KEEP AN EYE ON: sean murphy
By Amber Adrian, Associate Editor
LIKE MOST 13-YEAR-OLD MALES, SEAN MURPHY'S EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES DECISION WAS AN easy one. Theatre has girls. Soccer doesn't. Choice made. Years later, Murphy is still on the stage, acting and directing for Renegade Theatre [Experiment], which he helped found four years ago.
"It was just something that I really loved," Murphy explains. "But getting out of high school, there were the voices of reality that tell you, 'You can't make money in theatre.'" Murphy eventually learned to ignore those little voices and enrolled in further acting classes. After an advanced class, his professor sat Murphy down and told him, "I'm not going to let you leave my office until you make theatre your major." Luckily, Murphy had decided the night before to do just that, and a hostage situation was averted.
After Santa Clara University and major student loans, Murphy, his wife and some friends started assembling to practice monologues for auditions. These workshops morphed into a series of one-acts, performed in a bar in San Jose for three nights running. "We all had a great time and we innocently said, 'Let's start a theatre company.'" Murphy had always liked the idea of forming a creative collective. "The ultimate vision I had was that it would be a group of actors and technicians and playwrights, and we would be producing our own stuff, with music and dance—an amalgam of different creative disciplines."
Not knowing anything about the business of theatre, they dove in and Renegade Theatre was born. For seven actors who didn't have the faintest idea what they were doing, Renegade has become quite successful, with compelling seasons and money in the bank. "We wanted to do works that were edgy, that challenged both actors and audience to think and to feel," Murphy elaborates."Just do work that amused and thrilled us. We're in our fourth season now." By the very specific date of March 8, 2009, they plan to have a permanent theatre space and payment for all involved—actors, directors, technicians and everyone else.
Murphy is both understandably proud of this achievement and vaguely unnerved by his upcoming foray into directing. He's directed one-acts and claims to have done "quasi-directing" in college, but Roald Dahl's The BFG will be his first full production. "I wanted to do a family show—part of it is selfish because I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Part of it was because I wanted to do something that everyone could come see but was still Renegade—and Roald Dahl is very perverse and Renegade in his writing."
But Murphy still wasn't sure about the whole directing plan. "I kept trying to find other directors for it, but ultimately I gave in. My was wife was beating on me to direct it." Harangued into directing by an encouraging spouse, Murphy has a great support system in place from the other directors and Renegade members. "I know I'm in good hands and it will be hard to mess up," he laughs.
But acting is still his first love. "It was something that intrigued me. It was the mentality, the friends you formed in theatre. It resonated with me. You know how theatre folks are; we are a different, eclectic bunch. They're just my people." tba
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