One of the fathers of Central Florida’s artistic community is turning 70 this month. Terry Olson heads up the Orange County Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, in a role he calls Chief Arts Instigator. He’s been fulfilling that role most of his life, in fact. He helped found iconic theatrical institutions like SAK Comedy Lab in downtown Orlando, along with more recently-established favorites like FusionFest.
He credits Central Florida’s thriving arts scene to a unique brew of three special elements.
Terry Olson:
Theme parks, which bring trained theater people and other artists here; UCF, the largest Theatre Department in Florida; And thirdly, the Fringe Festival, which I was able to help get started and which allowed theater people to not wait for some one or two theaters in town to do something, but to say, hey, I want to do it, let's do it and put together a theater or perform at the Fringe Festival. But a number of those organizations also became theaters.
Nicole Darden Creston:
So you really are the "chief arts instigator," the catalyst that brought all of these groups together?
Terry Olson:
Yes, I say that I have three hats and one of them is convening or matching or putting the right people with the right things, because my biggest asset for the county is I've been here for years and years. So I know, "You want to start a theatre company, oh, you should check with this [organization]," or "You want to do that, you should start with this." So that convener, ambassador to and for the arts. The county's been very supportive of the arts, and probably much more aware of the arts, having had me around, talking to them for 20 years. (laughter) And then also administrator of our programs.
Nicole Darden Creston:
I'm curious about what you think about some recent developments regarding the state of Florida taking issue with performances of drag shows and things like that. Are you running into any friction there?
Terry Olson:
We live in kind of a bubble. And it's partly because we have people from all over coming here. We do business with, we become friends with, we work with people that are different from us. Now, if you live in a community that's all people like you, you are more likely to think that other lifestyles or other opinions are not as good as yours. We always think that we're the best, we're "better than." There's nothing like travel or people traveling to you to help one's eyes be open to the fact that the world is a big place. It's much bigger than my little gated community, it's much bigger than my little rural town. I guess the solution for those who don't like things to be different than the way they are is...to annihilate the rest of the world? No. If they really thought about that, they probably wouldn't want that either. But that's the kind of impulse. Now we are working on a multicultural awareness program to take to schools that will have three goals. The first one is for older students to understand that they have a heritage, to know what that heritage is, and to be comfortable with that is what brought them to who they are now. And to learn and share about each other's cultures, so they're aware of others. And then thirdly, to become more creative and innovative by working together with cultural influences from more than just their own heritage.
Nicole Darden Creston:
What is this program? Where is it on its developmental journey?
Terry Olson:
Well, Universal has given us a grant to develop it. In the next month, we should be fleshing out specifically how we will do that. There has been some concern like, will schools let us in there to talk about things? And the response to that is we work within the Sunshine State Standards, talking about facts and individual cases. There's no problem with that. Now, some people would want to draw conclusions that might sound like the kind of conclusions of critical race theory or something like that. That's up to individuals. We won't be drawing conclusions like that or philosophizing. But as I said, about traveling or living in a place where people come here, it's your own personal experiences that will shape your understanding of the world. There are systemic things in our world, in our country, that affect how people react to things. What I am saying is we can work with individuals. It's the role of politicians to deal with systems and to make needed changes in those realms. But those happen when you get a critical mass of people that have their own perspective, based on what they know, which is more than what they knew before they were exposed to whatever the information is that we're giving.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Sometimes, it seems to me that arts and culture can get into places personally that perhaps other realms of communication can't quite reach.
Terry Olson:
Certainly, there are multiple intelligences. We primarily operate on the rational intellectual realm, where A plus B equals C. But our emotional learning is very often fostered by the arts. And the arts are a safe place in which to do that, in which to be exposed to other ways of thinking and living and other emotions that one might not experience in normal life.
Nicole Darden Creston:
As a journalist, I often think about what I would like to leave behind, so to speak, what my legacy would like to be. Do you have any thoughts on that for yourself?
Terry Olson:
Well, I would say that my personal life mission is to create dynamic events that enliven people. So I guess I would like to leave behind a community that is alive, that's exciting, experiencing the fullness of humanity and our creature-ness in the universe. I'd also like to say that it's really important for all of us to get outside of our comfort zones. So there's a lot of people that think like us here in Orange County, in the arts community, but we need to not just be in the arts community, we need to be able to talk to, say, the service workers and understand their life and perspectives. Because everybody is not like us. Although there may be a predominant political party here, it's not like the entire community is that. And when the state issues rulings that seem contrary to what we want, it doesn't behoove anyone to label those people as evil. There are people in the world that want to do bad. But, it is really easy for us to extremize. We see in our country, extremes happening - the extreme right and extreme left. And to be successful as a society, we can't continue to polarize so much.
Nicole Darden Creston:
That can be a tall order, sometimes.
Terry Olson:
Definitely. Like at FusionFest. We have lots of flags, of countries, of states, of affinity groups, from the Christian flag to the Pride flag to the Cub Scout flag, things that people have said, "This is my heritage." The question comes up, what if someone wants to carry a nazi flag?
Nicole Darden Creston:
Has that ever come up?
Terry Olson:
It has not come up. But our discussion about it has. Let's be closer to home, let's say the Confederate battle flag. If a person says that is their heritage, I would be interested in asking them what that means to them and having a conversation about what it might mean to somebody else. But I am not in the place where I would say "Absolutely not, because I have all these conclusions about the facts that I can see." And that would be very controversial. We have to be able to go into difficult places.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Yes, but that takes time and willingness. And those things may be hard to come by in our very fast moving culture.
Terry Olson:
Yes, but we have to do it.
Nicole Darden Creston:
You are approaching your 70th birthday, happy birthday to you. Are you musing about anything in particular as this milestone approaches?
Terry Olson:
Not really. I love what I do. There's maybe more to do of that then I would love to have at this point. But I'm just keeping on keeping on.
