Sheldon Epps, artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, is known as an eclectic, versatile, and highly respected director who has worked in regional theatres around the country. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he was born in Los Angeles and lived in Compton until he was 11.
Whether directing new plays or classics, musicals or straight plays, Epps is seen as adept, insightful, and professional. While he has created and directed a number of plays about the African-American experience, including Blues in the Night and Play On!, he has also directed successful productions of Stoppard's The Real Thing, Shakespeare, and most recently, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Epps began his career as an actor in New York and in regional theatre after graduating from Carnegie-Mellon. He was co-founder and associate artistic director of the Off-Broadway theatre the Production Company, and started his directing work there. In regional theatre, Epps has directed at the Guthrie, the Old Globe, Manhattan Theatre Club, Cleveland Playhouse, and others. In 1983, he conceived and directed the musical revue Blues in the Night, which received numerous Tony and other nominations, and has had over 125 productions in regional theatres. In 1996, he conceived and directed the Duke Ellington-inspired musical, Play On!, which enjoyed runs at several prominent regional theatres as well as on Broadway and has now made its way back to Epps' home at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Prior to his appointment in September, 1997, as artistic director at the Pasadena Playhouse-a position that had been vacant for five years-Epps was associate artistic director at the Old Globe in San Diego. Epps also has a thriving career as a television director, having directed episodes of Frasier, Evening Shade, The Smart Guy, and Sister, Sister.
While some of his work has been regarded as controversial-particularly his 1997 production of Mister Rickey Calls a Meeting, which reportedly provoked some subscriber cancellations-Epps has enjoyed strong support from his board and subscribers, and, along with outgoing executive director Lars Hansen, has solidified the strong financial and subscriber base of the theatre.
In between rehearsals for Play On!, Epps sat down with Back Stage West to discuss his tenure and his visions for the future of the Playhouse.
Back Stage West: You have said about the Pasadena Playhouse that "A theatre's history can only inspire you, not sustain you."
Sheldon Epps: Yes. It's a very rich, inspiring history, certainly a kind of roller coaster. There have been many regimes, but throughout it has been a theatre producing on and off for 83 years, which makes it one of the longest functioning theatres in the country. While it's inspiring, you can't really make a reputation based on what the theatre did 40 or 50 years ago. I always say that a theatre's reputation is based on what it's doing at eight o'clock tonight.
BSW: Part of the challenge for the theatre in general is the changing direction and demographics of the audience. How does that fit into your vision of the future of the Playhouse?
Epps: All theatres have been sustained by a subscription audience that is constantly growing older and has now grown quite old. So we have to market ourselves and program our season so we appeal to younger audiences. I am not one who believes that price is a problem-that theatre is too expensive for younger audiences. Maybe it's true for Broadway theatre, where ticket prices are $85. I don't think $35-$40 is a negligible ticket price-I wish it were cheaper-but I've seen young people spend $50 out drinking or for a meal without blinking an eye. (I'm talking about the 40-year-olds or late 30-year-olds who have the money to spend on leisure, but who are simply not in the habit of going to the theatre.)
So I have to program the theatre with material that is appealing to them, about things going on in their lives, like The Real Thing, or a new play we are doing next year called The Kiss at City Hall, or by doing classics in such a way or with actors that will appeal to them. It is a real challenge and is just something that we have to keep plugging away at.
BSW: However, there must be a positive to side to that-to considering the plays you would like to see and then trying to match them with your audiences.
Epps: You have to work in both directions. It would be nice in this job to say, "Oh, these are the plays I'd like to do," but I don't think anybody gets to do that anymore. I don't face any more restrictions than any other artistic director, but with less government and corporate money, you've got to be more conscious of box office, and be more responsible to the subscription audience. It would be irresponsible of me to come in and start running this theatre and chase that audience away.
That doesn't mean I can't ever push them or challenge them a little bit, but we also have to give them some things that are satisfying. I can do that without resentment because, for example, The Importance of Being Earnest is a play that is tremendously satisfying both to a subscription audience and to me as an artistic director and a director. As long as you do some of those plays that one might somewhat derisively refer to as "chestnuts" in a new way that energizes them and makes them feel contemporary, I don't have any problem doing that. I'll take a good Oscar Wilde play or a Tennessee Williams play over a mediocre new play any time.
BSW: Speaking of picking new plays, or of selecting your season in general, what are some of the factors you consider?
Epps: My programming as an artistic director is very much a reflection of my appetite as a director. When I was freelancing, I never wanted to be boxed in to doing one kind of play, particularly as a black man. I never wanted to be considered a black director. I always wanted to be a good director who has the good fortune, from my point of view, to be a black man. So I worked very hard to cover all the bases as a freelance director. I did plays by black writers, but I also did Hedda Gabler. I did musicals by or about black performers, but I also did Shakespeare and new plays and Chekhov. The programming I do here at the Playhouse is a reflection of that kind of personal appetite for a wide-ranging, eclectic season of plays.
The other thing I look for is plays that have big, fat juicy parts that people are going to want to play. You know, it was not hard to cast The Importance of Being Earnest because that play has a bunch of roles that actors are very, very attracted to. So I really think of it also as a kind of actors' theatre and that I'm out to choose the material that will serve the acting community.
BSW: There is always that challenge in Los Angeles of trying to attract wonderful actors to the stage who are busy elsewhere, whether you're doing it for marquee value or for good artistic reasons.
Epps: You always have to try to do it for the latter. The moment you go casting plays just for marquee value, you are in trouble. You can't really depend on it, because if a big movie comes along, for the most part, they're going to take it (Although there are people like Shirley Knight or Annette Bening who when they make a commitment to you will honor that commitment.) But you can't cast a play badly just because there is somebody in it who's going to sell well. Then you're defeating the purpose.
BSW: You have said that two of your goals at the Playhouse were to strengthen the development process and to initiate a second stage program. What progress can you report?
Epps: We're still talking about it. Certainly one of the things that we had to do was to stabilize the fiscal basis of the theatre and clean up some financial problems. We've come a long way with that through our fundraising efforts and particularly through the re-creation of the board of directors, who are now tremendously supportive. So now that we've accomplished that, we can move on to some bigger dreams. At the top of the list is the second stage. Literally, I just had a lunch meeting about that today and we've identified a space in another part of Pasadena, which is a healthy thing, because it will expose us to that younger audience we were talking about. We're very much trying to raise the money to get it in operation.
BSW: Can you tell us what the space is?
Epps: It's not a space that you would know. But I can say that it is in Old Town Pasadena and it's a great opportunity to tap into the foot traffic there and the audience that is already spending a lot of money on leisure-time activities. It would give us a broader range of season possibilities because we would probably try to do a three- to four-play season over there. There are some plays that are more comfortable in a smaller space. Our space is beautiful, but it's big, and you can't do everything in there. So it would allow us to stretch out and do some alternative theatricality. We might do performance art or cabaret over there. And it would be a space we could use for readings and workshops, which is a little hard to do on the main stage.
BSW: What are some of your other visions for the future, for example, your outreach and educational programs?
Epps: I think it's vitally important not just to have classes, but to bring students to the theatre, so they have an authentic experience of what we do. We recently had our first student matinee in many years, and it was great for the actors and great for the kids. I would also like to have a real conservatory program. I think there is a gap in training for young actors between a good undergraduate or graduate program and the professional theatre. It would be modeled a little bit after the program at the Old Globe, where the M.F.A. students were a very active part of the Old Globe production process, performing roles in plays. Here we could offer a first-rate training program with working professionals, plus an opportunity for students to come from a training program and get their work seen in a professional theatre.
BSW: How would you set up something like that?
Epps: It would be similar to the Young Vic Company. You could call it the Young Playhouse Company for lack of a better word. It would be a group of young actors who would actually stay with the theatre for a period of perhaps two years and be involved in all of our work. Hopefully, that would be a way that we could use the second space. I would try to gear a subscription series toward younger players. For example, we could have a 22-year-old playing King Lear. I would never want, nor could we sustain, a permanent acting company here, but it would be kind of an adjunct young resident company.
BSW: Your executive director, Lars Hansen, recently left to become president and CEO of Theatre LA. Can you comment on his contribution to the Playhouse and what his departure means for you?
Epps: Lars was here for over 12 years and deserves a great deal of credit for keeping it alive and going through very difficult times. And he deserves credit for putting together a staff that is competent and dedicated. Because of that, we have not stumbled when Lars moved on to a job that is attractive to him and that, frankly, is a service both to this theatre and to the greater theatrical community. Fortunately, while we are going to do a search for a managing director, we don't feel the staff will fall apart.
BSW: Prior to becoming artistic director, you directed Mister Rickey Calls a Meeting at the Playhouse. It was reported that a number of subscribers complained and cancelled their subscriptions after that production. Looking back, what are your thoughts on that controversy?
Epps: Well, it was something of a tempest in a teapot . While there was some truth to some of the facts, it was never as big an issue as it was reported to be. It was reported that thousands of subscribers abandoned the Playhouse because the theatre was doing too much work by or about African-Americans. That was never true. There were never thousands of people who refused to subscribe. There were some.
In truth, we get, even today, some complaints from people who think the theatre is doing too much black work. In response, I point out the fact that, in a six play season, we have done one play by an African-American writer. If someone thinks that one out of six is too much, that shows me quite clearly how many they want to see done. So there are literally I would say five or six people out of 15,000 subscribers who feel that way, and they should cancel their subscriptions and go to a theatre where everybody on the stage looks like them. But as long I am here, that's not going to be this theatre.
The flip side of that story is that even when it was reported that a few people were leaving, some of the works, like Sisterella, Blues in the Night and Old Settler, that deal with the African-American culture were the most successful things that the theatre has ever done. So clearly there is an audience that wants to see that work, including most of our subscription audience.
BSW: People don't realize what a diverse community this is.
Epps: Yes. People think of the "little old lady from Pasadena," meaning the little old white lady. But you walk down Colorado Boulevard in Old Town on a Friday or Saturday, and you're walking through one of the most wonderfully diverse communities in America. That's one of the reasons I'm not just happy to work here as artistic director, but to live here as well.
BSW: Play On!, which you conceived and directed, is the next production at the Playhouse. Why did it take so long to get here?
Epps: I have a very practical answer to that. It's a great big Broadway musical and on a larger scale than, at the moment, we do here. So it's not something that we could have done on our own, and even with a co-producing partner it pushes our resources. I certainly wanted the show to be seen in Los Angeles and since I'm here as artistic director, I certainly prefer it to be in my own theatre. So it was a matter of bringing enough elements together so that we could afford it. It's still more expensive than anything else we're doing.
BSW: Play On! had mixed reviews on Broadway but has had a lot of success in regional theatre. How do you feel about the play's journey to the Playhouse?
Epps: As you said, the show's life has been sustained through resident theatre companies. It was born at the Old Globe, and after not a long run in New York, Robert Falls at the Goodman was brave enough to do the show up there and it turned into a big box office success. As time goes on, big musicals in New York more and more can only be sustained by big corporations. It makes it hard for a small show like Play On! to compete with shows that have millions of dollars in advertising. But thank God for regional theatres. My other show, Blues in the Night, is testimony to that. People think that because it's been around so long and has had so many productions that it was a big hit in New York. It was never a big hit in New York. It was well-received by a lot of critics, but it was not a commercial success. The 15-year life of Blues in the Night is due entirely to the fact that it has had something like 125 regional theatre productions.
BSW: What about the creative side of developing a new musical?
Epps: It's tough. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. It's the most challenging-and in the moments when you get it right, the most rewarding-thing that you can do because you've got to bring so many elements together. I would say that musicals are made or broken by looking at them and being able to tell that all the people in the room are talking to each other. But when you see that things are fighting each other, they don't work. Michael Bennett used to say, "We should all stop being so critical, because there's nothing harder than getting five minutes right." And that's actually very true. To get five minutes really perfect is very tough.
BSW: You are also busy directing television. How do you find the time for it all?
Epps: Well, I make time. I'm not always sure how I do that. With episodic television, it's a short season. I was lucky enough to a lot of it last year, about 12-13 episodes. I do primarily half-hour shows, and I enjoy it because it's like a little play.
BSW: There have been a lot of changes in regional theatres in the past few years. What about the future of regional theatre?
Epps: All the changes have not necessarily been for the better. Nobody can ignore box office responsibility in the way artistic directors used to be able to. You have to sell tickets now. On the one hand, that makes you a little more careful, but it also pushes you to be a little more daring, because you sell tickets by creating exciting theatre. If you succeed, it not only sells tickets but gives a life beyond that production, which then can have a return for your theatre. The classic model, of course, is Chorus Line, which sustained the New York Shakespeare Festival for many years. But you do have to run a theatre a little more like a business.
The other challenge is that people have more and more available in their living rooms. We really have to figure out what is it that we can do that makes it imperative for people to get up off their couch, get in their cars, and drive to the theatre. I believe that you'll never be able to substitute for the one-to-one contact an audience has with an actor. But we've also got to learn to use technological resources better without giving up those things that make it theatre.
BSW: Do you see any wonderful new playwrights out there or are we in a lull?
Epps: I don't think we're in a lull. People talk about that all the time, but then somebody will suddenly come along and write a wonderful play. As long as I've been in the theatre, and long before, people have been talking about how the theatre is dying. And here we are talking about that again. Theatre is not dead and it's not dying and I don't think it's going to. There's always going to be the desire for a certain number of us crazy people to want to create theatre. And thank goodness there's always going to be a big desire for people to want to come in contact with the live theatrical experience. It's always going to be different from anything else you can do and, from my point of view, slightly more exciting and slightly more passionate. BSW