orlando Family Stage.
"Orlando" says where. "Family" says who. "Stage" says what. Done.
Executive director Chris Brown, a UCF alumnus himself, unveiled the new brand on June 15, 2023, at an event packed with local officials and community partners. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings liked it enough to proclaim that date "Orlando Family Stage Day," which is the kind of thing that makes a rebrand feel pretty official.
The important part: nothing about the mission changed. The mission had already changed back in 2000. The name just finally got the memo.
What Orlando Family Stage Is Up To Right Now
So what does this century-old, seven-named, cat-with-nine-lives theatre look like today? Busy. Very busy.
On stage, it's producing professional-quality shows for young audiences and families, recent highlights include Tiara's Hat Parade, a one-woman show celebrating Black fashion, and Lilly and the Pirates: The Musical, adapted by John Maclay with music by Pulitzer finalist Will Eno and Brett Ryback.
In the classroom (and the rehearsal room, and the camp cabin), education programs have rebounded to and beyond pre-pandemic levels since the rebrand. The more intuitive name is doing exactly what a good name should: helping new families find the front door.
At UCF, the MFA partnership keeps humming. Graduate students in Theatre for Young Audiences train inside a working professional company, and many staff members. Chris Brown included, came up through that pipeline.
In the community, Orlando Family Stage lends its spaces to partners like Orlando Fringe and has made some pointed choices about artistic freedom, including declining state funding that came with restrictive "appropriateness" strings, to protect the range of work its renters and collaborators can present.
And at the center of it all is Jeff Revels, who has now been with the organization for over 30 years, spanning the Civic Theatre era, the Rep years, and the Family Stage chapter. He's basically the human version of the institution itself: still here, still evolving, still making the case that theatre builds empathy in kids by letting them see themselves on stage and experience life through someone else's eyes.
100 Years in a City That Doesn't Do "Old"
Here's what makes this anniversary a little bit wild. Orlando is not a city that does permanence. One local critic once quipped that in Central Florida, "anything older than a decade is practically antique." Restaurants cycle. Attractions open and close. Even the skyline looks different every few years.
And yet, here's this children's theatre, still standing in Loch Haven Park, celebrating 100 years of continuous operation (minus that pesky WWII break). From the Orlando Little Theatre Players in 1926 to Orlando Family Stage in 2026, through seven names, multiple near-death experiences, and a city that rebuilt itself around theme parks.
On February 3, 2026, exactly a century after those first short plays at the Beacham, local leaders, patrons, and alumni gathered under a "100 Years of Adventure" banner to mark the occasion. It was part history lesson, part pep rally, and part proof of concept: that you can build something that lasts in a city that's always looking ahead, as long as you keep adapting.
And that betting on kids, their curiosity, their willingness to sit in the dark and believe in what's happening on stage, their juice-stained, wide-eyed, boundless capacity for wonder, is a bet that keeps paying off.
A hundred years in, Orlando Family Stage is still putting on a show. And they're still not done.
👉 Curious about MORE Orlando History, then this is your spot, right here.
Sources:
https://orlandofamilystage.com/about/our-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Family_Stage
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/arts/live-active-cultures/orlando-family-stage-celebrates-its-100th-birthday/
https://freelinemediaorlando.com/orlando-rep-has-a-new-name-for-its-theater/26815/
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/arts/orlando-repertory-theatre-changes-its-name-to-orlando-family-stage-34421756/
