After transforming Florida Studio Theatre from a traveling acting troupe that brought shows to prisons, migrant workers and other under((served communities into a multi-million dollar company with five theater venues and apartment buildings – and more of both on the way – Producing Artistic Director Richard Hopkins is preparing to step aside and welcome new leadership over the next couple of years.

In a long-planned transition, Hopkins will become Executive Producer while his wife, Managing Director Rebecca Hopkins, will become Executive Director as the theater begins a national search for new artistic and managing directors to succeed them. At that point, Richard Hopkins will have led the theater for nearly 50 years.

It could be considered something of a seismic shift in the local arts scene because Richard Hopkins is the longest-serving arts leader in the area, with one of the longest track records in the country. Richard and Rebecca Hopkins prefer to think of it as a continued evolution of the theater.

“That’s what we’re hoping for. Nobody is going to do what Richard has done,” Rebecca Hopkins said. “They’re going to do what they do. That’s what we want. We want an evolution. Often people come in with a direction for a theater, but we’ve built 52 years of trust with this audience and want to maintain that. It will evolve and they will have a massive impact on this theater.”

Richard Hopkins said that after a celebration for his 25th anniversary more than two decades ago, “people started asking me when I was going to retire and did we have a succession plan. We started talking about it seriously over the last five or 10 years.”

As the company has expanded its theater, cabaret, improv and education programs and grown as a property owner, Richard Hopkins said he has been stepping back bit by bit in some ways, just as Rebecca Hopkins was expanding her role with the theater.

Richard Hopkins also serves as CEO of FST, meaning he is in charge of all its operations and hiring. The board hires the CEO, who is responsible for all other hiring, including the artistic and managing leaders. The board set up a succession plan so that when Richard Hopkins retires, Rebecca will succeed him as CEO.

It is a different system than what is in place at many other professional regional theaters around the country, where boards of directors help determine direction and goals for the artistic and managing directors they hire.

“The first part of the succession plan, which has been in place for years, is that I eventually would take on senior leadership of the company,” Rebecca Hopkins said. “FST has one CEO, Richard. At the end of the day, that’s been really important. I believe in that. I see how it works. We’re always on the same page, and with the board, it’s very clear. You don’t get that weird mommy against daddy thing.”

The announcement is the second major shakeup in the Sarasota arts scene this season. Last fall, Victor DeRenzi announced he would step down as artistic director of Sarasota Opera after 44 years.

FST has hired Management Consultants for the Arts, the same search firm used by Asolo Repertory Theatre when it hired Peter Rothstein three years ago to succeed Michael Donald Edwards as producing artistic director and Ross Egan to succeed Linda DiGabriele as managing director.

In a joint interview, the Hopkins said the plan is to have new leaders in place by the start of the 2027-28 season and to have all four work together for at least a year.

“We’re giving ourselves a year to find the new people and then a year of installing them and me stepping back but still being here,” Richard Hopkins said.

The company is separating oversight of its popular cabaret program from the artistic director’s job. “There’s not an artistic director who could run everything we’re doing, taking on the mainstage, Stage III, cabaret, new play development and education. Not for me because I created most of it, so that’s different,” Richard Hopkins said.

In the immediate future, he said the theater’s growth will be focused on new play development.

“The most important, pressing need in American theater is the development of new playwrights. We need to give them more opportunities and raise more money for productions of new playwrights,” he said. “When we were growing up, there were great playwrights alive and working and today how many are alive and working and writing. Not that many. We’re in this fallow phase right now and it could become permanent if we don’t do something about it.”

The timing and what’s next

After he steps down, Richard Hopkins said he plans to spend time on the beach and travel and start gathering thoughts on running a theater.

“There are a lot of things that I want to put on paper, about what we’ve done and how we do it that are different from how other theaters work,” he said. “There are things that we have created here that others have picked up, from standby tickets to building up subscriptions. Subscriptions are not dead. They have been incrementally whittled away by regional theaters all over America, taking off a little piece here and a little piece there and suddenly the subscription model didn’t work. And we have shown that’s not the case.”

FST sells subscriptions at a great discount to its various series. When coupled with ongoing trust, thousands subscribe months before knowing what shows they will see.

Richard Hopkins said that he has not lost enthusiasm for a job that has changed dramatically since he first arrived in 1980 as an interim artistic director. Jon Spelman, who founded the theater, took a leave of absence and never returned. 

“I’ve never felt I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. “But I’m getting older and looking at the bigger picture, I’m either going to leave alive or leave dead. I should do the wise thing and leave while I’m alive and leave a clean path for the next person coming in. It is that simple.”

He noted how his attitude about his work has changed over the decades.

“When I was in my 20s, all I wanted to do was act. In my 30s, I just wanted to direct. Then I didn’t want to be responsible for finances and I enjoy that Rebecca has picked that up. She’s picked up the real management of marketing and operating the theater. There are bigger things I want to do. I’m not interested in going out and guest directing,. I want to work with people I kow. It’s just time to make way for somebody else,” he said.

The main thing that distinguishes FST from other theaters, he said, is “our connectedness to the community. A lot of other theaters rely on their boards of directors to be the connective tissue to the community, but we are in the community, of the community and serve the community. That’s the way it’s been since we got here.”

That means the theater is looking for different kinds of leaders in the search process.

“We want people to serve Florida Studio Theatre, not to come here as a stepping stone to the next job. That’s a huge difference,” he said. 

Rebecca Hopkins said new leadership structures are emerging in theaters across the country. 

“The old days of an artistic director and a managing director has been broken down left and right. Many theaters have multiple artistic directors. Different places have other management in charge. It keeps evolving,” she said. “This is the pathway we’re taking. The right person will be excited to come in and become part of this, to be part of future leadership of this theater. The person who is more invested in the field than in this theater is not who we are looking for. When we hire someone at FST, it’s not about what can I change, it’s about what can I add.”

The new directors will join a constantly expanding operation, which was once run out of a single building, the historic Sarasota Woman’s Club, that is now home to FST’s Keating Theater. The company operates several buildings across two blocks of downtown Sarasota, and is in the process of building the new McGillicuddy Arts Plaza, an eight-story structure that will include a parking garage, apartments for its visiting artists, rental units for other artists in Sarasota, two cabaret theaters and a new mainstage theater, plus restaurants and a bar.

The building is named for Dennis and Graci McGillicuddy. Dennis is the long-time president of the board of trustees, who said, in a statement that FST has “remained committed to its founding mission; creating theater that is entertaining, challenging and accessible to all. By strengthening our leadership structure and expanding our campus, we are positioning ourselves to meet the evolving needs of our audiences while continuing to support and treasure our artists and serve our community.”