Community Profile: Todd Olson
Producing Artistic Director, American Stage Theatre Company

Words: Aubrey Bramble

Throughout thirty years of flux and growth as a professional theatre company in the heart of downtown St. Petersburg, American Stage has remained devoted to their original mission of bringing off-the-beaten-path theatre programming to the Tampa Bay community. In January of 2009 the company will be leaving its current home on Third Street South and moving into shiny new digs on the downtown campus of St. Petersburg College. I recently sat down with current Producing Artistic Director, Todd Olson, to discuss the reasons behind American Stage's continued success and what life is like behind the velvet curtain.

In addition to his residency at American Stage, Olson is a working writer, instructor, director, and actor. He attended the prestigious Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University and has co-created a number of successful plays, including the recently world-premiered Casa Blue: The Last Moments in the Life of Frida Kahlo (of which he was also director) and the beloved Frank Sinatra revues, My Way  and Christmas My Way. At the moment he is hard at work on what he calls a "uniquely American" musical, American Storm, about the Great Galveston Flood of 1900 to be released sometime in 2009.

REAX:  Thanks for getting together! First of all, please describe what a "producing artistic director" does.
Todd Olson: Oh, my pleasure! Well, the "artistic director" side makes all the artistic decisions; I'm custodian of the artistic cause. And the "producing" side means I oversee the financial life of the theater.

REAX:  How do you think the move to the new space is going to affect American Stage and the theatre/art scene in downtown St. Pete?
TO:  Well, I think it's going to bring us to that next level. I think we'll be more centrally located in downtown. Parking will improve. How we tell stories will improve. Lots of things will improve in that way.

REAX:  How did you get involved in writing for theatre, and more specifically, how did you get involved in “My Way?”
TO:  I was guest directing at a theatre in Lewiston, NY and the artistic director had put a Sinatra review on his season. Sinatra had died in May of '98 - I guess that would have been the '98/'99 year. And he had no author for it. So he asked me in the car one night, would I be interested? And as a freelancer I said yes - when you're a freelancer you say yes to everything - and within 24 hours I had a treatment of how it could be done. I found out pretty quickly how much I always loved Sinatra and I really admired the guy for so many reasons. We did and it was very popular in upstate New York. Theatres watch all the time what each other is doing and starting in the Fall of 2001 there's been a production of My Way  playing somewhere. There's been, like, 300 productions of it.

I think we assumed that after Sinatra's death, other people would do Sinatra reviews and then when that didn't happen ours just became the definitive one to do.

REAX:  Can you describe the types of programming you are most drawn to at American Stage?
TO:  I think our aesthetic has always been pretty wide-ranging. We'll do a cheesy musical or play every now and then but it comes down to the balance factor. Our customers want the stuff with substance, with bite to it. We like to do area premieres, the "hot thing" from the West End, American Classics, non-American classics... it's a wide offering that way.

For more information on upcoming productions and classes, volunteer opportunities and events, log on to www.americanstage.org .