Copious Notes
The journal of a Kentucky culture vulture
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Sep232 Comments
Six veteran Lexington musical theater performers team up with director Stephen Currens for Beguiled Again, a musical revue of the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It plays Sept. 24-Oct. 4 at the Downtown Arts Center. We caught up with the cast at a rehearsal Sept. 22. The lights and set weren’t quite together, but we got a good idea what it’s going to look like.
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Aug21
Actors Guild artistic director has left the theater
Filed under: Actors Guild of Lexington, Arts administration, Central Kentucky Arts News, LexArts, Theater; Tagged as: Actors Guild of Lexington, Bo List, Eric Ryan Seale, Kimberly Shaw, Richard St. Peter, Stephen Currens39 CommentsRichard St. Peter is no longer working as the artistic director of Actors Guild of Lexington.
Now-departed Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kim Shaw, who remains in her job, at Actors Guild's new Manchester Street offices. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.
Two weeks ago, St. Peter had announced he was resigning and would leave by the end of the forthcoming season to work on a doctorate in theater. But Friday afternoon, St. Peter said that the financial strain of working without pay and the prospect of being a lame-duck director prompted him to go ahead and leave the organization.
He also said he believed removing his approximately $45,000 annual salary from the theater’s financial picture might help it recover from a loss of funding from LexArts. In June, the united arts fund declined to give the theater an annual allocation for general operating funds, citing concerns about the theater’s ongoing financial difficulties.
“I’ve got kids, and I need to find work,” said St. Peter, who said he has only received one partial paycheck since July 1.
Actors Guild board president Jennifer Miller said two weeks ago that theater employees had been working without pay so the theater could concentrate on settling accounts with outside vendors and other creditors.
In addition to St. Peter’s departure, which St. Peter said the board approved Monday, Actors Guild also lost Bo List as the director of its season-opening production, Beguiled Again, a show based on the music of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. List said in an e-mail, “the agreed-upon terms of my employment were changed dramatically after I began my work in a manner that was unsatisfactory.”
List has been replaced by Stephen Currens, a Lexingtonian who enjoyed Off-Broadway success with Gorey Stories, a musical based on the illustrations of Edward Gorey. He appeared in last season’s AGL production of The Fantasticks.
Eric Ryan Seale.
Beguiled Again has been moved back to Sept. 24-Oct. 11, and AGL associate artistic director Eric Ryan Seale said he is looking at how the date change will affect the remainder of AGL’s season. Seale said that the original dates had been set to accommodate an out-of-town director who had to bow out before List took on the show, and that the date change was partially responsible for List having to bow out.
List said, “I hope that Beguiled Again is the success that AGL needs right now and my best wishes are with the company.”
St. Peter is scheduled to direct Actors Guild’s second production, David Hare’s The Vertical Hour, and he said he still plans to do that.
St. Peter’s departure leaves Seale and AGL managing director Kim Shaw running the company. Despite the challenging nature of the theater, both said they were upbeat.
“Everybody has been picking up the slack,” Shaw said Friday afternoon. “Our first priority is to get Beguiled Again up.”
Seale said, “This is probably going to sound crazy, but I feel pretty good. I’m used to the catastrophe curve of theater, and I have a new office here on Manchester Street, and I like coming in to work every day.
“If people are willing to bear with this initial season postponement and any other season adjustments, we’re going to be fine.”
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Dec18
Stephen Currens back in his old Kentucky theatrical home
Filed under: Central Kentucky Arts News, Musicals, New York, Theater, UK; Tagged as: Actors Guild of Lexington, Gorey Stories, Stephen Currens, The Fantasticks3 Comments
Stephen Currens in Actors Guild of Lexington's production of "The Fantasticks." Photo by Larry Neuzel.
Stephen Currens is having about as stealthy a stage homecoming as a successful stage veteran can.
Currens has three weekends left playing Henry, one of the actors who helps El Gallo stage an abduction of Louisa in Actors Guild of Lexington’s production of The Fantasticks. On opening night, even veteran theatergoers were asking, “Who is this guy?” while applauding his extroverted performance.
Currens is a 1971 Lafayette High School graduate who went to the University of Kentucky, where he came up with the idea for his biggest claim to fame: Gorey Stories, a musical based on the macabre stories and illustrations of Edward Gorey.
“I was visiting with a friend over in the student ghetto at Transylvania Park,” Currens recalls over a cappuccino at Common Grounds. “She had this Gorey anthology that she thought I might be interested in. I loved the theatricality of it and thought, I could make an adaptation of this.”
Through high school, under the direction of legendary Lafayette theater director Thelma Beeler, Currens explored acting and even dabbled in directing and writing. When he got his big idea, he was ready to transform it into a big show.
Gorey Stories, with music by fellow UK student David Aldrich, was first presented in a one-act version on the Guignol Theatre stage during an all-night theater festival. It went so well, it was presented the next year, in 1974, in a full production at UK.
Currens thought he had a successful product and decided it was time to take it to New York. He knocked on a lot of doors and got a lot of weird looks. One composer liked the idea but wanted to write new music. Currens balked, wanting to stay loyal to Aldrich, who shared his artistic vision for the show.
Finally, at the WPA Theatre in New York, he met Howard Ashman, the theater’s artistic director who would go on to write Little Shop of Horrors and the songs for Disney films such as The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast with Alan Menken.
“He looked at it for 15 minutes and said, ‘I’ll do it,’” Currens recalls. “I suddenly got panicky. ‘Somebody wants to do my show. Maybe I shouldn’t let them.’”
Currens let the WPA Theatre present Gorey Stories in a highly successful off-Broadway production that received rave reviews from critics such as The New York Times’ Frank Rich.
Copious Notes Podcasts
- Live this Weekend: Joshua Roman with the Lexington Philharmonic October 16, 2009
- First Look: UK Opera Theatre’s River of Time October 7, 2009
- Podcast & Pics: Jahi Chikwendiu October 1, 2009
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