Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Adolfo.
Adam, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I got bitten by the acting bug early… very early. Like 3 months old early. I did my first stage production at 3 months playing Baby Jesus and then took a long hiatus as I searched for the ‘right” follow up role. haha. In middle school I got a second whiff of the entertainment biz and became active in community theatre in Corpus Christi, Texas at the Harbor Playhouse. Following High School but before college, I got the opportunity to study Shakespeare, theatre, and movement at the renowned Texas Shakespeare Festival in Kilgore Texas.
I studied Theatre at Stephen F. Austin State University and quickly learned I was a mediocre actor with limited range. A professor pointed out that my knowledge of that quite possibly meant that I had directing in my genes. And I did. I studied directing in every way possible. I’d shadow and assist graduate students on their directing projects and when time came for me to take on that chair, I knew very clearly that I had the vision for it.
Vision is a big word when it comes to directing in my philosophy. I don’t just ‘stage’ productions, create worlds that we aren’t familiar with. I have a singular mantra when it comes to theatre making – Reinvent, Don’t Reinterpret. What does that mean? Well it means that we should change the way we look at text and theatre rather than changing what it actually is. Hamlet in Hawaii is just that – changing Hamlet. Rather, change how we look at him.
After college, I got the privilege to ‘learn the biz’ at the Arizona Theatre Company in the production department where I got to learn everything from budgeting productions to contract writing.
Directing stops along the way with theatres like the Weathervane Playhouse in Ohio, and the Live Theatre Workshop in Tucson helped me hone my skills when I was given the opportunity to take over as Artistic Director of The Living Opera in Richardson Texas, where I got really focus my work as a producer.
That was followed by a 7 year stint as Executive Artistic Director of Artes de la Rosa Cultural Center for the Arts which saw me rebrand the company from a community theatre to a sprawling and ambitious professional theatre company.
I continue to direct while serving as Director of Marketing and Community Engagement for the Bishop Arts Theatre Center which is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year. It so happens that I’m also going to get to direct one of the shows this season.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There is a very famous quote from noted actor, director, and acting Coach Stella Adler, “Life beats down and crushes the soul. Art reminds us that we have one.”
I venture to say Art can also beat down and crush the soul. haha. I’ll leave it at that.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Adam Adolfo – what should we know?
I’m a stage director. What does that mean? Well, it means that I help people dream for a few hours in a dark room full of other people experiencing that dream together. Where some people work in spreadsheets and balance sheets, I work in artistry and inspiration.
Let’s start with a cliché. “All the world’s a stage,” comes the mantra from young idealistic theatre students, their voices unabashedly and loudly professing their passion. I believe to truly find that voice, you have to be silent, still, and open to the inspiration that it brings. Your voice comes from your passion and if you don’t know where your passion comes from, you are mute. I found my passionate voice in a dark theatre. In East Texas. On a hot summer night.
The year was 1999 and I was attending the Texas Shakespeare Festival Acting Workshops in Kilgore Texas. I was headed to Stephen F. Austin State University to pursue a degree in theatre that fall. I had been active in both community and high school theatre, but in hindsight, I had failed to find my voice and love in the art. In retrospect, I was pursuing the degree because I was good at it; not because I loved it. At that age, I didn’t recognize there was a difference, but Two Gentleman of Verona, directed by Tom Whitaker, was about to change me by putting into stark relief a vision of theatre that lived beyond the stage.
I remember sitting in the theatre, in what I can only describe as awe and wonder at the parts of the whole, basking in the bare raked stage, a 3 piece jazz band complete with lounge singer, a starry moon hanging in the sky, a cast spiritedly lilting on and off stage as if by magical force – all poised in perfect simple detail. It was overwhelming. The images of that show: men’s white linen suits, the bobbed hair of actress Michele Tauber, the long white gown of the ‘lounge singer’, Sarah Hartmann, whom to this day, I still see in my mind’s eye, elegant, statuesque, an icon of 1930’s jazz; even now as I type, they all still glow in my head as a miracle of storytelling still stirring and spurring me on toward my own dreams. Most crystalline in my memory is during that evening’s two hour revelry, I felt as if I didn’t breathe.
At the end of the show, when the cast took the stage to sing the finale, “Love Is,” I realized something that was a profound first in my theatre going experiences, my eyes were wet. To this day I can’t tell you how long I had been crying, but it had come. I looked at the cast and there was not a dry eye among them. I fell in love with Shakespeare that evening. I fell in love with the magic of the language and the lyrical poetry executed so stunningly by the cast of brilliant actors. I fell in love with theatre that night and I knew I was sharing it with a creative team, cast, and crew that loved it as much as I would grow to love it. As the cast raised their voices to sing, I found my voice. Mute no longer, I learned who I wanted to be in this brotherhood of artists. I wanted to make people feel the way I did in that East Texas Theatre on that hot summer night and I wanted to help other artists do that as well.
A bachelor’s degree, countless directing credits, and helming 3 arts organizations later, I am a director. I’m also a producer. I’m a designer, a marketer, a social media specialist, and a constant requirement in our artistic climate, I am also a fundraiser. I am an artist. I’m what Julie Taymor calls a “Theatre Maker” and my ambition is focused on becoming an Artistic Director for a major regional theatre in America.
Almost two decades after that night in an East Texas Theatre, I have directed shows across the country, run several arts companies, received rave reviews, accolades, and awards, yet, I still recall the night Shakespeare gave me a voice. In my time at Stephen F. Austin and on the many stages I’ve worked on since those days, I cultivated technique, communication, artistry but not heart. I am grateful to say, I learned that many years before my resume grew. I learned that I must touch you, “the audience”, personally as a human being if I am to succeed as an artist. Now for every project, I direct with the hope that it might make a teenager fall in love with theatre, the way Mr. Whitaker, made me fall in love with Shakespeare that summer night 17 years ago. That was the moment that defined what I hoped to become, the moment Shakespeare put a voice to my love, the moment I chose a life as a theatre person. So when someone asks me “Why a life as a director?” I do not tell them it’s because I am a director, designer, or an administrator, rather I raise my voice and say, “I am a Maker of Theatre.”
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
There are so many people who help me make art. Kristin Spires who has been a friend and collaborator musically or Austin Ray Beck who has been an assistant director and choreographer on so many productions it is sometimes hard to delineate where our work ends and begins in a show. I’ve had amazing designers work with me including Mark Howard who makes magical worlds out of sound and Kyle Harris who can light anything – including a massive pool of water for my performers to dance on. I’ve had great friends who became collaborators – most notably Kyle R. Trentham and Todd Camp with the QLive! Production Company. Clyde Berry who as an Arts Educator danced the line of friend, mentor, and educator with every late night conversation I had. And then those young artists who inspired me as much as I directed them, Stephen Newton, Matt Bowdren, Jeremy Coca, Caden Large and most recently Alexander Peters. I love working with young performers – they always manage to remind me to not take for granted that we ‘dream’ for a living.
Then there are cheerleaders like Eva Bonilla and Steve DeLeon who both were on my Board of Directors… but I think there is one person who I owe my work ethic to – my mom. My mom was and continues to be my biggest critic. My father, who passed while I was directing a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, was my biggest cheerleader. For those who know the story of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it’s about a family in crisis when the patriarch finds that he is dying of cancer. It seemed odd to be directing that show as I was dealing with my grief. In many ways – I think it informed my directing.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adam_adolfo/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/director.adam.adolfo
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DirectorAdolfo
Image Credit:
The photo provided of “me” in the purple sweater is shot by Vishal Malhotra for the Fort Worth Weekly.
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