The Gate Theater Director
Stephan Turner - Artistic Director/Producer
My name is Stephan Turner. I’m a stage actor, director, scenic artist, lighting designer, and producer. I’ve been working in the theater for many years. I’m the former Artistic Director of The Gary Creative Workshop Theater, Stage Actor’s Ensemble of Chicago and Founder of The Performance Loft Theater, also in Chicago and now, the Artistic Director of The Gate Theater here in Chiang Mai.
I left the U.S. in search of a quieter lifestyle, to get away from the cliquish rat race of the theater industry in New York and Chicago and to settle down in a more peaceful environment. Chiang Mai had everything I was looking for. However, after two years of living in Chiang Mai it became apparent to me that the only thing missing from this great old city was an outlet for live stage drama. I very much wanted to be part of an artistic endeavor that would allow me to use my theater background. But there was nothing available for me to join. For that reason I enlisted the help of four English teachers, and started a theater group in Chiang Mai called The Gate. We’ve taken up the challenge of bringing English Language Theater to a city where there was none.
In the beginning people said it couldn’t be done, that I was wasting my time, I’d be arrested for working illegally, that there weren’t enough people who would support English Language Theater in Chiang Mai. As it turned out, finding a suitable venue was the most difficult problem we faced and after that finding the actors. But when I got the opportunity to meet Mr. John Gunther, Director of the AUA Language Center, things started to fall into place. John is very interested in the arts and even has experience as a theater technician, so he was very sympathetic to our cause and agreed to let us rent the AUA auditorium for our first production, The Dodo Bird, which was an outstanding success.
My father was my first reference point for acting and the theater. At the age of 82, he’s still a prolific playwright, producer, and performer. I grew up seeing him on television in walk-on roles on shows like The Lucy Show, The Odd Couple, Mission Impossible, and Sanford and Son. He also had roles in a few well known feature films like M.A.S.H, The Long Goodbye, Watermelon Man, and Party Animal, to name but a few. Even though he never quite gained Hollywood star status, he planted a seed within me which convinced me that I could do something out of the ordinary with my life.
After spending a few years as a laborer, a mason’s helper and a crane operator in one of the biggest steel mills in the country I decided that I needed to improve my station in life so I went back to school. Not really knowing what I wanted to study, I went to the local extension of Indiana University. This was the mid 70s and one of the first people I met there was Thomas C. Mazur who was, at that time, the head of the technical theater department. After talking with him and taking part in a scene painting project back stage, I knew that I’d found something that I could do. I remained at I.U. for three years before dropping out and heading back to the steel mills for lack of money. But Tom Mazur had great influence in shaping the way I view and approach my work in the theater, especially working behind the scenes.
In the late 70s, while working the swing shift at Inland Steel Co. I spent a summer working with a local community theater group called The Gary Theater Ensemble. It was a city project founded by Donald Thompson, a city administrator, Dancer, Choreographer, the late Phillip Morris, and the late Al Boswell, was Artistic Director. He was also my high school drama teacher. I came on as scenic designer and also got my old professor Tom Mazur involved as well. That one summer cemented my fate as a theater artist and lit a fire within me that burns to this day. My whole perception of work changed. That summer and I became an artist.
I learned a lot during those few months and made friends and colleagues that continue to influence me to this day. Friends like those mentioned above and like actors Samuel Brooks, Rodney Lee, Robert Turner, Gwen Wright, Michael Davis, John McCants, Gina and Sabrina Beckman, Kathy Jones, Larry Brewer, Houston Rucker, and photographer George Morgan, and artist Oba Williams, and many more. Some of them have long since passed on but Like my father, continue to have great influence my life and work in the theater.
After that summer I co-founded a community theater company in Gary, Indiana with Al Boswell, a larger than life personality who has also had a great deal of influence on the way I approach directing for the stage.
In 1983, unsatisfied with what I’d been able to accomplish without a degree, I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and auditioned for the acting program at the world famous Goodman School of Drama in Chicago. Founded in 1925, it is now known as The Theater School of DePaul University, and is ranked as one of the top theatrical training programs in the country. Being accepted into the acting program at The Goodman and then making it through the four year program was quite a challenge for me. Not only did I have to audition to get in, but I had to perform to a certain standard in order to be asked back each year. Being asked back wasn’t based specifically on grades but more so on talent and the ability to perform to the highest standard year after year.
After earning my BFA in acting in 1987, I formed Stage Actors Ensemble of Chicago. Starting with practically nothing, I took my acting company on the road and was able to raise enough money to build my own theater, The Performance Loft, and successfully produce major works by some of the world’s best known writers, while winning a good deal of acclaim for my efforts. Four years later we built the Performance Loft Theater on the North Side of Chicago, where I produced and directed plays of all kinds until 1991, when I decided to start traveling the world.