And now, when theater is faced with one of its biggest challenges ever - regaining financial footing and attracting new audiences in the wake of the devastating COVID closures - he’s afraid many houses will cut staff or close entirely. He’s heartened to see an increase in the number of leaders of color as artistic directors and executive directors, but he fears that “it’s a moment and not a movement.”Įpps has been privy to far too many of those moments. Tremendous strides have been made, he says, but the art form is still “fighting a long tradition of the American theater as a white institution, and the power in the American theater, both commercially and in the not-for-profit world, being in the hands of the white establishment.”Įpps says he feels a bit nervous about the way the situation has played out since 2020. “Actively, loudly or covertly, I’ve been talking about this for decades.” “Let’s not kid ourselves that these conversations started in 2020, they did not,” Epps says, his voice precise and commanding - the voice of an actor, with the poise and posture to match. After the murder of George Floyd, the resulting waves of mass protest swept into the arts world in 2020, and theater makers began speaking loudly about a lack of diversity and racial parity on and off stage as well as in leadership ranks.Įpps attempted to parse that question in an interview on the sun-dappled patio of the Pasadena Playhouse, near a bench where he sat many years ago watching patrons enter the theater and wondering why he was the only Black face among them - and how he could change that dynamic. More than 25 years later, Epps’ feelings mirror the fraught conversations the theater world is currently embroiled in. I had to deliver in every possible way in order to prove that it was possible for a person of color to run such an institution successfully,” Epps writes in his recently published memoir, “My Own Directions: A Black Man’s Journey in the American Theatre.” “This was a tremendous extra burden to bear in a position that was already full of its own challenges and obstacles.” “I felt bound and required to be successful. The distinction, says Epps, was an honor imbued with great difficulty. At the time, he was one of a handful of Black artists in the country to hold such a position. Sheldon Epps became the first Black person to lead a major theater in Southern California when the Pasadena Playhouse appointed him artistic director in 1997.
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