Lifeline Productions adds Atomica Arts co-founders to its management team

Will Leura and Maria Schaedler-Leura have joined Lifeline Productions, the arts nonprofit best known for Scott Ehrenpreis’ one-man show, “Clowns Like Me.”

Leura and Schaedler-Leura are the co-founders of Atomica Arts, a hub offering workshops, bilingual programs and other initiatives to promote the arts and health.

Image courtesy of Sorcha Augustine

At Lifeline, Leura and Schaedler-Leura will be co-executive directors of the nonprofit dedicated to using arts to end the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Leura is the former director of improvisation at Florida Studio Theatre, a post he held for more than a decade. He currently serves as the director of Big Bang Improv and artistic director emeritus of ImprovBoston. 

In addition to holding regular Saturday night performances featuring its improv troupe, FST produces the annual Sarasota Improv Festival, founded in 2009 by FST Managing Director Rebecca Hopkins.

Now in its 14th year, the festival draws improv and comedy troupes — and their fans — from all over the world for a long weekend of nonstop performances.

Leura sits on the boards of CreArte Latino, a Latino cultural and arts community center, and Miss Sarasota Softball, which empowers young women through educational-athletic initiatives.

Through Atomica Arts, Schaedler-Leura designs and implements arts integration programs, culturally responsive teaching models, bilingual initiatives and wellness workshops for schools, nonprofits and community organizations.

Among the local organizations Atomica Arts has worked with are the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, the Sarasota Performing Arts Center Foundation, Focus 5 Inc. and the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County.

Retired marketing executive Joel Ehrepreis founded Lifeline Productions in 2022 to help produce a one-man show, “Clowns Like Me,” starring his son. Scott Ehrenpreis is a Sarasota-based actor who has appeared in such FST productions as “Network,” “The Front Page” and “The Lehman Trilogy.”

Directed and written by FST veteran Jason Cannon, “Clowns Like Me” is a stage production that tells the story of Ehrenpreis’ struggle with mental health issues such as depression, OCD and Autistic Spectrum Disorder, but in a humorous fashion.

“Clowns Like Me” had its first run in 2023 at the Jane B. Cook Theatre in FSU Center for the Performing Arts. An updated version of the play was performed at the Cook Theatre again in May 2024 before moving to New York City for an Off Broadway run.

Along the way, the father-son team got lots of community support, including financial backing from Gulf Coast Community Foundation, Community Foundation of Sarasota, Michael Saunders & Co. and Aviva Senior Living, to name just a few donors.

A video version of “Clowns Like Me” played at the Sarasota Film Festival and the first Sarasota Living Arts Festival in 2024. Lifeline has been screening the film free for college students, including a Jan. 28 event in Bradenton at the State College of Florida Neel Performing Arts Center.

In a video interview, Ehrenreis, Leura and Schaedler-Leura expressed their enthusiasm for working together and promised to reveal a new project at Lifelife Productions soon.