Thirty-two abstract canvases by painter Tom McGrath cover the ceiling, and the floor itself moves. The Alexis and Jim Pugh Theater is the intimate 294-seat house within the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts at 445 South Magnolia Avenue in downtown Orlando, across from City Hall. The room is engineered for shape-shifting: the main floor sits on a manual scissor-lift riser system that reconfigures between standard tiered seating, cabaret tiers with tables, and a flat floor at stage level - theatre one night, banquet room the next. Full theatre mode seats 225 on the orchestra level and 69 in an upper balcony whose aluminium fronts glow with tiny white lights. Technical fittings run deeper than the black-box label suggests: a 21-line single-purchase counterweight fly system, 40-foot battens and a full lighting rig, letting the room stage plays, chamber music, cabaret, education programs and community productions that would be swallowed by the centre's larger halls. The theater opened with the Dr. Phillips Center's first phase in November 2014, named for Orlando philanthropists Alexis and Jim Pugh - Jim chaired the arts center's board through the 613-million-dollar, two-block project that grew to include the 2,711-seat Walt Disney Theater and, from 2022, the acoustically isolated Steinmetz Hall. Within that campus the Pugh serves as the community stage by design: local theatre companies, school showcases and small touring productions share the calendar with corporate events using the flat-floor mode, which takes about 100 for banquets and 160 for receptions. The Seneff Arts Plaza lawn out front and the AdventHealth School of the Arts complete the complex, putting the smallest room of Orlando's arts center at the centre of its busiest block. Backstage the room keeps two dressing rooms of its own, roughly twenty feet square, and the fly rail is operated exclusively by house crew from stage right - small-theatre scale run to the standards of the larger halls next door.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 455 S Orange Avenue, Orlando, United States, 32801

Telephone: 407-358-6603

Website: https://www.drphillipscenter.org

Capacity: 294

Opening Date: 06/11/2014

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