‘We find solutions in plays, ways of working things out, ways of bringing your mind to new understanding’

Lyman Saville’s son was born just before Saville took his cue on stage at an Old Globe Theatre production 17 years ago. He made his entrance, and a fellow actor marked the event with an impromptu line neatly woven into the dialogue. Saville, 48, no longer finds time to act, but his love of the stage is lavished on San Diego City College drama students. He is director, teacher, costumer, coach, psychologist and designer at the college theater, and has been for more than 20 years. Saville came to San Diego from Mishawaka, Ind., and he helped design the college’s 286-seat theater. Budget cuts have diminished the grandeur of 1970s productions, but the jovial man still enjoys guiding students through fear to confidence and watching shows “click and work.” Times staff writer Nancy Reed interviewed Saville at the college theater and Dave Gatley photographed him there.

I was a ham. I always enjoyed turning on in front of somebody and having them react. Since junior high, I have liked theater. I once played Joseph in a Christmas pageant on a pair of Ping-Pong tables.

I have an undergraduate degree in biology, but all the while I was studying biology, I was actually performing plays and working in theater. I finally talked to myself somewhere along the junior year and said: What do you really want to do? The answer was theater.

The excitement in my job comes in what I do with the kids and the relationship that we form together.

If you are developing a role, it is a very personal, very agonizing thing. It takes a lot of time, so you are working closely together for six or eight weeks to try to put the whole show together. And when we finally get it on the boards and they see how it has finally turned out, it is a very happy thing.

It is satisfying to see the changes come about in students, in their self-assurance in approaching a role. They can go from “I am not worth anything” to “Gee, I can do this” to “Hey, I’m not bad.” And they grow in their skills.

With me at the helm here, in terms of directing, it is exciting to watch that whole thing come together. They finally do what I call “taking the show away from me”--and it becomes their show.

In terms of course work here, we are dealing with a great deal of ignorance because the students don’t deal in theater in all. Occasionally, I find a person who can’t read at all. They are thinking, anybody can be an entertainer, I can be a star tomorrow and make a lot of money. Everybody does it, look at television.

They watch “Fame” and they hear about the big bucks involved in commercials; they come to acting class to learn how to do commercials. Then I tell them that most people are not successful in acting on the stage until they are in their 40s. They say, “Oh! I can’t wait.”

The students are involved in television and in films. How do you understand French neoclassical comedy--what the heck does that have to do with anything in their world? I try to draw comparisons.

They have all heard about the Oedipus complex, but have no idea where it came from. We talk about a person who killed his father, married his mother and bore children by her--it is scandalous--it is worse than anything they have seen on “Dallas.”

I try to give them a basic understanding of the importance of theater to mankind.

To me it is a kind of mirror as well as being an entertaining device. It is reflective of problems that we face. We find solutions in plays, ways of working things out, ways of bringing your mind to new understanding.

I think it was Freud who said “if theater had remained central to the populous at large, then therapy wouldn’t be necessary.”