Meet Your Neighbor / Oct/Nov 2011
Meet Kevin Harris
In this installment of our “Meet Your Neighbor” series, SLO LIFE Magazine sits down with Kevin Harris. He is extensively educated with loads of theatrical experience, remains “life-long friends” with his ex-wife, Khara, and has two young kids, Ella and Dominick, in local schools. He has a penchant for sweater vests and Converse “Chuck Taylors.” He commutes by skateboard to The SLO Little Theatre where he is the Managing Artistic Director. Here is his story…
Okay, Kevin, we’d like to hear your story. Take it from the top and spare no details… I grew up here. I lived in Arroyo Grande from when I was two until about high school. I went to A.G. High School. Studied drama under Billy Houck and also really got into Speech there, and knew I wanted to be an actor.
How did that go? My mom drove me around to all the auditions. It was really difficult for her because I was her youngest by about 9 years. Both of my brothers stayed local, one went to Poly. The idea of sending her youngest off somewhere outside of the area - I didn’t even apply to any schools in California - you know, because I really wanted to leave this terrible, terrible place [laughter].
Where did you go? I got a full scholarship to NYU. My dad flew me out there one week before classes began. And I had never really been anywhere besides Missouri up until that point. I remember just being in my dorm room, I was 17 at the time. My dad was there and he woke up at like 4:30am to go off to JFK and fly out. I remember him walking out of the door and thinking, “Holy [cow], I can do anything.” But, honestly, I was totally terrified and alone.
What came next? So, after I finished, I immediately moved back here, as people do when they graduate from undergrad, especially actors. I started doing work at the Centerpoint Theatre. They started in 1991 over at the old Greyhound Bus station in the space where Mario’s Cafeteria used to be.
How were things going at Centerpoint? It had been there for 10 years. I started right after we had spent the last several months on this major fund raising campaign where we raised nearly $70,000 to completely renovate the theatre, which we did. It was beautiful but we were still leasing from Greyhound and it was a very tumultuous relationship from the beginning. Right before our 10-year anniversary season opened, we received a letter from Greyhound Corporate saying we had to move out in 30 days.
Did Centerpoint go out of business? No, we looked for somewhere to relocate. We needed a place to set up shop. And we had always had our eye on New Orleans. We had a couple of friends who were living there. They didn’t seem to have a lot of theatres considering its size. We got in touch with the city and they were very supportive of us moving out there because in New Orleans there is no shortage of empty city-owned buildings. So they were willing to subsidize us by allowing us to go rent-free in one of their buildings.
What a great opportunity… So it seemed. We moved out there and about a month-and-a-half after we got there, this was back in 2003, not sure if you remember this, but there was a huge shakeup in the Mayor’s Office, where just about everybody it seemed, was found to be involved in some major corruption over the past 20 years and it had all just come to the surface. Of course, our contact at the city office was one of the people that was fired and the new person who took his place said, “Are you kidding me? No - we aren’t going to subsidize a theatre.”
And, how far into the development of the new theatre company had you been at that point? We had moved about three quarters of the Centerpoint stuff out there, just ready to go. All the seats, all the lighting equipment ready to go. And now we had no place to put it. But I said to myself, “Alright we are going to make the best of it,” and I got a job at the Contemporary Arts Center as their theatre manager there. It was a new arts complex and I started producing theatre through them which was a great experience.
What was life like in The Big Easy? We were living in the Garden District, my wife, Khara, was pregnant with our daughter, Ella. We lived right off Saint Charles Avenue, about two-and-a-half miles from the French Quarter. It’s a great neighborhood. It’s where you find so many of those beautiful mansions. But, like anything in New Orleans, which is why it’s one of the most culturally diverse and interesting cities on Earth, there are no good areas of town. It goes street by street. You can have mansions on one street and then the very next street you can have shacks, and then mansions again. It’s just completely interspersed like that. We lived in an old plantation-style house that had been converted into a duplex. We had families living around us and a big front yard and a big backyard. It was great.
Sounds perfect, why did you leave? Well, it all started one night after this huge gala at the Contemporary Arts Center. I had been dressed up in a tux and I got home around 1am. Khara came home shortly before I did. I remember getting into bed with her and almost falling asleep but then hearing commotion from the next room that sounded like people yelling. And we figured that it was just our roommate watching a movie way too loud and we thought, “What is that? That’s pretty rude.” Khara got up and she opened the door and there was this guy standing there with a gun. He walked into our bedroom and said, “Give me all your money. Give me everything you got.”
Wow – that’s intense. I remember Khara called me Kevin at one point and then the guy started calling me Kevin. And I will always remember that. He was like, “Kevin get your stuff. I’m gonna really hurt Kevin, better make sure he gets his stuff.”
How long did this go on? You know the whole thing probably lasted like 45 seconds, but it just seemed like forever. And I was buck-naked because I was wearing the tux before and I was so tired that I just stripped it off and got into bed, so I remember feeling doubly vulnerable. And it was pitch black and I was looking for stuff and I couldn’t find it. I remember feeling around on the floor and finding this plastic level - we were putting in a shelf earlier in the day – and then I picked it up and looked over at this guy’s silhouette, this big guy, and thinking for just a split second that I could maybe knock him out with it. And then I thought to myself, “Man, you are stupid. It’s a plastic level from the Dollar Store.” So I put it down and ended up not being able to find my wallet. I finally said to him, “I’m so sorry but I can’t find my stuff… if I can turn on the lights I could find it. I’m not trying to b.s. you, I just can’t find it.” And then he said, “Alright get in the corner,” and he had Khara and I get in the corner and put our hands behind our backs and we thought for sure he was just going to kill us.
Maybe the plastic level counterattack wasn’t such a bad idea after all... What happened next? There was silence, and we heard him go down the stairs. And then we got up and looked out the window and he was just walking down the street, not even running, just kind of walking. So the next hour or so everyone was in shock, but we didn’t know it. Everyone was just all business. No one was really talking about what just happened. Everyone was just very efficient. We need to do this, cancel these credit cards, call the cops, do this, do that. Khara got on the computer trying to log onto the credit card company website to file a report, and I remember looking at the computer screen - it was just completely fuzzy - that is when I realized I was totally in shock. I felt alright and I felt like everything was fine, but I couldn’t see the screen because my adrenaline was just so crazy that I was unable to focus on the computer.
How do you feel about the experience now? Oh, it just feels like a Bruce Willis movie now. But, honestly, it just ruined it. It ruined the whole town for us. We were out of there about two months later, as soon as we could get out. Actually, it took about a week for us to be able to bring up that option because we really wanted to make roots down there and make it happen. And we really loved the city, but all of the most magical, romantic parts of New Orleans, like all the dark streets and the fog, and burnt out street lamps and everything, all the stuff that two weeks ago we loved, that made it seem like Disneyland, were now just ominous and terrifying. The whole experience, even though outwardly I felt fine, it had really shaken me up.
How did you regroup? We decided to do what you do when you don’t know what you are going to do, which is that we decided to move back home. All our family is here and I decided that would be the perfect time to go to grad school since I really didn’t want to start another theatre company from the ground up. Even at Centerpoint, which was a great experience in learning how to run a theatre company, I was always worrying about the bottom line.
So, did you stay in San Luis? I just really wanted to spend three years of not having to worry about the financial realities and instead just worry about the arts, so I enrolled at the University of Iowa.
What were your impressions of Iowa? There are a lot of similarities between Iowa City and San Luis actually - it’s got the same feel, similar architecture, and it’s a college town. It has a similar vibe and I felt very much at home there. Plus it’s dirt cheap to live there and it’s one of the best directing schools ever. My focus has really been on working with new playwrights and original work. The University of Iowa has a writers’ workshop which is the top playwrights’ school in the country, so I knew if I got in there as a director I would be working with the next generation of the greatest playwrights. And I still have relationships with almost all of them. I was there for three years. I got my masters degree. And, my son, Dominick, was born there. And he still describes himself as “Dom the Iowa boy.” He is very proud of the fact that he was born in Iowa, even though he doesn’t have many memories of it… he’s definitely corn-fed, which is the best way to describe him.
How long were you there? We stayed in Iowa for just about five months after I graduated because I was directing for the Riverside Shakespeare. Then I had another directing gig right after for an original musical in Illinois. So Khara went back to the Central Coast and I stayed out there. And that was when we split, when we officially separated.
How did you cope during that transition? I was just going from theatre to theatre to theatre, you know, and being there for six weeks at a time, and then a couple of weeks off. Then the cycle would repeat. And it was really good at the time because I was going through a divorce and it was a very good profession to be able to avoid any kind of introspection at all because you are in a new place every six weeks with a new group of people. And, as a director you are sort of at the top of the ladder, so it really feeds into that God complex, too, while your real life is falling apart. It was great while it lasted but then everyone has to come back to reality after a while. And, I felt that the lifestyle was no longer healthy.
How do you look back on your experience there now? Well, we had kind of planned on setting up shop in Iowa, but as you know plans change. Iowa just seemed great because I was working as a freelance director and I was traveling all around the country working on plays so it was a great central location. It was three hours from O’Hare in Chicago, so I was able to easily fly anywhere in the country very quickly. And, it’s just a great place to live. Iowa rocks, it’s just really cold. Other than that, no complaints.
What brought you back home? Khara had gotten a job out here and we knew we wanted to relocate for no other reason than we didn’t know what else to do. And I wanted to be near my kids and Khara and I still have a great relationship. We knew that we always loved it here and we always wanted to come back here but we never thought that we would have the means to do it. But, sometimes life takes you back where you want to go whether you think you can do it or not, you know? And now, three years later our family is doing great.
So how did you end up at The Little Theatre? We came back and I continued to travel. And then I thought, I need to get a job around here, I need to find a theatre job. But the PCPA (Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts) was undergoing cuts at that time and they weren’t hiring anyone. Poly wasn’t hiring anyone. Cuesta wasn’t hiring anyone. But, around this same time I happened to go to breakfast with one of my old Speech teachers from A.G. High School because I wanted to get her advice. She had always been a really dear friend to me and I wanted to talk to her about my divorce. I knew she had been divorced before and I told her, “This is what is going on with me. Is it normal?” We were talking and out of the blue she says, “Listen, I’m on the board of The San Luis Little Theatre. We just lost our executive director and we’re looking for a new one. Do you think that is something you would be qualified for?” And it just completely fell into my lap because that was what I was totally qualified for. That is the only job on Earth that I would totally qualify for, and it was just right there. So I interviewed for it and got it and the rest is history.
This December marks the third year of your tenure. How is it going? This has been our best year ever. We are going on fifteen shows in a row where we have exceeded our net goals. It has been nuts. And the Reader’s Theatre has just been off the charts, too. We just had one of our most successful Childrens’ Theatres this summer. So we are looking good.
We hear that The Little Theatre has big ambitions. We plan on making this one of the premiere community theatres in the nation. You know, really get our name up there in the top five quality-wise. And my vision, and the board of directors shares this, is to make The Little Theatre a cornerstone in the artistic community. We are lucky enough to be subsidized by the city and have this amazing history behind us, and now it is our responsibility to bring as much art into this place as possible. I want the name San Luis Obispo Little Theatre to be synonymous with good art that truly represents the community.
It’s been great getting to know you, Kevin, but it’s time for us to exit stage left. I’ve enjoyed it, too – and don’t forget to come back and see a show soon.
