There are many ways people get discovered. For Steve Beecroft, it was on a stroll in Mill Valley’s Old Mill Park when he stumbled upon the auditions for Curtain Theatre, the local theater company that performs free theater every summer that he’d taken his children to see. As he stopped to watch, a troupe member asked if he had any experience singing and dancing. As it turns out, he did. A lot.
It wasn’t long before the Mill Valley resident joined the troupe. That was nearly 15 years ago and since then Beecroft, an executive director for UBS, a global financial firm, has worn many hats at the organization, from acting on stage to behind-the-scenes work as choreographer, fight choreographer and board member.
He will direct this year’s production of “Romeo and Juliet,” which runs from Aug. 12 to Sept. 4 in Old Mill Park.
Q When did your creative side begin?
A My dad was a good musician. I grew up with him playing the piano. I always liked to sing and got into a musical in high school, even though I was primarily an athlete. It was a lot of fun. I thrived on that.
Q Where does your interest in choreography come from?
A I was a dancer. I choreographed “West Side Story” at Cambridge University, and played the part of Riff in that. Under the Curtain name, I choregraphed “Return to the Forbidden Planet,” which is basically Shakespeare, “Star Trek” and rock ‘n’ roll, and that won a bunch of awards. And the fight choreography, I have always done that. Give me a sword on stage and I’m a happy person.
Q How did you get exposed to the Bard?
A I grew up in southern Ontario in Canada, and in high school, I did a whole year of Shakespeare. I was drawn to the beauty of the language, the quality of the characters, the depth of the stories, the nuances. I always felt like Shakespeare was protofeminist. The way he portrays women is very different than any others in that time, or for hundreds of years afterwards. He has powerful women characters in it, which I respected a lot. My kids learned Shakespeare because of me quoting it to them, and keeping it alive and part of our culture is something that is important to me.
Q Why did you want to direct “Romeo and Juliet”?
A I started to work on that right after I directed “Henry IV, Part 1” back in 2018. I went to Italy after that and was in Verona, which is one of my favorite cities in Italy. I was sitting at dinner and I just started to write notes in the sides of it and how I would want to perform the play. Doing one of the most well-known plays, for me, it’s a different type of challenge. Even in the wonderful poetry and story that’s there, you can make it more full than it’s portrayed. That’s what I plan to do.
Q Were you hoping to get involved again in the arts?
A I had done a lot of theater in my university years and thought at one point of doing it professionally. But even with scholarships, I had a lot of student debt and so that didn’t happen. But I always wanted to get back into it. At that time, my kids were older, I had gotten divorced and things had changed in my life. It opened up some opportunities to get involved.
Q What has kept driving you all these years?
A I get to work in the most beautiful place with beautiful people doing great art. What’s better than that?
