A Conversation with Sheldon Epps: Michelin Distinguished Visitors Lecture

Sheldon Epps, Artistic Director of the renowned Pasadena Playhouse, conceived and directed the Duke Ellington musical Play On! which received three Tony Award nominations. The Pasadena Playhouse production was taped by PBS for broadcast as part of the "Great Performances" series. He also conceived and directed the highly acclaimed musical revue, Blues in the Night. The Broadway production was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Musical of the Year, and the London production, which he also directed, was nominated for two Laurence Olivier Awards, and ran for over a year on the West End.

Epps was a co-founder of the off-Broadway theater The Production Company, and has directed plays and musicals for many of the country's major theatres including the Guthrie, the Old Globe Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Crossroads Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Arizona Theatre Company, and Coconut Grove Playhouse.

For television he has directed episodes of Frasier, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Joey, Out Of Practice, My Wife and Kids, In Laws, Veronica's Closet, What I Like About You, Evening Shade, and Sister, Sister, and several pilots among others. For five seasons he was also producer/director for the hit series Girlfriends.

Since joining the Playhouse in 1997, his directing credits have included As Bees In Honey Drown, Blue, Play On!, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Old Settler, The Real Thing, On Borrowed Time, Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, Blues in the Night, and Purlie, a co-production with the Goodman Theatre.

He is currently a member of the Executive Board of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. Epps is a two-time recipient of the Theatre Communications Group/Pew Charitable Trust National Theatre Artists Residency Grant, which supported his four-year tenure at the Old Globe Theatre as Associate Artistic Director.

The Michelin Distinguished Visitors Lecture Series was established in 1992 by New York designer Bonnie Cashin in memory of her uncle, James Michelin, a consulting engineer, who had always hoped to attend Caltech. Previous speakers in this series have included architectural critic Vincent Scully, artist David Hockney, playwright Tom Stoppard, architect Frank Gehry, director Oliver Stone, opera singer Beverly Sills, poet Seamus Heaney, authors Michael Crichton, Herman Wouk and Walter Mosley, and violinist MIdori. The purpose of these lectures is to promote creative interaction between the arts and sciences.

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