Downtown Orlando’s nightlife has been in an undeniable death spiral of late, plagued by parking issues, vacant venues and violent crime. City Hall’s preferred solution to these problems is to restore vehicular traffic along Orange Avenue and eliminate the “street party” atmosphere.
But this weekend Creative City Project presents an alternate vision, as Immerse shuts down Orange from Central to the Seneff Arts Plaza and fills it for three days with vibrant cultural experiences. Returning for its 10th edition after a three-year hiatus, the arts festival features free performances by brand-name headliners Cirque du Soleil — who will debut a fusion of unicycle and aerial acts from Drawn to Life, dangling above the street — and Blue Man Group, previewing their new permanent Orlando show opening April 3, as well as local companies including Orlando Opera, Central Florida Vocal Arts and the new Orlando Vocal Collective.
However, there’s no bigger draw at Immerse in my book than Broadway star Michael James Scott, an Orlando native best known as the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin. In addition to appearing at EPCOT’s Festival of the Arts, he’s in town to perform a taste of his upcoming concert at Steinmetz Hall, as well as reunite with childhood friend Cole NeSmith, Creative City Project’s founder and artistic director.
I sat down for a conversation about Immerse with the pair — who sang Dickensian Christmas carols together on Church Street as kids — inside Judson’s Live at the Dr. Phillips Center last week, and started by flipping the calendar back to when Scott and I last spoke in late 2020, as he prepared to kick off Orlando’s groundbreaking Frontyard Festival during the depths of COVID.
“It was so unknown and scary and uncertain on so many levels for so many people, and the Frontyard Festival was the one thing of its kind in the country that was actually still being able to program shows and provide entertainment for the community,” Scott recalls. “That happened in Orlando; when I think about it, it really is mind-blowing that it happened, and it really was an outlet at a very scary time for so many people, that we were still able to have some kind of joy in the midst of such uncertainty.”
Although the pandemic taught Scott to “pivot [and] take a breath,” he was overjoyed to return to the cast of Aladdin when Broadway reopened after 19 months. “Audiences came back ready. People were hungry for entertainment. They were hungry for the arts, [for] escapism,” Scott observes. “The biggest change for me, in terms of what I’ve seen in the audiences, has been attention span. We live in a world where we’re on our phones [and] there’s a lot going on around us. To be able to just stop is actually hard for people to do.”
Admission to much of Immerse is completely complimentary, and according to NeSmith, 90% of attendees don’t purchase any type of ticket. A $25 all-access pass gains admission to preferred viewing areas and the Art Park (home to a luminous unicorn slide and other Insta-worthy installations), with VIP and dining event options available.
That affordability — and the return of Immerse to Orlando at all — is entirely due to the “blockbuster grant” Creative City was awarded from the Tourist Development Tax fund for “blockbuster” cultural tourism events.
When Scott takes Immerse’s Dr. Phillips Center Stage on Friday and Saturday night, he’ll be surrounded by dancers and musicians from Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, perched atop five-story-tall scaffolding, and his performance will be punctuated by pyrotechnics. NeSmith says that supersized scale is what Scott’s “city-sized spirit” deserves, in keeping with their mission to “bring truly unique, not-going-to-be-seen anywhere else in the world experiences to Immerse.”
That kind of larger-than-life ambition could intimidate some performers, but Scott seems more than up for it. “When you have that [spectacle] as an artist, then the challenge is figuring out how you push yourself to match that,” he says. “That is a dream of a thing to get to perform with those elements [and] get to make something tailored specifically for Immerse. That is really exciting.”
Back during the peak of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter, Scott told me he was “protesting with joy,” and despite everything that has happened since, he says that still hasn’t changed.
“I’m from a community that cares,” he says. “Orlando provided a place where [he and NeSmith] could meet and be on the same playing field by connecting through arts. So that is why I protest with joy, because it’s been that way since I was a little boy. There’s more that connects us than does not in this world; I believe that with my heart.”
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This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.