Rick Dean: The Theater Habit

Rick Dean chuckles as he watches his 20-month-old daughter, Eliza, cavort in his Hollywood living room. “Having a kid,” he says, trying to sum up the experience, “it’s a lot of fun.” Then, he sighs: “It’s a lot of work, too.”

Dean could be talking about his life in the theater right now. On Thursday and Friday, he plays a kiddie-park attendant in John Steppling’s “Storyland,” at the Padua Hills Playwrights’ Festival. On the weekends, he takes his place as a trailer-park dweller in his own staging of Steppling’s “Neck” at the Lost Studio on La Brea.

“The killer was playing ‘Neck’ at 8 at night, then racing to Cal State Northridge (Padua’s home) and rehearsing ‘Storyland,’ ” says Dean, whose Dallas accent adorns his deep, gruff voice. “We tried to rehearse during the day, but just try it in 110-degree heat!”

Wasn’t Dean pushing things a bit, attempting to put his own mark on one Steppling play without the involvement of the playwright (known for insisting on directing his own work) and, at the same time, acting for him in another? “I was scared of what he would think,” admits Dean, who previously acted in Steppling’s “My Crummy Job” at the Mark Taper Forum’s New Works Festival. “But I wanted to please myself first. It was better not having him around while directing.”

Steppling’s verdict? “He liked it. He also said to me, ‘This is definitely your version.’ ”

Dean, 34, has no second thoughts about his grueling schedule (he also does the typical L.A. actor’s daily grind of tryouts and tests at the studios) except for directing himself on stage. “I’m almost more confident as a director than as an actor,” he adds. “Deep down inside, I feel like I still don’t know how to act, even after 17 years of work and study. Each script has its own difficulties, so it’s always like starting over.”

Not all of those scripts are good, he’ll admit, especially the low-budget variety he’ll take on to support his theater habit (he’s acted in no less than six as-yet-unreleased movies in the last two years). “If you work on a movie that’s really bad, you tend to forget how to act. That’s what my friends who do a lot of TV tell me. Acting is weird enough without that.”