When Riverside Theatre’s newly named production manager Richard Crowell came to Vero Beach in February, it wasn’t to interview for a job. It was to design the set and lighting for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” the hilarious Chekhov send-up by Christopher Durang that packed the Waxlax Theatre for its two-week run.
It was his second time doing the set for “Vanya.” The fusty living room of a deceased elderly couple was one of more than two dozen sets he created for Florida Repertory Theatre in Fort Myers.
And that was just his side job. For 16 years, Crowell served as resident designer for the now-shuttered Florida Stage in Manalapan, south of the town of Palm Beach. The theater, tucked into a shopping plaza, was led by Louis Tyrrell, a remarkable talent whose vision earned the theater national recognition for developing new plays.
Crowell laughs at his unprintable reaction when he saw how low the theater’s strip-mall ceilings were. “I could reach up and touch the equipment,” he says. Nevertheless, the high-caliber productions delivered Crowell four coveted Carbonell Awards – South Florida’s version of the Oscars – for his sets or lighting dating back to 1996.
Florida Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2011, $1.5 million in debt. A victim of the recession, the theater had also relied on donors who fell prey to Bernie Madoff.
Cash strapped in its last year, Florida Stage had moved to the Kravis Center, hoping to save on expenses while attracting new patrons. Instead, attendance dropped.
Even after the city of West Palm lent the theater a quarter-million dollars, it still couldn’t make ends meet.
Crowell moved on, finding work at various theaters, including Riverside. In addition to “Vanya,” he designed the set of “God of Carnage” in 2014.
He also designed sets for four plays at West Virginia’s Greenbrier Valley Theatre, where his sister Cathey Crowell Sawyer is producing artistic director.
Meanwhile, Cornell and Jon Moses, Riverside’s managing director, had been trying to ease the burden over the past season on Kyle Atkins, who served as both production manager as well as company manager, in charge of contractual, housing and transportation needs of actors arriving in town for shows, as well as Riverside’s apprentices.
Atkins’ workload last season was so intense that he had to miss the technical rehearsal for “Vanya,” because 27 people were arriving for the upcoming main stage production, “Hello, Dolly.”
On a break in all the preparations, Crowell found time to catch up with Alan Cornell, Riverside’s producing executive director and his friend for two decades.
The next day, Cornell called Crowell to his office and offered him the post of production manager.
Five months later, he has made an offer on a house west of town and gotten a waiver for his son Theo to go to Beachland Elementary, across the street from the theater. That will make life easy for the family since Crowell’s wife Sofia will also be working at Riverside – she’s been hired to assist with event planning.
Crowell started at Riverside just two days after turning in his grades at Florida Atlantic University, where he was visiting professor of theater this past year, and where Lou Tyrell has just started a new resident theater, Theatre Lab.
It had been 30 years since Crowell taught at a university. Now in his mid-50s, he taught briefly when he was 25 at what is now the University of Memphis. “It was long enough to know I needed more practical experience than I had to be a teacher.”
Crowell, whose demeanor seems more professorial than theatrical, comes from a family of educators. Raised in Nashville and in Winchester, Tenn., the tiny town where the annual music festival Bonnaroo takes place, Crowell’s mother taught elementary school before starting a family – Crowell is the second oldest of five.
His father was principal of a school for neglected or unwanted children in Nashville.
He was also a referee – and here, Crowell breaks into a sudden, loud impersonation of his dad’s gruff bark, proof that his acting talents haven’t left him.
It was his sister Cathey who first noticed those talents. Nine years older than Richard, she was a high school English teacher in charge of the drama club; he was about 14.
“She talked me into coming to a community theater in Shelby, Tenn. They had a light board they couldn’t make work. I didn’t know anything about theater, but I had a family reputation of taking things apart and putting them back together.”
It was a simple fix, he says. But that wasn’t all he was asked to do. “They talked me into being the little boy in ‘Inherit the Wind’ about the Scopes’ monkey trial,” he recalls.
By the time Crowell had to decide on a college, his options were to accept a football scholarship or pursue a major in theater. He chose theater. But the team-building skills he learned playing ball should serve him well in the role of production manager. And if he picked up anything from his dad’s refereeing, that too may come in handy.
Riverside’s upcoming season on the Main Stage includes “Ring of Fire,” “Chicago,” Noel Coward’s “Private Lives,” “Mame” and “Saturday Night Live.” On the smaller Waxlax Stage, there’s the comedy “An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf,” and “The Christians,” a new play by Lucas Hnath.