Colorizing a Classic in San Diego : With a black ‘Hedda Gabler,’ director Sheldon Epps pursues his goal of bringing more artists of color to the Old Globe.

Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival may have pioneered “non-traditional” casting decades ago but colorblind classics are still far from the norm at resident theaters across the country.

For Sheldon Epps, however, they’re standard practice.

As one of the few prominent African American directors as likely to be found at the helm of an Ibsen production as an August Wilson, Epps has refused to allow himself to be pigeonholed. And he affords the same consideration to his actors.

Yet Epps’ influence doesn’t begin and end with his productions. He is one of only a handful of blacks holding top-ranking administrative positions at major U.S. theaters.

Epps is currently the visiting associate artistic director at the Old Globe Theatre, a position financed by a National Theatre Artists Residency Grant administered by Theatre Communications Group.

Epps is particularly suited to serve as Jack O’Brien’s associate artistic director because his interests dovetail with the artistic director’s own. “He’s a classicist, and he does musicals,” O’Brien says. “He’s sympatico with the whole range of work that we do here and he’s very much contributing to that aesthetic.”

Epps is also an able leader. “He’s a stunning diplomat,” O’Brien says. “He steps in and speaks for me whenever I’m unable to be there, since I’m in New York so much. He understands how to lead, to engender enthusiasm with a light touch.”

Principally, the position gives Epps a base of power through which he can help both the Globe and other artists.

“I have a mandate to look for and bring artists of color into the company,” Epps says over a pancake breakfast at a small cafe near Balboa Park. “The fact that I’m here is a way of opening up the spectrum of color of artists who work here at the Globe.”

He accomplishes this, most obviously, by casting nonwhites in roles that have long been the domain of white actors--as illustrated by his staging of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” which features African American actress CCH Pounder in the title role. But for Epps, it isn’t only about what, or who, is onstage.

“The effect is also to attract new audiences,” he says. “There’s a real need and desire for us to serve not only the audience that has been coming to the Globe for years but to attract a new audience as well.”

I t is near curtain time for the Sunday evening performance of “Hedda Gabler” on Memorial Day weekend. The Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage theater is nearly full, and sprinkled throughout the audience are half a dozen or so clusters of African American women.

Some of these women are in mixed groups, but the majority are not. Dressed up just a bit and talking excitedly as they look around the theater-in-the-round, this appears to be a “girls’ night out” for at least several putative first-timers.

Judging from a house like this, Epps’ strategies may well be working.

“I know that there are people of color, women in particular, who will come to see this production of ‘Hedda Gabler’ who would not otherwise see ‘Hedda Gabler,’ ” he says.

“But simply because they know a black woman is playing this role, they’ll come to see it,” he continues, referring to Pounder, who is familiar to TV viewers from her role as Dr. Angela Hicks on the popular show “ER.” “And in a way, they will have an experience of the play that is different than anyone else’s experience.”

Moreover, the presence of these new theatergoers affects everyone involved.

“That’s the most fascinating aspect of multiculturalism, particularly in classical theater,” Epps says. “You always think about a play’s ability to transform an audience but what you don’t think about so much is an audience’s ability to transform a play.”

He has, in fact, seen it happen: “One night, we had a group of black sorority women come to the play. And suddenly, with 50 or 60 strong successful black women in the audience in that theater, that play became about something different.

“The actors’ work suddenly became about something different because of the way the audience was perceiving the play,” Epps says. “There’s a wonderful energy that passes both ways that makes opening up the doors of casting possibilities fantastic.”

Yet longtime theater aficionados need not feel excluded. “Those who are still wary of non-traditional casting in the classics should definitely see this ‘Hedda,’ ” wrote The Times’ Don Shirley. “ . . . Ethnic concerns quickly vanish. Human concerns take over.”

Epps’ extensive training in the classics has made him comfortable with Ibsen’s complex and symbolic prose.

The Los Angeles native, now 42, moved with his family to Teaneck, N.J., when he was a teen-ager. He went on to attend Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., where he studied acting.

Once out in the world, Epps segued into directing. He co-founded the Production Company Off Broadway in 1978. He used the group as a creative home base, staging the kinds of plays that he might not otherwise have had the chance to direct.

“In addition to doing work by black writers, because it was my company I could also say that I wanted to do ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ ” Epps says. “So even before I started working at other theaters, I had a full body of work.”

Epps stayed with the Production Company until 1981, when he struck out on his own. To this day, however, the work he is most widely known for--a musical revue that he conceived and directed called “Blues in the Night”--began there.

“Blues in the Night” won both Tony and Olivier award nominations in the early 1980s and was seen in its West Coast premiere at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1990 and at the Old Globe early last year. It will be revived at the Pasadena Playhouse this fall.

“It opened the door for me to do things at larger regional theaters,” says Epps, who has since staged a variety of plays at leading resident theaters, including several at the Old Globe.

I t isn’t surprising that the Globe would be the place to provide Epps with a base. Artistic Director O’Brien has been at the forefront of multicultural theater practice for years, hiring such nonwhite artists as Epps and Benny Sato Ambush (who until recently was associate artistic director at A.C.T. in San Francisco) to direct classic works, rather than just black-themed plays.

Epps’ association with the Globe began three years ago, when he was hired to direct “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting,” a play about Jackie Robinson. “Jack and I started talking about the possibility of doing other things,” Epps says of O’Brien.

Then, during pre-production for Epps’ 1993 Globe staging of “All’s Well That Ends Well,” TCG announced the National Theater Artist Residency Grants.

“We decided to apply,” Epps says, “and to create an associate artistic director position.”

Since getting the grant early last year, Epps has spent about half his time at the Globe, directing three shows and helping with season planning.

What the future holds, however, is unclear.

“My grant period ends at the end of June but we are seriously discussing the possibility of continuing,” he says. “Mainly, it’s finding a way to finance it.”

He will, at the very least, continue to direct occasionally at the Globe. Currently, he’s at work on a jazz adaptation of “Twelfth Night,” set in Harlem in the 1940s, to be staged there in January.

And Epps will also remain committed to helping his fellow artists of color. Yet he is well aware of how much difference an artistic director’s position can make.

“You [can] talk about multiculturalism, broader programming, colorblind casting or any of those things,” he says. “But finally what it’s going to take is artists of color being in those top positions. It’s happening--but very slowly.” *

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“HEDDA GABLER,”Cassius Carter Centre Stage, Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. Dates: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 18. Prices: $36. Phone: (619) 239-2255.