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Unabashed theater junkie takes reins of Actors Guild's 'The Pillowman'

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

In June, at a Theatre Communications Guild conference in Denver, Eric Seale felt a little out of place.

"It shook me up," Seale says. "I said, what am I doing here, because a lot of you work for these million-dollar organizations and have entirely different lives than me."

Well, not entirely.

Seale, associate artistic director of Actors Guild of Lexington, makes his directing debut at the theater this weekend with Martin McDonagh's pitch-black comedy The Pillowman.

Like many a theater professional, Seale, 27, practically eats, breathes and sleeps theater. He says a girlfriend once broke up with him saying, "I like seeing you on stage, but I just don't get all of this other stuff."

If he's not working on a show, Seale is thinking about shows he wants to work on, or creating promotional posters and videos, or acting as AGL's technical liaison.

That passion for theater is largely responsible for his rise to the No. 2 artistic gig at Actors Guild.

"I work a lot, like well beyond my hours," Seale says. "And it's all I ever want to do."

In fifth grade, he played Dick Clark in a school play called American Pop. The role had him wearing a suit, holding a microphone and introducing songs.

"It was the most fun I had ever had in my life, up 'til that time," he says. "I started doing every church play I could get into."

He joined the drama program at Henry Clay High School, and he joined Lexington Children's Theatre's student troupe, Company B.

There, LCT theater school director Lisa Zaleski became his role model, "because she made her living in theater, and up until then, I didn't think you could do that.

"Company B pretty much did it for me. After that, anything but theater seemed like a poor second to me."

Seale was in advance-placement classes at Henry Clay. He's an avid reader and can easily navigate discussions about literature, European political history and other brainy topics, but he says he was never that good in school.

"I looked at different theater schools and realized that going to theater school is exceedingly expensive."

So he went to work.

He looked at audition notices, but he didn't see anything for himself. He also took a stab at making a few movies. But mostly he worked "my corporate job," for Panera bread.

In 2004, he tried out for a Studio Players production of Wit, and he was cast in a small role. That started a busy four years that Seale says had few breaks. He acted and directed at Studio again several times; became an integral player in the growth of theater at Natasha's Café, directing Surprise Theatre; and eventually went to work for Actors Guild, initially in public relations and development.

"He is Mozart to my Salieri," Actors Guild artistic director Richard St. Peter says of Seale, who was just promoted to associate artistic director.

Seale says St. Peter initially saw him as an actor. But after seeing Seale's production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at Studio Players last season, St. Peter started putting directors' memoirs and books on directing technique on Seale's desk.

The Pillowman is the third in a sort of trilogy of Seale-directed plays that he says were particularly important to him, including Cuckoo's Nest and David Mamet's American Buffalo.

Pillowman is about a writer in a totalitarian government being grilled by police because his gruesome short stories are suspected of leading to the grisly murders of children. Some of the killings are re-enacted.

"It's this idea of, 'How responsible are you from what people take from your art?'" Seale says. "If you write horror stories, or gruesome morality tales, are you responsible if somebody goes out and lives them?"

Seale says the play will push Lexington theatergoers out of their comfort zone. A few impressed eyebrows were raised when Seale, while hobnobbing with the theater elite in Denver mentioned that Actors Guild was doing it.

"I would say I was from Kentucky, and you always watch people react ... and look at your feet, to see if you're wearing shoes," Seale says. "They don't know that Lexington is this incredibly awesome, progressive little town in the middle of Kentucky."

Of Actors Guild, he says, "I really want to see this theater take off, because it has so much potential."