John Miller-Stephany effortlessly moves through the labyrinth of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre -- through the props shop, through a crammed costume room, through another space lined with 12-foot-high shelves stacked with shoes and around a hallway behind the orchestra pit.
"Where are we?" he asks and smiles to himself as he shows a visitor around his new place of employment before heading up a staircase in the 100-year-old-plus building at Sixth and Main streets in downtown Little Rock.
The new producing artistic director (in essence, the chief executive officer of the Rep) has only been in Little Rock about three months after nearly two decades administering a theater in Minnesota, but given his history of study and attention to detail, it won't take long before he's got the Little Rock theater scene down pat.
"In my soul, I feel this is where we're supposed to be," says Miller-Stephany of himself and his husband, Andrew Cooke.
Before a show in mid-December, actors greet him while costume specialists mend garments. Other staff members prepare refreshments, and child actors holler as they rehearse getting their arms twisted.
It's another fast-paced day at the Rep. An audience is convening in the auditorium for an afternoon performance of A Christmas Story. Children, parents, grandparents and people of all sorts enjoy the traditional holiday tale. Yes, they could watch the movie version on television, but it wouldn't be the same. This version is staged live, specifically produced for an Arkansas crowd.
"We're really all about Little Rock," says Miller-Stephany of the Rep's mission.
He explains that other venues host traveling productions that stay in town for a couple of weeks and then go on to the next city. But the Rep is the only theater in a 300-mile radius that produces its own plays specifically for its audience -- hiring directors, actors and creating sets, often from scratch.
It's what attracted Miller-Stephany, 56, to Little Rock. After an eight-month national search, he was chosen out of more than 100 candidates in August, replacing Bob Hupp, who left for a job in Syracuse, N.Y. Miller-Stephany previously helped manage the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, which also operated as an independent playhouse, staging its own productions.
"I'm really impressed by Little Rock," Miller-Stephany says. "I think there is some real truth in the presence of Southern hospitality in Arkansas. People have been very, very kind.
"My sense is the Rep is deeply appreciated in Little Rock, which is really important to me. It's a smaller community than the Twin Cities. The theater is smaller. [The Guthrie] was a fantastic place of great excitement and growth. But ... sometimes it just seemed too corporate, too big. To get anything done, it was like turning the Queen Mary around."
Miller-Stephany worked for 19 years at the Guthrie, but when new management arrived last year, he says, he was viewed as part of the old regime that needed to go. He says that time in his career was "very upsetting," but he completely understands the need for management to have their own people. He also is appreciative that he has been an oddity in the theater community, having had such a long run at one spot. Looking back at the situation, he says it all worked out.
"What I really like about the Rep is that it's big enough to do quality work, but it doesn't seem corporate," he says. "There is still very much a family feel about it, which I'm really enjoying. The board [for the Rep] is spectacularly supportive."
Brian Bush, chairman of the Rep's board, says the theater was fortunate to have many excellent candidates who applied, but in the end, Miller-Stephany was a unanimous choice.
"For me, it was his quiet, yet confident, demeanor in the interview process," Bush says. "He was very direct in the way he answered questions and very direct in the way he asked questions. A seasoned actor in New York told us that the first thing we needed to know is that John's a wonderful human being. That's certainly what we found to be true."
Bush says he's been pleased to see that Miller-Stephany has new ideas but isn't running roughshod to make big changes.
"He's trying to respect history," Bush says. "He says on the front end that he's got to get to know this community."
Miller-Stephany manages 20 to 25 full-time employees, and he appreciates their openness as he negotiates a learning curve of a new workplace, new culture and new city.
What are Miller-Stephany's goals for the Rep?
"It's important that the Rep does classics, and it does contemporary work, and it does American classics, and it does musicals," he says. "That's important to me because my tastes are broad. ... You'll continue to see a mix of things just like there has been a mix in the past."
Regardless, there will be some shifts in emphasis. For example, he anticipates doing fewer musicals. Currently, half of the Rep's schedule consists of musicals, which may be a bit too much, he says. He also may consider summer plays.
Miller-Stephany anticipates directing two or three plays a season, as well.
Arts immersion
Miller-Stephany was born into the fine arts on Oct. 20, 1960, in Rochester, N.Y. His mother was a professional musician and music teacher, and he and his five siblings all played instruments and sang. He played violin and saxophone.
"As a kid, I just sang all the time," he says.
As an elementary school pupil in Rochester, he had a really good chance at joining the Vienna Boys Choir, but his mother had no interest in uprooting the family and moving to Europe. Opera, it turned out, wasn't really his thing anyway. He focused on musical theater. At New York University, he studied the classics and did some part-time acting work at The Acting Company, which was run by Academy Award-winning actor John Houseman.
After graduating in 1983 with a bachelor's of fine arts degree, Miller-Stephany became less and less interested in performing and more and more interested in producing and directing. Sometimes he would think the person next to him in the audition line would be better than he was, which was the opposite mindset a performer needed. Instead, he would focus on lighting, props and direction of a particular scene and wonder why things were being done a certain way.
"I imagine I was a pain to a lot of directors because I was poking my nose where it really didn't need to be," he says.
He soon had an opportunity to take an associate producer's role with The Acting Company, a role he filled from 1989 to 1996. It served as the perfect classroom. He recognizes and is thankful for his opportunities, citing Houseman, Zelda Fichandler, Joe Dowling and Liviu Ciulei among his many mentors.
"I've worked with giants," Miller-Stephany says. "Sometimes it may have just been in the same room making photo copies. But to be around these major figures in the American theater was developmentally important."
It also was during this early period in his career that Miller-Stephany adopted his name.
"My birth name is John Leonard Miller," he says. "When I was an actor and joined a union, there was a rule that you couldn't have the same name as another union member. So, I couldn't be John Miller, and I didn't want to be John Leonard Miller. Around the same time my great-uncle, John Stephany, had just passed away, so I took that. I didn't [legally change names]. On my driver's license, it says John Leonard Miller. My paychecks say John Miller-Stephany."
He milked the New York experience for all it had to offer, learning what everyone in various roles did, including marketing, development and administration. After a while, he longed for a more creative role, and the opportunity to move to Minnesota presented itself. To become artistic administrator at the Guthrie was incredibly appealing.
"Doing professional theater in a community, for a community," was the mission of the Guthrie, just as it is for the Rep in Little Rock. It's the work that Miller-Stephany loves, as he has made the theater his life.
"He's very, very smart," says Pat McCorkle, a New York-based casting agent who worked with Miller-Stephany in Minnesota. "He really does his research and homework. ... He's terrific with actors and he's very authentic to the writers and at the same time very creative. His production at the Guthrie of A Streetcar Named Desire was the best I've ever seen. Little Rock is a different cultural experience, but he's game for that. It's what he wanted."
In Streetcar, McCorkle recalls, Miller-Stephany was able to tap into the "mysticism" of New Orleans, something that's already in the text of the play. But not every director can bring it out, she says.
"He brought it to a better dimension," she says.
Margaret Daly, a New York-based actor who has worked with Miller-Stephany, says she loves the gentle, encouraging manner he employs to direct actors.
"He does a lot of background research into the play," Daly says. "He's very clear about what he wants to do and that helps the actors. He's also good at creating a warm and supportive safe room. He's incredibly observant."
Settling in
At the Guthrie, Miller-Stephany helped oversee a period of substantial growth. From 1997 to 2015, the theater more than doubled its budget, from $11 million to $27 million. During his time, he helped put on more than 200 productions, guiding them from inception through performance. His productions of The Music Man, Jane Eyre and 1776 are three of the top 10 grossing productions in the 53-year-old theater's history.
Other directing credits include To Kill a Mockingbird, Roman Holiday and The Night of the Iguana.
In Little Rock, Miller-Stephany will be only the third artistic leader in the Rep's more than 40-year history. He succeeds Hupp (1999-2016) and Founding Artistic Director Cliff Baker (1976-1999).
As someone who grew up in upstate New York and worked in Manhattan and then in Minnesota, a move to Arkansas came with some trepidation for Miller-Stephany. He initially considered renting, not sure exactly how long he would be here. But the transition has been smooth, much smoother than he expected. He quickly decided to buy a house and has settled nicely in the Robinwood neighborhood of Little Rock.
"My husband and I have been together for 30 years," Miller-Stephany says. "He's a really talented musician, but for the time being, he's taking care of the dogs and settling the house."
He and Cooke, a former singing teacher at the University of Minnesota, married in 2013 in Minnesota. Miller-Stephany says he emphasized with job recruiters he was working with that he didn't want to go anywhere that isn't tolerant toward him and his husband. He wasn't sure how Arkansas would receive him. But he learned of how involved the gay community is in the Rep and has been quite pleased at the welcome.
"I didn't want to go someplace where I would feel like I couldn't be at home," Miller-Stephany says. "Little Rock tends to be more progressive ... so hopefully [being gay] will not define who I am. It's certainly part of who I am and I have no desire to hide it. But it doesn't totally define me as a human being."
John Miller-Stephany
• DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Oct. 20, 1960, Rochester, N.Y.
• PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THAT I am a champion sleeper. That means, if given the opportunity, I can sleep for many, many hours.
• I GET ASKED THIS THE MOST: People want to know what plays we're going to do next [season]. At the moment, my response is I don't know. We'll know in March or late February.
• I'M READING: I love to read. [I'm reading] Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet. It's fantastic. It took me a while to read it because it is so dense. Usually I'm a quick reader. I also read a lot of plays -- possible plays for next [season].
• I VACATION IN: In Minnesota we would escape for brief visits to Duluth on Lake Superior. We haven't found a place in Arkansas to get away yet.
• MY HOBBIES INCLUDE: I'm not a particularly well-rounded individual. I don't hike, and I don't like sports at all. I love my work. I love my dogs. I don't really have hobbies. I have two modes. I'm either on or off. For me, off means sleeping. I'm not a good couch potato.
• I GET BOTHERED BY people who do not respect the importance of detail.
High Profile on 01/08/2017