New COO has big plans for theater

Changes at the Garden Theatre continue as the community venue announced a new leader.

Keith Davenport was named the theater’s new chief organizational officer Thursday, June 8. 

In his role, Davenport will provide the leadership, inspiration and strategic direction to enable the establishment to achieve its annual and long-term goals for artistic excellence, financial sustainability and community engagement. 

With the new fiscal year kicking off this month, the Garden Theatre also elected six new board members to its leadership selection. These include Rich Taylor, chair; David Baldree, vice-chair; Todd Wheeler, treasurer; and David Romano, secretary.

Taylor said the theater is “extremely fortunate” Davenport has taken the role.

“He brings a remarkable and extensive level of global experience and expertise in entertainment and production with the added bonus that he is a well-known member of the community and understands the Garden Theatre,” Taylor said. “The value the theater gains from his knowledge, experience and professionalism is unprecedented.”

Davenport recently served as a member of the Garden Theatre board as chair of the programming and partnerships committee.To transition to his new role, he has resigned from the board.

“I’ve always been very vocal on the board; I’ve always had strong opinions kind of in my career,” he said. “I’ve been of the space that we get better when people speak up and have opinions and share those opinions. … We can’t dismiss the fact that the year has been a great learning (experience) for us as a theater. But with that learning, I also wanted to make sure that we were not going to lose any of the momentum that we’ve had from the last year.” 

The theater halted producing live performances in August to allow its board and staff to conduct an internal review of operations from a strategic growth perspective.

Upon reflecting back on the assessment period, Davenport said a key piece for him is making sure the theater is administratively running a great, smooth operation. He said this includes scheduling, programming, making sure the staff feel informed and knowing the theater is matching its production schedule to its workforce. He also wants to look at how the theater is reaching out to partners and inspiring them to give back to the community. 

“It seemed to me like the perfect space when the board was looking at, ‘OK, how do we identify the right person,’” he said of the new position. “It was going to take a very unique person to heal the spaces that are here, but also has the same amount of passion and drive that I have for this space. So, I think for me, my responsibilities are definitely much more operational, but it’s about keeping our community motivated with the arts. It’s about having someone that is going to be the biggest cheerleader for the arts, and that’s what I think I bring to it.”

Davenport said the theater currently is looking at every bit of the programming, storytelling and what people experience when they walk through the door.

“When you come in here into this space; I look at this space as the heartbeat of Winter Garden and Plant Street, and that can’t be just what’s happening in this space, it has to be something that works for every single business in this community,” he said. “I see a vision where we’re looking at every single line of business that we’re working in and we’re saying, ‘How do we make better partners of the people that we are serving?’”