Philip Sneed, the first new producing artistic director at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 17 years, is shown last week on the University of Colorado campus, top, (Photo by Glenn Asakawa / The Denver Post). The photos below show Sneed in 1976 at Golden High School, in 1980 as an actor in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival ensemble, and today. When the Colorado Shakespeare Festival scoured the nation for a new boss to lead it into its historic 50th season, few realized the big shot discovered out in California had scoured pots as a teenager at the Heritage Square Opera House.
Or that he had skipped his Golden High junior prom to go camping with his best friend, future "Ally McBeal" star Greg Germann. Or that 27 years ago, he played bit parts for the very same Colorado Shakespeare Festival alongside Annette Bening. Philip Sneed has come home to Boulder to lead the nation's second-oldest Shakespeare festival, which bowed Saturday night with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - the first of five new offerings that will open on consecutive Saturdays on the University of Colorado campus.
Sneed, 48, was an awkward kid, very much a loner. But from the moment he performed in his first play, he resolved without equivocation to become the next Olivier. He was 12, a seventh-grader at Arvada Junior High.
And the jet propulsion for this life-changing epiphany? Playing a teddy bear in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Solider." "I was very shy, and theater gave me an opportunity, even at age 12, to be a successful human being on the planet," Sneed said.
"That was something I just couldn't do in my own shell - but I could if I were playing another character." Sneed was such a theater geek, he followed a nomadic mid-'70s staging of the exuberant New Testament musical "Godspell" all over Denver, seeing it a dozen times. It starred Jerry Webb and Robert Wells, who now runs the Avenue Theater.
For Sneed, like Denver Center Theatre Company artistic director Kent Thompson the son of a Southern Baptist minister, "Godspell" was a life-affirming, life-altering event. "Having grown up in a very conservative, strict religious upbringing, 'Godspell' not only opened up theater to me, but religion," he said. "My experience of the Bible was not READ Our collection of anecdotes from 50 years of stars who have appeared on Colorado Shakespeare Festival stages, including Annette Bening, Jimmy Smits, Val Kilmer, Michael Moriarty, Barry Corbin, Karen Grassle, Ted Lange and John Carroll Lynch.
LISTEN to an excerpt from Jimmy Smits' interview with John Moore about his days as "Othello" in 1984 (app. WATCH Two fun slideshows: All the celebrities mentioned above -- then and now; plus a more expansive look back at 50 years of CSF history. it was disciplined.
Through 'Godspell,' I found someone who, through art, found something joyous and and positive about the Bible. That had a profound influence on my work because it melded my interests in theater and art." Hope in the bleak 1970s One of Sneed's crushing high-school disappointments was not getting cast in "Godspell.
" Even Germann got in - and he couldn't even sing. Sneed says it's kismet to have now hired Scott Schwartz, son of "Godspell" composer Stephen Schwartz, to direct "A Servant of Two Masters" for him, opening July 7. But the world Sneed graduated into from Golden High School in 1976 was, sadly, not so different from what faces today's teenagers, having been Phil Sneed, daughter and company member Emily Van Fleet, and wife Clare Henkel, a company costumer, at Saturday's opening gala.
informed by both Iraq and Virginia Tech. What's a kid to do? As a young teen, Sneed recalls, "I was seeing people get killed in Vietnam, but with Kent State, I was also seeing people getting killed at college.
Theater gave me hope." Sneed spent his days at the University of Colorado soaking up knowledge in lieu of a starring actor's adulation. He worked at theaters like the Bonfils and Arvada Center, but his biggest role in three years at the Shakespeare Festival (1978-80) was playing Dumaine to Bening's Princess of France in "Love's Labor's Lost.
" So no one would have guessed then that he'd be back one day to administer a prestigious $1.2 million annual festival. "No way .
.. no way at all," said Gavin Cameron-Webb, Sneed's director in 1980 and his employee in 2007.
"But who could have ever told you that George Bush was going to be president based on his time at Yale?" Sneed is the CSF's first new artistic director in 17 years, and the first equally charged with running both the creative and financial shows - duties for which he swears he brings equal enthusiasm. He's already instituted a number of changes, such as non-Shakespearean titles and earlier start times, which have reaped a 16 percent increase in advance sales.
Sam Sandoe, a CSF actor since 1970 and Sneed's two-year college roommate, attributes the surge in enthusiasm to the new boss' "Why not?" attitude. Why not stage five plays instead of three?
Why not present a play at Christmas? (Sneed will mount a "A Child's Christmas in Wales this December, a first for the otherwise all-summer festival). Cameron-Webb cites Sneed's "great sense of caring for the institution and caring for the people who work for it.
" He's an insider with an outsider's eye. Surfing a wave of enthusiasm But Sneed brings more to Boulder than his eye. He also brings his wife, costumer Clare Henkel, and daughter, actor Emily Van Fleet.
Actually, Van Fleet had been establishing herself in the local theater community long before the CSF job opened up. Her dad, who had been overseeing both the Sierra Shakespeare Festival and the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare festivals for a decade, was a finalist for several jobs. So coming home to Emily was icing on the cake.
Sneed swears none of his 2007 directors knew of her bloodline when she auditioned. Certainly not Schwartz, who cast her in "Servant." But Sneed knows he only gets that pass once.
"I would never, ever want to be nepotistic," he said. "On the other hand, one does not want to punish one's relatives because they are related to you. Audience and critical response will have to back up whether that was a good choice or not.
" Van Fleet, for one, can't wait for Colorado to meet (or re-meet) her dad. "He truly believes, as I do, that there is nothing in the world like live theater," she said. "It's been such an inspiration to me as an actor just to watch him work.
I think Boulder is just the place for him to share his passion." Sneed has enjoyed great success as an actor, notably playing "Hamlet" for the Indiana Rep, and he plans to tread the Boulder boards himself again one day, perhaps as early as next season. In the meantime, he's enjoying the wave of goodwill - not to mention the 25 percent bump to his operating budget.
He promises Shakespeare will remain at the heart of the festival, even promising to soon complete the entire canon for a second time, a task few companies ever accomplish once. "I am so charged," Sneed said. "The pressures are huge, but the support is also huge, and morale is so high.
I can't wait to get started." Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
Raising a new curtain Among changes instituted by new producing artistic director Philip Sneed for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's 50th anniversary season: curtain times on Tuesdays and Sundays (they were 8:30 p.m.) *New, more comfortable seatbacks; and not for a rental fee - they're free, and for everyone.
*More plays, fewer players: Five summer plays instead of three. Company reduced from 46 to 32. More roles for each actor.
*Staggered openings: One new play opens every Saturday for five straight weeks. Added holiday show, "A Child's Christmas in Wales." *High-tech microphones on the stage (not on the actors).
*Operating budget increased from $900,000 to $1.2 million. Last year, only 2 percent of the CSF audience was under 18.
This year it's already running at 10 percent. *Upcoming major new-play initiative; more local, regional, national and international collaborations. Philip Sneed, the first new producing artistic director at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 17 years, is shown last week on the University of Colorado campus, top, (Photo by Glenn Asakawa / The Denver Post).
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