IF YOU’VE BEEN to a CATCO show in the past 10 years, you probably know Steven.
Whether or not you talked to him after the show, his influence is evident in the plays performed on the CATCO stage. Now, after more than 40 years of theater in Columbus, Steven Anderson is retiring.
“‘Retirement’ makes it sound like I’m going to sit at home and knit,” laughs Anderson. “That’s definitely not me. But I do hope to do less of what I’m doing now. Doing a little less and enjoying a little more.”
Once it is safe to travel, he plans to visit friends in Europe and spend an extended vacation with his extra time. Until then, his retirement plans include working on and editing the nearly 100 scripts he’s written, covering topics such as self- awareness, individualism and death.
Anything Goes
A Renaissance man from the start, Anderson spent almost half of his undergraduate
experience abroad in England, pursuing not one, not two, but three majors. He saw nearly every play produced in the famous London West End during 1972-73.
“I saw the good, the bad and the different,” he says. “That’s really where my aesthetic came from, I think.”
He then spent time in Ireland, as an apprentice for a theater studio, quickly deciding he wanted nothing to do with theater. So he returned to the U.S. and settled in Columbus to get a master’s degree in educational communication with the hope of writing for educational media. He began teaching classes and acting, and in 1976, he began directing.
“One thing led to another: I kept getting these amazing opportunities, and pretty soon Columbus was home,” Anderson says.
He started as the director of education and youth theater at the Player’s Theatre and rose through the ranks to become associate producer director. He then went on to found Phoenix Theatre for Children.
“When Player’s closed sort of unceremoniously, I had 12 interns from around the country who were not going to get jobs that year, and were really kind of stranded,” he says. “That’s how the Phoenix was born. It was rising from the ashes.”
Ten years ago, Anderson was asked to merge Phoenix with CATCO. Though reluctant at first, he began to get excited about the possibility to create theater for the youngest kids up to senior citizens.
The rest is history. He once more rose through the ranks, now holding the title of producing director. He’s been nominated for and won numerous awards, including the Greater Columbus Arts
Council’s Excellence in the Arts Award and the Ohio Theatre Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Producer
One of the hallmarks of CATCO is the fantastic collaborations with non- theatrical groups. From the Columbus Museum of Art to BalletMet, something fresh and exciting is always happening.
“My work was so much richer for working with the ballet, the symphony and those other groups,” says Anderson. “You immediately have to look at things through another lens.”
In 2009, Phoenix collaborated with BalletMet for a fusion of ballet and theater in a production of Alice in Wonderland. Anderson recalls the moment Gerard Charles, then the artistic director of BalletMet, called him up to suggest the performance.
“I hadn’t seen a ballet since 1975, so when I was called up to do a collaboration, I said so,” Anderson says. “Charles asked me what I had thought of it and I said, ‘Honestly, it was fine but I thought I’d prefer it if they had said something,’ and there was a long silence and he said, ‘Well, I think that’s what I’m asking you to do.’”
In his time as producing director of CATCO, Anderson says, the Herb Brown plays were some of his favorite shows to direct, including I Am My Own Wife and The Final Table. Choosing which plays come to the CATCO stage isn’t always easy. It matters what’s timely and topical, he says, and which plays speak to a central Ohio audience.
The most rewarding part of what he does isn’t directing groundbreaking plays, nor is it working on grand collaborations. For Anderson, it’s giving back to a community that’s often left in the dark.
He started out far before CATCO was even a glimmer in his eye. With a local Girl Scout troop in Marysville, Anderson began volunteering at a prison, in a day camp for children of incarcerated women. Those three days were often the only days of the year certain kids could see their moms.
After a few years, he passed the leadership on to a friend so the work could continue without him. Twenty years later, the woman called and said she now worked with the men’s prison, too, and convinced him to come down for an afternoon.
That one afternoon turned into 18 months of writing plays with the men, about their experiences as kids and in incarceration and what their futures looked like.
“It was an incredibly life-changing and meaningful experience for me, as well as for these men,” he says. “It required being completely honest on both ends. My usual charming schtick didn’t work with them. I had to strip away all my ‘Steven stuff’ and just stick with that which was me. Those rooms were rooms in which truth was spoken.”
Thoroughly Modern CATCO
CATCO will certainly miss Anderson as its producing director, but it’s not time say goodbye just yet. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, Anderson will be coming back to direct one last show from this season that has been postponed until next.
Despite the closures, cancellations and postponements brought on by the pandemic, Anderson remains hopeful that this will be a time to usher in a new age of theater.
“This is a time that arts organizations are going to have to reinvent themselves,” he says. “Technology is going to play a larger and larger part of it. What’s happening right now is encouraging people to share theater in other ways.”
As he prepares to let his roles be taken over by new minds, his greatest hope is that CATCO can completely transform itself into yet another thing.
“I think we’re ready for a 21st century CATCO,” he says. “We need to speak to a new world that didn’t exist 10 years ago, when I took over there.”
Though his time with CATCO is coming to a close, he reflects fondly on the years.
“I’ve had a great ride.”
Sarah Robinson is an editorial assistant. Feedback
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