Also this issue:

On the Job
Publicist and performer Christine Barbush is taking on Philly’s arts scene.
-Trish Boppert

Modern Marvel
Munakata Shiko's prints illuminate the PMA.
-Susan Hagen

Camelot/Broadway Love Affair
-Debra Auspitz

Time/Travel
-Morgen Rossmair

Mary Knott
-Paul Burress

August 15-21, 2002

theater

Ted Sperling

by Steve Cohen

Ted Sperling has just been appointed Associate Artistic Director of the Prince Music Theater, where he will work with the founder of the company, Marjorie Samoff. Sperling is extremely versatile, with talents as instrumentalist, singer, conductor and stage director.

He’s conducted five Broadway shows, and sang and acted the part of the ship’s bandleader in Titanic. He’s also done solo instrumental turns in shows that he conducted such as Broadway’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Adam Guettel’s Saturn Returns at the Public Theater and William Finn’s A New Brain at Lincoln Center. His most recent credits are music director of The Full Monty and stage director of the Prince’s production of Lady in the Dark, for which he just received a Barrymore nomination. He’s set to be music director of the new show by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (of Ragtime fame), A Man of No Importance.

Sperling is 40, six-foot-three, slender and soft-spoken. He was born in Manhattan to parents who both are psychiatrists, started violin lessons at age five, entered Juilliard at age 16 and graduated Yale, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude at the age of 21.

City Paper: Why did you accept the Prince position?

Ted Sperling: Because I believe in the Prince’s mission, producing music theater work that is unexpected, groundbreaking, unusual, exciting, risky. I have followed that path myself, working with the new crop of theater writers. It is great for me to have a home here. Marjorie took a big leap of faith in hiring me to direct two shows in 2001 without my ever having directed a full production before. I hope to bring new writers and projects to the Prince, to stretch myself as a director, to learn about the administration of a theater, to help train theater artists who live in the Philadelphia area, to help bring wonderful new work into the canon.

CP: Won’t it be awkward living in New York and working here?

TS: Part of my value to the Prince is that I live in New York, where I can go see readings, meet with fellow artists, take meetings, and generally be on the cutting edge of what’s happening there.

CP: What about projects you previously started?

TS: I am seeing them through to completion. For instance, A Man of No Importance, which has a typically charming and tuneful score by Lynn and Steve. Then The Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas. We just did a workshop at Sundance. And R Shomon by Michael John LaChiusa, which I’m directing. Audra [McDonald] was in its reading and we hope she’ll continue with it. Beyond that, I want to be as available as possible as I explore this new position at the Prince.

CP: What will you work on personally at the Prince?

TS: I’m directing two holiday shows simultaneously! The mainstage show is Peter Pan, an exciting new version of the story, and the upstairs show is called Striking Twelve, performed by the pop/folk group Groovelily. I’m planning to do readings of work by some great new writers I’ve met in the last couple of years, most of them in their 20s, and I’m hoping the Prince can commission new work from some of them.

CP: Why do you do so many different things?

TS: I’ve always tried to take on projects that scare me a little, that force me to develop in new directions. For example, working on a show that’s written in a musical style that’s new for me, or having to write vocal arrangements for the first time, or conducting a symphony orchestra for the first time. I knew there was more creativity in me than I could express as a music director. I needed to push myself, to open up, use more of my brain.