8/24/2007
By Perry Shirley

Stage veterans like John Baldwin know putting on a piece of theater is no small feat. "It's a group of disparate people coming together, going from nothing to a complete picture," he said. "Sometimes it's tortuous."

Finding the idea, picking the players, piecing together a plan, working in harmony: doing a play takes some managerial know-how and an entrepreneurial spirit not unlike what it takes to get Silicon Valley firms to work. As it happens, a group of San Jose-area computer analysts, bankers and corporate board members, who all had a passion for theater since college, got together in 2001 and formed the Renegade Theatre Experiment, a production company with a taste for off-beat material.

This season's first offering was "Noah Johnson…," a dark comedy set during the Civil War that follows three war profiteers and their efforts to scam both the Union and the Confederacy. Front and center on the stage: a pile of bodies that Baldwin, who played an undertaker, routinely grabs and toys with.

While the resume of Renegade co-founder Sean Murphy includes directing the 2006 play "PornoZombies" and acting in "Eat the Runt," during the day he's an analyst for Juniper Networks in Sunnyvale - exactly the sort of wide apart worlds Renegade likes to bring crashing together.

"With a name like the Renegade Theatre Experiment, some people think that we are going to be really avant-garde and cover ourselves in ketchup, but we're not into that," said Sean Murphy, artistic director. "We are renegade in that we don't fall into a particular category. We hop all over the place we're not tied to one genre or one type of theatre."

That doesn't mean they won't push the limits. When they did produce a Shakespeare piece, they chose "Titus Andronicus" - one of the Bard's earliest efforts and by far his bloodiest - and revisited it from the point of view of a modern-day biker gang. One reviewer referred to the play as "cathartic" and wished all the gore had been set in an office cubicle for further relief.

"What I love about Renegade," said actress Alika Spencer, a South Valley resident who played Titus' daughter Lavina, "is that they are not afraid to take a jump off a cliff and take down with them whoever wants to come. They have some balls."

If she was looking for work that might stretch her limits as an actress after graduating from the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in 2006, Spencer might have found a perfect match in Renegade.

In last season's "Bill of (W)Rights," she played multiple parts, including a Nazi girl who prances around the stage naked, save for an American flag wrapped around her, and a nurse whose boyfriend is getting a penis enlargement procedure. But it was in her role as Lavina that the 21-year-old really had her work cut out for her. Lavina gets her tongue and hands cut off, leaving Spencer "vulnerable in trying to get (her) point across without those aids," she said.

"It's challenging work, too," Spencer said. "You can really expand and play around with your acting tools."

Renegade started as a group of friends from Santa Clara University who had always liked theater, several having earned majors and minors in the field. But the friends also knew a career in theater wasn't likely to put bread on the table. Instead of running off to an actors' paradise, such as Los Angeles or New York, where all the trees are turned into scripts and the streets are as good as stages, they took "real" jobs in the Silicon Valley to pay off student loans.

In early 2001, several of the group who still pursued stage work in their free time began what Murphy calls "an actor's support group," a place where they could prepare for auditions. They soon realized their time would be better spent working for themselves, having the freedom to produce whatever they pleased.

"We learned by trial-by-fire on how to run a theater," Murphy said.

The founders quickly discovered that performance rights had to be negotiated with agents, funds for rent and insurance had to be found, and a marketing plan had to be drawn up. So, though they were trained as actors, the founders' common post-college background in business came in handy, bringing crucial project management skills to the table, Murphy said.

As the group dealt with the trials of getting a theater company off the ground, it never stopped being about the players as much as the shows themselves. More important to the artistic director than a rigid chain of command is a spirit of collaboration that leads to a better product, Murphy said.

"Everybody is there to give their talents to make it happen," he said. "Life is too short to work with jerks."

At Renegade, a great effort was made to institute a looseness of roles. One of the original founders, Evangeline Maynard, has had many hats to fit her skill set. Maynard is a banker with Comerica who studied commerce with minors in theater and dance from Santa Clara University. She became the company chief financial officer and treasurer while simultaneously acting in eight productions and earning credits as choreographer and prop designer.

It's often in community theater where the rules bend, and Renegade is no exception. In big-budget production companies most actors would be tied down by union rules and would hardly get a chance to swap jobs at will. This flexibility also extends to scheduling. Howard Miller, who played several roles in the last production, "Noah Johnson…," said that a larger company would require rehearsals during the day, an impossibility for working people like him.

Further blurring the line between the stiff boardroom culture and the loose performing arts world is Jill Podolsky, a tech industry veteran of Apple Computers and Extreme Networks, who brought her enduring love of theater - and a few deep-pocketed contacts - to the Renegade board.

"Whether it's a startup high-tech company or a startup theater company, any devotion of time or money makes all the difference, particularly to a group like RTE," Podolsky said.
She and Murphy had been acquainted while working at the same Silicon Valley company, two more former liberal arts majors working in the business world. But she had always known theater as a spectator, someone willing to travel to New York to see Broadway shows and Oregon for the Ashland Shakespeare Festival, and Murphy thought she would benefit from some inside work.

"Jill is passionate about theater but she's always been on this side," Murphy said, indicating the lobby of the Hoover Theatre in San Jose. "And for her to see what it's like on the back end has really enlightened her."

Podolsky, the vice president of the board, was allowed to draw on her past experience in college theater courses and act as assistant director to Murphy in "PornoZombies," an experience that made her realize how little she knew about directing but that she appreciated.

"He (Murphy) is willing to let us get as involved as we want to be," Podolsky said.

As with any young venture, Renegade has struggled on the financial side of operations, something Murphy knows might be worsened by the bold choices they have made.

"If (theatergoers) are going to go out, spend time and money, they'll go see something safer - they won't be taking a risk on something that is edgy," he said. "There is a small number of people that are willing to look for unexplored material and find those gems."

The offbeat values of Renegade's productions create a paradoxical marketing dilemma: you can sell seats to those who might think classic theater is too safe but you also risk alienating others. What is the purpose of putting forward-thinking, sometimes downright shocking pieces on stage when actors are playing to empty seats?

In January, the Renegade board enlisted another longtime theater fan, Matthew Simis, who has made a living raising funds for startups and schools, and who said he saw a "worthwhile challenge" in helping make the production company more financially stable - but without betraying the founders' vision.

"The issue has come up, (but) we would rather not do a more traditional production to fill seats," he said.

In an effort to mix in some family-oriented shows that still carry weight, the group put on Roald Dahl's "BFG" last season and will showcase "Wiley and the Hairy Man" this fall, a play by Susan Zeder about a boy facing his worse fears in a swamp.

Talking to the people in charge, which at Renegade are often the same people that play roles or direct bodies or paint sets, you know that they are not in it to make a living. Murphy said that "the money really isn't there anyways." They are sound people who keep day jobs for a reason.

This theater company strives on being seen as the South Bay's source of edgy material, a place where the bold can come to act, write and direct. Or whatever they may like to do.

Upcoming RTE Shows

'Americana Absurdum'
Performances: Sept. 6, 7, 8 at 8pm;
Sept. 9 at 2pm;
Sept. 13, 14, 15 at 8pm;
Sept. 16 at 2pm;
Sept. 20, 21, 22 at 8pm

'Wiley and the Hairy Man'
Performances: Nov 10 at 2pm and 5pm;
Nov. 11 at 2pm;
Nov. 17 at 2pm and 5pm;
Nov. 18 at 2pm
Nov. 24 at 2pm and 5pm;
Nov. 25 2pm;
Dec. 1 at 2pm and 5pm;
Dec. 2 at 2pm

Location: Historic Hoover Theater
1635 Park Ave. in San Jose
Box Office: Call (408) 351-4440 or visit www.renegadetheatre.com/boxoffice/tickets.html
Ticket prices: $13 - $20