Christine Robison
Credit: Photo collage by Pedro Macias; photos courtesy of Crash Ur Party, Janine Klein and Seth Kubersky

Orlando’s live theater and interactive entertainment community lost one of its foundational members earlier this month when acclaimed actor-director-playwright Christine Robison-Laurence passed away June 2, following a multi-year battle with multiple sclerosis. It’s difficult to think of a stage in Central Florida — from the scrappiest community theaters to billion-dollar theme parks — that wasn’t uplifted by her immense talents across five decades, and news of her passing triggered an outpouring of tributes from her fans, friends and colleagues.

An alumna of Winter Park High School and University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Robison had been an active member of Orlando’s emerging arts community since the early 1980s, and took leadership roles in multiple influential theater companies — including Theatre on Park, Civic Theatre of Central Florida, Tropical Theatre and Theatre Downtown — during more than 45 years of performing, producing and creating educational programs. 

“Chris was a singular talent, well-read on the topics that interested her, and that contributed to her brilliance of creating and portraying characters onstage,” recalls Margaret Nolan, producer of Robison’s award-winning 2006 Fringe show, Lilly and Lila’s Lovely Lesbian Hour, who first became friends with Robison at Tropic Theatre in the mid-1980s. “Offstage, she was a total adventure!”

Rebecca Fisher Swanberg, a longtime collaborator of Robison’s, remembered being “lucky enough” to be cast alongside her in a touring Theater for Young Audience production during the early 1990s. “I’d already enjoyed watching her perform around town. I loved being in her company. Her stories, her intelligence, her many accents, her sharp life observations.” The pair worked together again on Catholic School Girls and The Book of Liz at the 2003 Fringe; Fisher says Robison “loved to out-funny everyone, and she was so good at it.”

David Lee was 17 when Robison was cast as his mother in Titanic; they survived a crashing chandelier together, which cemented their lifelong relationship. “From that day forward she would always say to me, every damn time she saw me: ‘Oh Teddy, Mummy loves you so!,’” wrote Lee, who later directed Robison in Women Behind Bars at Sam Singhaus’ Big Bang nightclub and went to the Edinburgh Fringe with her for Joe’s NYC Bar. “She was a Magical Theatre Wizard in every sense of the word … she brought the Stars and the Moon to every stage that was lucky enough to have her grace it … she touched my heart and my soul and I count myself one of the luckiest to have been invited into her magical and magnificent presence.”

Actress-entrepreneur Janine Klein, another lifelong friend, calls Robison “an incredibly gifted actor. Being on stage with her was one of the great blessings of my life. She was one of the most honest, truthful and caring actors I’ve ever performed with. Her characters were grounded in truth and realism. If you ever witnessed her onstage in a drama, you were one of the lucky ones.”

Although she excelled as a performer and director of scripted shows, Robison’s true gift was for interactive improvisation, which especially shone in her vast volume of work with Sleuths Mystery Dinner Theatre. From performing on cruise ships and in hotels for nearly five years prior to finding their first permanent home, Robison went on to cast, direct and develop scores of Sleuths productions before their closure last year. “I feel like there isn’t a venue or stage in this town where she didn’t perform,” says Laurel Clark, who managed Sleuths for just short of 25 years. “She was a wonderful director as well. She recommended several actors to me at Sleuths and I always ended up hiring them. She had a great eye for talent particularly comedic diamonds in the rough.”

I personally first met Robison and her wife, Alia Laurence, during Theatre Downtown’s 2000 production of The Rocky Horror Show, where they played Magenta and Janet (respectively) while I emceed. The couple then joined the opening cast of SoulFire’s short-lived dinner theater, where I stage-managed Memories and Mayhem and Tony and Tina’s Wedding. She proved to be an anchor of professionalism and reliability — not to mention a font of wicked bullshit-free wit — within a sometimes chaotic environment. “I could never find the words to adequately describe the force of nature that was Chris Robison,” says Stephen Hurst, a fellow SoulFire veteran who also worked with her on his Crash Ur Party interactive events. “She was a powerhouse of talent and a pure joy to be around, both onstage and off.”

In addition to being a key contributor to the growth of Orlando’s theater scene, Robison was a groundbreaking entertainer at both Walt Disney World and Universal Studios from 1993 until just a few years ago. As an early member of EPCOT’s World Showcase players (back when they were contracted by Sak Theater) and later as a member of Disney-MGM Studios’ Citizens of Hollywood, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor and special events teams, she helped develop numerous beloved “streetmosphere” characters, such as “Madame Carlotta,” a ghostly debutante who haunted Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party for a quarter-century. 

Robison was among the first actors hired for Universal Studios Florida, helping workshop the Murder, She Wrote attraction prior to opening, as well as portraying Elvira in the first-ever Halloween Horror Nights (then known as Fright Nights). She opened Diagon Alley as Ollivanders’ top-ranked female wand keeper, where she paired my own elementary-age niece and nephew with their magic wands almost a decade ago.

Despite her health problems, Robison remained involved with her friends’ creative projects. “Even as late as the week she passed, she was pitching me ideas of how to update Lilly and Lila’s Lovely Lesbian Hour to remount for Fringe,” Nolan shares. “I’ve saved her voicemail. She literally called me on Monday night [Memorial Day] during Fringe Awards.” Though she’s now gone, Robison’s indomitable spirit lives on in the generations of younger performers that she nurtured, and the laughter that she created for countless visitors from around the world.

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This article appears in June 17-23, 2026.