Visit the Education & Engagement page on Asolo Repertory Theatre’s website and you’ll find about 20 different programs. There’s Asolo Rep on Tour, which brings dynamic performances to classrooms and other community spaces. Student matinees, where students and teachers enjoy Mainstage productions followed by custom talkback sessions. Kaleidoscope, a collection of programs to nurture creative expression in students with disabilities. Plus workshops and classes and much, much more — for youth and for adults.
It sure looks like a lot to manage. But for Education & Engagement Director Terrance Jackson, it all comes down to two things: access and opportunities.
Homegrown Talent
Terrance assumed his role at Asolo Rep a little over a year ago. But in a way, he’d been rehearsing for it most of his life.
He was born and raised here in Sarasota. “I attended the three Bookers,” Terrance says—Booker Elementary, Booker Middle, and Booker High. From a young age, he was exposed to performance by his mother. She worked for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, overseeing commissary and properties. But her hobby was community theater. “She spent her days at the jail, and then at night would put on costumes and do plays,” Terrance recalls. There were always records playing in the house, too, soundtracks like The Wiz or Dreamgirls. “That’s how I got started,” says Terrance, whose sister is also a performer. “We got it from our mom, who prioritized the arts.”
At Booker Middle, Terrance was in the music program, where his orchestra teacher was Angela Hartvigsen (today she’s Fine Arts Program Specialist for Sarasota County Schools). “Terrance had a curiosity and charisma that made him stand out,” she says. “His quick wit occasionally pushed the limits, but he was a truly wonderful student, the kind you never forget.”
He did his first play there, too, initially cast in a small part in Beauty and the Beast. When his good buddy left the show to focus fully on music, Terrance was tapped for the co-lead. “It fell to me—and I was not great,” he deadpans about his debut as the Beast. “I was not good in the play.” But at the end, people clapped, he says. And that’s when Terrance realized: “This is it. This is what I want to do.”
“My sister is a performer too. We got it from our mom, who prioritized the arts.”
Mrs. Hartvigsen realized something as well. “She said, ‘Terrance, you’re good at music; you’re good at theater; you should do something called ‘musical theater,’” he recalls. “I had never heard of that.”
She encouraged him to audition for Booker High’s musical theater program. “I did,” he says, “and the rest is kind of history.”
Lead Role: Community Service
Terrance spent “four amazing years” in Booker High’s Visual and Performing Arts program, where teachers like Scott Keys and Candace Artim—now peers in arts education—helped shape his development. Next, he earned his BFA in acting from University of Central Florida, then headed north to act professionally in places like Atlanta and Ithaca, NY. But Terrance made the bulk of his early professional career in tiny Abingdon, Va. (population 8,000) at the historic Barter Theatre. “It was supposed to be a 15-month contract,” he says, “and I wound up spending about 10 years on and off there.”
Tucked in the southwest corner of Virginia, Abingdon may be small, but Barter—running over 90 years strong as a professional theater—draws upward of 120,000 patrons a year. Terrance joined as an actor doing theater primarily for young audiences, and that’s where he discovered that his love for acting was really rooted in service. “We do this to serve a community, to serve the story, to serve the playwrights,” he says. “All of that stuff comes before ‘to serve us as the performer.’” That realization marked a professional turning point.
During the social unrest of 2020, Terrance says, Barter decided it needed to prioritize amplifying Black stories and storytellers. That led to a new program called Black Stories Black Voices, which Terrance headed up. Through the pandemic, he also helped Barter remain open by staging plays at an old drive-in theater. Someone who got to see Terrance’s innovative and award-winning work firsthand was Ross Egan. At the time, he was Barter’s managing director, a role he’s held at Asolo Rep since mid-2023.
When the education position opened up here, Ross encouraged Terrance to throw his hat in the ring. He applied, interviewed extensively, and was offered the job. “So, I came back home,” he says. Terrance’s mom was thrilled, of course. Though he’d performed in over 40 productions in his career by then, she’d only seen him once professionally. Also important to Terrance: “Asolo Rep was always in our backyard.” Yet, while he’d enjoyed opportunities like Booker’s VPA and proximity to the prestigious Asolo Rep, he knew that “the theater” still can feel a world away, even to those who live just beyond its doors. And he’s already changing that.
Aspiring for Excellence
For starters, Terrance has focused on how Asolo Rep can best serve different communities within our larger community. That includes homing in on where Asolo Rep fits and what the community really wants from the theater. “I never want us to be anywhere that we’re not wanted or needed,” he says.
For example, Sarasota offers a lot of camps and classes—many more than when Terrance grew up here—which is amazing, he says. “But what does that mean for us? What is it that we uniquely offer that makes a young person say, ‘Oh, I want to go to Asolo’?”
He’s not shy about pointing people toward one of Asolo Rep’s counterparts, either, if it offers the right fit. “That’s also community building,” Terrance says. He mentions Justin Gomlak at the Van Wezel and Thayer Greenberg at The Sarasota Players as colleagues who often share ideas and referrals. “If a young person or an adult is taking a class or wants to come see a play, whether that’s here or at another institution, that’s good for us,” he says. “Because that means people still want to see theater and want to do theater, right?”
Excellence is another Asolo Rep hallmark for which Terrance strives. That starts at the top, with Producing Artistic Director Peter Rothstein, and flows to all corners of the organization. “I want what we do [in education] to match what we do on the stage,” says Terrance. “They’ve got to match. If they’re killing it in the business office, we’ve got to be killing it in Education & Engagement!”
“It’s so cool that I work at a place where people take what they do seriously, and love what they do, and strive for excellence.”
That’s why you’ll find Terrance and his team all over the community. He does a teaching residency at Booker High with seniors. Last year, he did a monologue workshop as they prepared for their senior recital. “I want to give them access,” he says. “That’s what I wanted when I was a senior at Booker, just the chance to be seen. I never want us to feel like this institution that isn’t approachable. If I can provide opportunities where a young person at Booker can say, ‘Asolo came to us. They sat in my class and gave me feedback,’ I want to do that.”
“It means so much to see him back in our community, inspiring students and teachers and giving back with the same joy and passion that always set him apart,” says former teacher Mrs. Hartvigsen. “I am so honored to call him my colleague and my friend!”
Terrance’s Education team is also part of Second Sundays at Sarasota Art Museum, teaching a 30-minute acting class for kids as part of the free family programming offered all day. “By the time they get to us, they are ready to move their body and use their voice,” he says. The team also does audition workshops for the public, exposing community members to helpful insights from professionals like Associate Artistic Director Cat Brindisi. For Asolo Rep’s professional productions, Cat sees 700-800 auditions a year, Terrance notes. To offer aspiring artists in the community access to her insights is invaluable.
All the Community’s a Stage
“I think a lot of education and engagement is meeting people where they are,” says Terrance. “Not everyone can come here, so we’ve got to engage them by going to them.” Perhaps the best example is Asolo Rep on Tour.
For the 2025 season, the touring program brought two shows to nine cities across five Florida counties, reaching nearly 10,000 audience members. One show was Shakespeare45, an ingenious and energetic Shakespeare sampler with modern sensibilities. It was designed for middle- and high-school students and fits into a 45-minute class period. Terrance conceived and directed the show himself. A fast-paced celebration of Shakespeare’s “greatest hits,” it blends iconic scenes, sonnets, and soliloquies to show students how 400 years ago the Bard coined phrases and influenced language that we still use today. At the same time, it illuminates how language is still evolving and transforming today, including they ways that the students themselves use it.
“A lot of education and engagement is meeting people where they are. Not everyone can come here, so we’ve got to engage them by going to them.”
The other show on tour was a delightful adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which invited K-6 students to embark on a brave adventure of imagination. And the two shows didn’t only go to schools. They were staged everywhere from the Bishop Museum in Bradenton to the pavilion at Waterside Place in Lakewood Ranch and even Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales! “Theater can be done anywhere, in any setting,” says Terrance. “We want people to say “Oh…this is what theater is—or can be. I like theater.”
Once they do, and they’re hooked, of course, he wants to bring them to Asolo Rep’s own spaces. Terrance mentions a recent encounter with a gentleman who thought the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, where Asolo Rep is housed, was a movie theater. “He’s lived here for 14 years, and he had no idea that people were performing live on stage,” Terrance says. “Being able to give him a tour and show what happens here—that’s education and engagement to me.
“Theater is for all,” Terrance continues. “The model we’re embodying right now is ‘theater starts with you.’ The goal is to take what we do to people, get them interested, bring them here, and make them fall in love with the theater—so they say, ‘I’ve got to be a subscriber and and advocate, because I can’t imagine my life without plays.’”
Learn more about Asolo Rep’s immersive education and outreach programs here >>
