Actress Brings On-Stage Savvy to Off-Stage Post at Actors Center

The San Fernando Valley is due for another new theater--this one housed in the Actors Center of Los Angeles in Studio City. And the woman searching for new plays to mount there knows plenty about starting such an enterprise.

As an actress, Jeanne Hepple was present at the birth of the National Theatre in England and the Yale Repertory Theatre in Connecticut. And she is eager to nursemaid another, as she tries to regain a foothold in an industry that she sees is leaving her and other actresses behind.

Hepple is the development director for the new theater wing at the Actors Center, a Studio City facility that offers training and support services for actors. Her major task is to find the right balance of plays for a first season, to begin in October.

She has a personal interest in scripts with strong roles for women and older actors.

“We have got to show that everyone can have fun and adventure and challenges even if they don’t look like the gorgeous people of the world,” she said.

Hepple was brought in to help organize the new theater wing by Katherine Billings, an instructor at the Actors Center. Billings, asked by Actors Center co-founders Sam Christensen and Michael McCabe to serve as artistic director, agreed to take the position on the condition that she could recruit Jeanne Hepple to share the responsibility.

“Jeanne is the genuine article. She’s fiercely talented with an impeccable training experience. Working with her demands that I rise to my highest expectations,” Billings said.

Billings, who also has a long list of credits as an actress, writer, director and film maker, met Hepple and studied with her five years ago at an acting workshop. In their new roles as artistic director and development director, both women waived any salary or compensation for the first year of the theater wing.

Hepple, who lives in Woodland Hills, acknowledged that the Valley already has a large number of Equity-waiver theaters, but she feels that the Valley’s population is large enough and affluent enough to support another.

“And like anything else in this capitalistic society, if it’s good and viable, it will last. If not, it will fade away. But I think Katherine and I have a wonderful sense of what is both artistic and commercial. And we should be able to beat the odds.”

Also tipping the odds in their favor is the support of Christensen and McCabe, the center’s co-founders. Until the theater wing begins generating sufficient income to pay for itself, Hepple and Billings won’t have to worry about rent. Marketing and box office services, as well as technical equipment, will also be provided by the center.

For Hepple, the theater wing offers an additional plus--a chance to rebuild a career.

For many years, Hepple was at the top of her profession, performing in major roles on both sides of the Atlantic. She shared the stage with Laurence Olivier, Derek Jacobi, Maggie Smith and Peter O’Toole. And she was wined and dined by Noel Coward.

(“For some reason, Noel took a tremendous liking to me. I didn’t wear makeup and slopped around in jeans. . . . Noel took it upon himself to try and glamorize me. It was hopeless.”)

When Hepple took over a major role in “The Master Builder” on a few days’ notice at The National Theater, she won over her co-star, Olivier. In his autobiography, Olivier wrote that Jeanne Hepple was a name “forever engraved upon my grateful heart.” She is a “splendid, first-class actress who possessed not only talent, but brilliant efficiency as well.”

Hepple went on to other major roles on London’s West End and on Broadway. She was the only person to win the Clarence Derwent Award as most promising actress in both London and New York.

In 1967, Rubert Brustein brought her to New Haven, Conn., as a charter member of the Yale Repertory Theatre Company. And when she wasn’t performing there with Stacy Keach, Irene Worth and Estelle Parsons, she was teaching students such as Henry Winkler, Talia Shire and Ken Howard at the Yale Drama School.

She put all that on hold for more than 10 years to raise a family. But her marriage to Emmy-winning television director Jeff Bleckner ended two years ago, and she realized she had to start supporting herself again. Even before her divorce, Hepple decided to “strong-arm agents and friends,” as she puts it, for acting parts. But she suffered a siege of anxiety and a drop in self-esteem when she realized that her considerable credits in England and New York didn’t count for much with L.A. theater companies and the film and television industry.

“I understand that now and accept it,” Hepple said. “I have to rebuild my reputation.”

What Hepple does have difficulty accepting is the dearth of roles--for other actresses as well as herself.

“The odds of getting a good break are horrendous for women in my age range. I’d go up for a small part with a few lines, and I’d be astounded that other women auditioning for these parts have won Emmys and Tonys. It shocks me.

“Women are totally forgotten. Stories are not being told about them. Older women, character women, women over 30, these are the lost people on the American entertainment scene,” she said.

When her children, 14-year-old Alexandra and 11-year-old Joshua, enter college, Hepple said, she may return to England, where writers are more inclined to create the “unglamorous parts” for actors in her range and where her reputation is still very good.

But until then, she doesn’t plan on retiring. For one reason, she said, she can’t afford to. For another, she so loves the theater and the entertainment scene that it’s worth “hitting your head against the wall,” she said.

“I’ve got at least eight years left out here, and I don’t want not to be in this business. I have to build a reputation and make a living.”

Along with Billings, Hepple is firm in the kind of theater she doesn’t want--this is not to be a place for actors to use as a showcase merely to get television work.

Nor does she want television writing in the guise of plays.

“I read a lot of plays, and many of them are good. But what they really are are ‘Movies of the Week.’ People on the West Coast are steeped in TV, and they tend to write for television even when they think they’re writing a play. But theater writing in the last few years has stepped away from that style. And I want good theater scripts.”

Hepple said she has been in New York this summer meeting with artistic directors and others for new plays. She’ll be making a trip to London this week with the same goal in mind.

She has also arranged for a contest to attract submissions. The first contest, for new plays in the mystery-thriller genre, offers a $300 prize and possible production. The deadline is March 31, 1989.

The large Actors Center building on the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Radford Avenue includes five Equity-approved spaces for productions. At present, Hepple and Billings plan to use two.

They are committed to one new play so far, “Cadillac,” by Bruce McIntosh, and are sifting through stacks of others to fill a season that would include four plays at their 99-seat main theater and up to six in a 45-seat workshop space.

Some of these productions may be co-produced with other groups like the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival. There are also plans for a musical theater lab under the direction of Roy Leake Jr.

Hepple said the large Actors Center building offers the option to move plays from smaller spaces to larger ones as the works grow artistically sounder and commercially more viable. And, she said, she hopes some of these productions will be transplanted to Equity houses outside the Actors Center.

But, more important, she and Billings want the theater wing at the Actors Center to evolve into a major theater complex, offering a mix of new and classical plays as well as late-night cabaret entertainment, she said.

“We want a good theater with good writing. We want plays that are controversial, that will spark some debate.”

And, yes, Hepple acknowledged with a smile, she may even act in some of them.