Explore the Arts & Culture of the Fort Myers Sanibel Area

Professional Productions

A theater that started in a historic schoolhouse, another in a restored Vaudeville theater and yet other spaces devoted to the charms of live musical theater dot the area’s performance landscape. The 1,871-seat Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall features Broadway musicals and performances by the Southwest Florida Symphony. Harry Connick Jr., Bill Cosby and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast are just a few of the performances in early 2010.

Florida Rep, which is known for high-quality productions featuring equity actors, calls the restored Arcade Theater in downtown Fort Myers home. On Sanibel, the Herb Strauss Schoolhouse Theater’s intimate space feels almost like theater-in-the round. It offers musicals, comedies and revues. The Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre presents professional, musical theater in a warm, family-friendly atmosphere – and the food’s good too.

Art Galleries and More

Sanibel is rightly called an “island of the arts," and in addition to live-performance spaces, has art galleries numbering in the teens, as well as BIG ARTS, a community gallery and performance space. Music, dance, visual arts and theater all find a home there.

The tiny community of Matlacha on the way to Pine Island is dotted with a kaleidoscope of brightly colored galleries with colorful characters inside to match.

Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers offers changing exhibitions of national and local member artists, as well as indoor and outdoor theater space. And the Art League of Bonita Springs offers classes and exhibitions by local artists.