From onstage to off

The baton has been passed over at Capital Stage, as departing Producing Artistic Director Jonathan Williams has turned over the reins to Michael Stevenson, who officially started the job earlier this month.

When Williams decided to follow his spouse, Cap Stage co-founder Stephanie Gularte, to Florida (where Gularte became artistic director of the American Stage Theatre Company this year), Stevenson decided to apply for the Capital Stage job.

“It’s a natural evolution of having been an actor, then a director, in Sacramento,” Stevenson explained. “This is kind of the next step up.”

Stevenson is hardly a newcomer the scene—he’s been a fixture in the local theater community for nearly 20 years, arriving in Sacramento in the mid-to-late 1990s as an actor with an appearance in a B Street Theatre production of Jeff Daniels’ romance Apartment 3A.

The script was forgettable, but Stevenson was good, as was co-star Jamie Jones (who is Stevenson’s spouse).

They decided to settle here because Jones has family in Elk Grove. Soon Stevenson was directing occasional shows at B Street as well (Jane Martin’s Jack and Jill: A Romance, David Mamet’s Boston Marriage, Steven Dietz’s Becky’s New Car, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom).

Over the years, Stevenson has also worked with the Sacramento Theatre Company, appearing as an actor in Treasure Island and The Taming of the Shrew, and directing Of Mice and Men, Noises Off and Pride and Prejudice. And he was previously affiliated with the old Delta King Theatre, which became Capital Stage and relocated from Old Sacramento to Midtown.

Stevenson gave a memorable performance playing an aloof husband and physician in the outrageous, orgasmic Victorian-era comedy In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), and as a philandering, pleasure-seeking husband in Anna Karenina. And he directed shows focusing on challenging contemporary social issues, including Clybourne Park and Ideation.

Stevenson inherited the lineup of plays in Cap Stage’s current season, picked by Williams. Stevenson directed the first show himself, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, a futuristic script that examines how theater survives and adapts after the sudden, disastrous collapse of modern technological civilization.

“I love the script, the thought processes are so original,” Stevenson said.

October will feature a production of Gularte’s new script adapting the classic Henrik Ibsen drama, A Doll’s House—with a twist.

“We’ve moved the setting to post-World War II America,” Stevenson said. “Janis Stevens will direct.”

And in December, the company will try something new: The Behavior of Broadus, a musical about John Broadus Watson, the pioneering behaviorist researcher who also developed Madison Avenue’s early subliminal advertising campaigns.

If anything, Capital Stage’s niche remains presenting thought-provoking fare: “The plays can be funny, but they always have an edge, they start a conversation,” Stevenson explained.

The venue is small, he added—just 125 seats—so the goal is filling that intimate little house six times a week, and growing the list of subscribers.

“The kind of theater we do attracts an inquisitive audience … people who enjoy the artistic risks we take,” Stevenson said.