On stage and off

Benjamin T. Ismail is a busy fellow these days. He’s artistic director for Big Idea Theatre, the much admired small company that stages a heady mix of Shakespeare, edgy contemporary fare and even French existentialism. (Their summer production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit drew crowds, contravening the dictum that you gotta do silly shows in Sacramento when the weather’s scorching.)

Ismail is also directing elsewhere. He did the Sacramento Theatre Company’s well-mounted Driving Miss Daisy, which closes on February 14, and is on board for Capital Stage’s next show, Love and Information, a complex tale of technology and amour, told in a composite form.

“The script is built of seven sections, with seven or eight scenes in each … some are 10 seconds long, some are six minutes … snapshots,” Ismail said of that production, which runs January 27 through February 28.

“There’s never any punctuation or character description. It is very skeletal … but everything you really need to tell this very subtle story is in the script,” he adds. “It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever worked on.”

But there’s more. Once Love and Information opens, Ismail will set off to Florida to direct 4000 Miles at American Stage, a company led by former Capital Stage artistic director Stephanie Gularte.

Cap Stage staged a production of 4000 Miles in spring 2014. In the Florida production, Ismail will again be directing Janis Stevens (who plays the title role in Driving Miss Daisy).

Then it’s back to Sacramento, where Ismail will act in Capital Stage’s production of Disgraced, from the 2013 Pulitzer winning script, running May 4 through June 5.

Fast-forward to summer when Ismail will be back at Big Idea, working on the early summer production of A Bright New Boise, a dark American comedy from 2011, as well as a late summer production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. (“Cleopatra is Shakespeare’s most interesting female,” Ismail says.)

Ismail grew up in Memphis and attended college in Arkansas, settling briefly in Boston. In 2008 he arrived in the area to audition for a part in Bare that the now-defunct company Artistic Differences was staging. Once here, he kept auditioning for parts and then started landing gigs as a director.

Lately, he’s been following that path more.

“Directing is the thing I’ve been going for,” he says.

Still, he adds, acting remains “near and dear” to his heart.

“I would be sad if I didn’t have both in my life,” he says.