Ron Sossi, founder and artistic director of the 38-year-old Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in West L.A., is a maverick in the best senses of that word. This Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award winner has produced and directed edgy, risk-taking theatre locally for almost four decades. He had the guts to walk away from a promising career at Hollywood movie studios to roll up his sleeves and toil in the fiscally challenging realm of 99-Seat theatre.
"I'm a renegade," he says. "I worked in the [film] industry for about seven years. I was an executive producer at ABC and associate prod on a series. And I was at Paramount, in program development. It wasn't satisfying to me creatively, and I didn't like the lifestyle. I became very frustrated and started the theatre really as a fresh creative outlet, then ended up leaving film entirely to devote full time to it. And here I am."
With company-produced efforts, rentals, and KOAN, the company's experimental ensemble troupe, the Odyssey's three theatres remain filled almost continually, staging works including Shakespeare, international contemporary playwrights, and up-and-coming American playwrights.
Sossi is outspoken about a trap he feels actors moving to L.A. fall into. "Too many get caught up in the Hollywood merry-go-round," he says. "I'm speaking of when they basically stop acting, spending all of their time on the phone with agents, taking pictures, buzzing around, and networking. They end up basically just doing all of that." He feels that joining a theatre company is a good solution for some to keep in touch with and hone their craft.
He has certain things he looks for when he is casting a show: "I always look for the quality of the actor. I'm not very concerned about the material they bring; I'm concerned that they're on top of it, and that they have a point of view, a take on it that is really their own—even if I consider it wrong. I look for uniqueness; I often say to people in my acting classes that of the actors who audition at the Odyssey, maybe 10 to 20 should get out of acting. Another 70 percent to 80 percent fall into a category where you would say, "Oh, well, okay, they're fairly competent. But you look for that 10 percent that is really exceptional—those who have something that is totally original in what they do."
—Les Spindle