2024 marks Lamb’s Players Theatre’s 30th year in Coronado. Along with the longevity of the nonprofit, one of the proudest accomplishments is being able to raise $3,000,000 to bring the 1917 Spreckels Building back to its original intended use as a home for live performance. Producing Artistic Director Robert Smyth reflects back on his nearly 50 years of Lamb’s and what comes next for Coronado’s beloved theater group.
Robert Smyth, Producing Artistic Director
Robert Smyth joined Lamb’s Players in 1976 and became the Producing Artistic Director in 1985. Robert explains that as the Producing Artistic Director he is the CEO of the theater company. For context he shares, “All theaters aren’t set up that way. Some theaters are set up where you have an Artistic Director and a Managing Director. They’re equal positions – one oversees the artistic and one oversees the production end of things.”
“I started as a Producing Director, then I became an Artistic Director. Then I became the Producing Artistic Director. I make sure all the elements are arranged to be able to do the work. This includes the budget, who the people are in charge of the different areas, choosing the material that the theater’s going to present as a season, hiring artists, the relationship with the actors. Although, directors underneath the Artistic Director are also responsible for that part of the casting. Those are the three elements; and I wind up on the stage now and then too.”
While Robert is not primarily on stage, he says that he does enjoy acting. “I’ve been able to do a number of shows here in the last few years and I realized I need to put a lot more time aside to learn lines,” he says good naturedly.
Robert’s Origin Story
“I never thought I’d go into the theater. I had a lot of things that reinforced that I was good in it, but I always thought ‘who would go into the theater and try and make a living?’
“I played football in high school and one day our head cheerleader Joanne Hayakawa came to the team and dared us all to try out for the school play. Well, we were all half in love with her. We tried it out. None of us had an audition piece because none of us were actors. They gave us sides to read from the play. It was a fun piece set in Washington DC, and this was in Pasadena, California. Everybody’s reading this play, and it comes to a place where it mentions a river there. All the guys read it as the Potamac River, and I came up and I read it as the Potomac River because I had lived in Washington, and I got a part. That’s how I got into the theater.”
Lamb’s Leadership
The leadership at Lamb’s is something special, stacked with core team members that have been working together for 40 years. Of this experience, Robert says, “That’s something very rare for the theater world. It’s been great, it’s been very much like a family. I look at it like I couldn’t have done the work that I’ve done or the work that the company has done without that kind of team. These are people you can really depend upon. It’s like a family, so sometimes we have little squabbles, but we have methodology where we always work all that through.”
While there are five team members that have been working together for 40 years, three of them are approaching 50 years together – Chris Turner (Art Director), Kerry Meads (Associate Artistic Director), and Robert Smyth (Producing Artistic Director). The other two members are Nathan Peirson (Production Team Director) and Deborah Gilmour Smyth (Associate Artistic Director).
The Next Act for Lamb’s Players Theatre
Inevitably with the leadership approaching retirement, conversations for the next act have been well thought out. Robert shares, “We’ve been in conversation as a leadership body that this would be a good time to think about doing the transition. We’re starting to now work with our board of trustees to be part of that and to help lay out the plan of a three-year transition period. That’s what we start next year.”
How the Theater has Changed
All businesses must adapt and grow to thrive. Lamb’s is no different. Robert shares that over the years, Lamb’s has changed both their business and artistic models at different times. Robert credits some of his ideas to time in London. “I was in high school in London and I happened to be there at one of the most exciting times you could have been in England. For a teenage kid, it was just a wild city. It was safe, it was inexpensive, and we just had a great time. If you were interested in the theater, that’s when Laurence Olivier’s company was at the Old Vic.”
Steve Terrell, Founder of Lamb’s Players
Robert eventually made his return to San Diego and learned of a “small little touring company based in El Cajon called Lamb’s Players. I went out and met them and saw what they were doing with their touring. I just really hit it off with Steve Terrell, who was the founder of Lamb’s Players. We were sitting around over coffee and he said ‘what are you gonna do next?’ and I said I was going to graduate school. He replied, ‘You’ve enjoyed the theater so much, do you have any interest in that?’ and I said, ‘Well no, that’s not the pathway I’m on.’”
Robert smiles, “But I’ve always had this thing in the back of my head, ‘Wouldn’t it be exciting to run a resident repertory company over a number of years with a with a group of people that were all committed to work together?’”
He shared the idea with Steve who was onboard. Robert describes this as a time in his life where he felt like he could be a little more crazy. In 1978 Lamb’s Players Theatre, the organization’s first resident theatre was opened in a renovated church building in National City. Lamb’s maintained the resident repertory company until 2013.
Moving Away from an Ensemble
“That was a big transition moment. We realized many other ensembles had gone by the wayside as theaters began to realize it’s a difficult financial model to maintain. Going through the great recession, we were wondering how we were going to make this. We gave up a lot of other things before we gave up the ensemble, but we had to change. We couldn’t have all those people on full time staff with us. Over the years we developed a group of very clever talented pieces of performance in San Diego and that’s what we worked with over the years. We had to change to be able to survive.”
Lamb’s Players Theatre Mission
The mission of Lamb’s is to “Tell good stories well.” A simple concept that Robert says is constantly at the forefront of what they do. “People believe in us because of the excellence of our work. We’ve always seen this as an extended conversation with the people in the San Diego community. We’ve been fortunate to have not only strong base of support from Coronado, but from all around the county.”
R-E-S-P-E-C-T-F-U-L-L-Y Christmas
Two years ago, Lamb’s moved forward with the spirit of their Christmas show, formerly called “Lamb’s Festival of Christmas,” adding a little something else. Robert explains, “We have done a festive Christmas show since 1978. It’s almost always been a script that has a lot of music in it. A lot of different musical directors have worked with us over the years.”
The show evolved in 2023. “We did a piece called ”R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” which was a world premiere that we presented in the ’80s and 2023. It was a huge hit. We were coming up with what we were going to do for Christmas, and we thought what if we took the cast of R-E-S-P-E-C-T and the cast of “Million Dollar Quartet” that we had had such a huge hit with the year before, and put them together? We looked to develop a Christmas show out of it and that’s where “R-E-S-P-E-C-T-F-U-L-L-Y Christmas” came from.
Lamb’s Players Theatre Looks to 2025
Lamb’s 30-year celebration in the Spreckels Building will be happening next year along with their 55-year celebration of Lamb’s Players. Robert explains, “We weren’t able to do our 50th year celebration in 2021 because of COVID. So, we’re doing a 55th year celebration! We’ll have a big hurrah and then we’ll start announcing what the new leadership for the company is.”
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