Carrie Lund Cacioppo

Carrie Lund Cacioppo a longtime resident of Southwest Florida, Carrie founded professional theatre on Sanibel Island by opening the Pirate Playhouse in 1984. She received a distinguished citizen award in 1987 and a lifetime achievement award in 1997 from the Sanibel-Captiva Chamber of Commerce, as well as Florida Weekly’s 2011 Best Actress and 2012 Power Women of Lee County.

Carrie also served as a theatre faculty member at Florida Gulf Coast University for three years, taught theatre for Cypress Lake Middle School for the Arts, and directed SOURCE Teen Theatre for Planned Parenthood. After Carrie received a BFA in Acting and Directing from Ithaca College, she initiated services for the visually and hearing impaired that received international attention as Resident Artist at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. She served as Company Manager and acting member at the American Ibsen Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA and Managing Director for the Player’s Circle at LaGuardia College in NYC. Regionally she’s performed with theatres in New York, Vermont, North Carolina, Pennsylvania at Three River Shakespeare Festival, was Narrator for Ellis Island with the Naples Philharmonic and several PBS Untold Stories in Florida.

Her dedication to theatre for young audiences is realized through the many programs she developed and performed over the years: touring children’s theatre throughout New England with the Green Mountain Guild in 1978, 1982, and1983, and the tri-state area from her hometown of Erie, PA with The Company she created in 1977, the 1996-98 Pirate Playhouse Shakespeare Initiative, Co-Chair of the 2000 Lee County Arts for a Complete Education Coalition.

In the past 30 years, Carrie produced and starred in over 100 productions. She’s appeared in all nine of Florida Rep’s nationally acclaimed productions reviews by The Wall Street Journal: The House of Blue Leaves, The Cocktail Hour, One Slight Hitch, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Little Foxes, God of Carnage, Sylvia, You Can’t Take It With You, and Dancing at Lughnasa, as well as the regional premieres of Heart Song, The Last Romance, and Miracle on South Division Street. Other selected Florida Rep credits include: Doublewide, Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End, Becky’s New Car, The Unexpected Guest, Tribes, Clybourne Park, August: Osage County, Other Desert Cities, Enchanted April, Rabbit Hole, To Kill a Mockingbird, Noises Off, The Tale of the Allergists Wife, Rumors, All My Sons, I’m Not Rappaport, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Same Time Next Year, and Private Lives.

Carrie is married to Florida Rep Founder Robert Cacioppo, and proudly produced two independent college graduates: her son, Matthew, and daughter, Julia.