Orange Blossom Award: The Educator Who Rebuilt the Room While Standing In It
by Avery Anderson
A quick reminder of what the Orange Blossom Awards are — in a city full of shiny galas and people congratulating themselves for “raising awareness,” these awards are for the other people.
The ones doing the unglamorous, quietly revolutionary work that actually shifts the ground under our arts community.
Sometimes that’s a volunteer.
Sometimes it’s a backstage legend.
And sometimes — like today — it’s the person who walks into a room mid-shift and somehow builds the future anyway.
Enter Jose Avilés.
When Jose arrived in St. Pete in April 2022 to lead education at American Stage, the department wasn’t just in transition — it was in full identity recalibration. Pre-pandemic, the program ran on improv classes. Post-pandemic, the momentum had dissolved. There was no “returning to normal,” because normal didn’t exist anymore.
Most people would try to glue the old system back together.
Jose didn’t.
He asked, “What does this community actually need now?”
And then he rebuilt the whole thing from scratch.
Acting classes. Playwriting. Dance. Partnerships with national teaching artists who brought new skills and new energy. A trauma-informed framework that treated students like actual human beings navigating an actual world — not just ticket buyers in training.
That alone would’ve earned him applause.
But that’s not why he’s getting an Orange Blossom Award.
Jose pushed the ecosystem itself.
He insisted that BIPOC students see stories onstage that looked like their own lives — championing works like Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans and Familia de Flamingos. He showed this city what it looks like when an education department isn’t an accessory to a theatre… but a cultural engine.
He met the community where it really was, not where a brochure wished it would be.
He changed who felt welcome.
He broadened what “arts learning” meant.
He built programs that will outlive his tenure.
And yes — he did all this without ever being the loudest voice in the room.
Jose has since moved to EPACENTER in East Palo Alto, California, as the Director of Performing Arts, leaving behind a program that’s sturdier, braver, and more honest than the one he inherited. And here’s the kicker: he didn’t get nearly enough credit while he was here — because people doing foundational work rarely do.
So today, we fix that.
The Orange Blossom Award goes to Jose Avilés — for rebuilding an education department, expanding the city’s cultural vocabulary, and proving that real change doesn’t always arrive with a spotlight… but it definitely deserves one.
What Are the Orange Blossom Awards?
A month-long series from The Arts Passport celebrating the people and organizations whose quiet, steady work strengthens Tampa Bay’s arts ecosystem. No applications. No campaigning. Just community-driven recognition, released daily in December.
Other Orange Blossom Stories:
December 1
by Avery Anderson Every arts community has its stars — the people onstage, the names in the program, the ones audiences come to see. But Tampa Bay’s arts ecosystem runs on something deeper: the quiet, unglamorous, fiercely devoted labor of people who rarely get recognized. That’s why The Arts
Tampa Bay Arts Passport
December 2
by Avery Anderson Today’s Orange Blossom Award goes not to an individual, but to an unlikely coalition — four Tampa Bay theaters that came together this fall to help a much smaller organization make a very public case for its future. Dunedin Public Theater is barely two years old — volunteer-run,
Tampa Bay Arts Passport
December 3
by Avery Anderson Today’s Orange Blossom Award goes to someone whose work rarely draws attention, yet hundreds of St. Pete readers feel its ripple effects every single month — whether they realize it or not. Before most book clubs at Tombolo Books ever meet, before the emails go out or
Tampa Bay Arts Passport
December 4
by Avery Anderson Today’s Orange Blossom Award goes to someone whose work is so woven into Tampa’s arts landscape that many people don’t realize they’ve been shaped by it — not directly, but through the countless stories she’s helped bring into the world. Long before a
Tampa Bay Arts Passport
December 5
by Avery Anderson Every day in December, The Arts Passport is recognizing someone whose quiet, persistent work holds this region’s arts scene together — the kind of people who rarely get applause but absolutely deserve it. We call them the Orange Blossom Awards: small spotlights for the folks who keep
Tampa Bay Arts Passport
December 6
by Avery Anderson In nearly every corner of Tampa Bay theatre, from splashy musicals to the smallest black box, there’s one person quietly shaping how audiences see the work — long after the curtain falls. He’s not onstage. He’s not giving notes. He’s usually somewhere in the
Tampa Bay Arts Passport
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