The Marco Players

The Marco Players: Community Theatre on Marco Island

The Marco Players was a nonprofit, volunteer-driven community theatre on Marco Island, Florida — a small barrier island better known for its beaches than for its stages. For close to a decade, a room of about eighty-three seats in the Marco Town Center — the island's main shopping plaza, on North Collier Boulevard — turned volunteers into actors and a resort island into a theatre town. The company presented its final seasons through 2021 and has since remained closed.

An intimate playhouse in the Marco Town Center

The venue operated as a community house rather than a commercial road-house. Its small scale, of about eighty-three seats, defined the experience: a small, well-run evening. The location inside the shopping center made access and parking simple for both residents and the island's seasonal visitors.

Programming: comedy, drama, Shakespeare, and concerts

The offering ranged across mainstage comedy and drama, a daytime 'Lunch Box' series, lower-priced Reader's Theater staged readings, tribute concerts, children's productions, and a Shakespeare strand under the Marco Island Shakespeare Festival banner. Among the titles that passed across its stage are:

• The Adventures of Anne Bonny, about the legend of the Golden Age's most famous woman pirate.
• The Tempest, Shakespeare's island romance staged on a real island, within the Shakespeare festival.
• Macbeth, the tragedy of ambition and ruin, also as part of the festival.
• Born Yesterday, Garson Kanin's 1946 comedy of money and awakening.
• On The Farce Day of Christmas, a holiday farce of slamming doors and mistaken identities.
• The James Taylor Experience, a Fire & Rain Band tribute concert to the American songbook.

The most-searched title on the old marquee

The Adventures of Anne Bonny was the most-searched production on the theatre's bill, according to the site. The piece centres on the legend of the Golden Age's most famous woman pirate.

An editorial reference, not an active box office

The current website serves as an editorial reference on the company's productions, its Shakespeare festival, its concerts, and the performing-arts context of Marco Island and Southwest Florida. It does not sell tickets or stage performances. The page gathers what once happened on the island's eighty-three-seat stage and presents itself as a resource for anyone who wants to learn about the theatre's history.