A Man for All Seasons

A Man for All Seasons

BY DAVID KAPLAN
Rice News Staff
September 23, 1999

In ’63, Sandy Havens was in New York, trying to make it on Broadway. While looking for stage-managing work one day, he heard about an acting job–a replacement for the male lead in “Barefoot in the Park.” Havens, a handsome young man who could act, was encouraged to audition by someone who knew someone with the show. But as soon as he got to the theater he was told, “I think we’ve already made our choice. Some new guy.”

That new guy was Robert Redford, who fared pretty well as an actor.

Just one year later, Havens’ star would also rise–in a different constellation, but no less bright.

He took a job at Rice University, directing an all-volunteer student theater group called Rice Players. What he has accomplished in 35 years as its leader is remarkable. Havens took an extracurricular drama group–at a school with no drama department–and turned it into a major theatrical force in Houston.

Havens, professor of drama and director of Rice Players, will retire at the end of this academic year. Having deeply enriched the cultural life of the university and city, he leaves an impressive legacy.

The Rice Players have presented many Houston premieres of plays by Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Lanford Wilson, to name a few.

For decades, the Players have presented groundbreaking productions, never shying away from daring or difficult work. In the days when there were fewer professional theatrical companies in town, the local papers reviewed college theater, and the Players consistently drew high praise. The Houston Post called a ’72 production of “A Macbeth” “pure and simply brilliant.” The Houston Chronicle described a ’76 production of “The Serpent” as perhaps the city’s most important piece of the year.

Inspired and mentored by Havens, many Players have gone into professional theater or film as actors, directors, technical directors, executive directors, teachers, writers and script consultants.

What is equally impressive about Sandy Havens is that throughout his 35 years of working with the Players, often under extreme pressure, he has been a kind and good friend.

Soon after the parts have been cast for Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This,” the first show of the 1999-2000 season, the actors meet in Haven’s office for a read-through. In his enthusiastic and melodic baritone voice, Havens analyzes each scene, explaining the emotions and motives that are driving the dialogue. The rehearsal takes up much of the evening.

How can these Players squeeze in six nights a week of rehearsals on top of all their school work? Quips the assistant director, Brown College junior Amanda Leslie, “You drop your friends and don’t sleep a lot.”

As a director, Havens is known for painting memorable pictures on stage.

For decades, Rice students have gladly made such sacrifices for the thrill of being a Player.

Havens has also done without sleep sometimes. In his first 20 years as Players director, he worked 18-hour days. Along with directing, he helps build and paint the sets, buy lumber, track down the costumes and more.

He was born in McCamey, Texas, near Midland. The son of a Shell Oil production foreman, he moved with his family 21 times before finishing high school.

His childhood was like the theater. Says Havens, “I was constantly ‘opening’ in a new town, establishing myself, then shutting that show down.”

Havens ’56 came to Rice as an undergraduate with the dream of becoming a physicist. “It was a romantic notion,” he says. Switching to English, he became active with the recently-formed Rice Players, who had no faculty director.

He thrived in the group and “loved the people”; one of them in particular, Helen Morris Havens ’57, whom he married the day after she graduated.

As a Player, Havens acted and tried his hand at directing. His first effort as a director was “so bad I couldn’t watch it.” He felt better about his nextdirecting project, a scene from Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle.” It was the first time the play had been performed in America.

His Rice Players experience inspired him to pursue a master’s degree in theater at Indiana University.

After graduating in ’59 he served in the Army, then moved with Helen to Odessa, where his stepfather, who had invented a drilling device, convinced Havens to start a business manufacturing it.

In their spare time, Sandy and Helen Havens became active in community theater. Under his direction, the shows greatly improved but, Havens says, he was “driving everybody crazy” with his intense work ethic and was asked to resign. The experience motivated him to try professional theater.

They moved to New York City where Havens worked on two Broadway shows as a production assistant and stage manager for famed director Joshua Logan. Havens loved the work but couldn’t find enough to make a living.

In ’64, after learning from a friend on Rice’s faculty that the university was looking for a director of Rice Players, he flew to Houston for his interview. Surprisingly, it was the Rice Players–not a faculty or administrative committee–who would make the hire.

He met with about 30 Players inside Sammy’s. “They grilled me for about four hours and wanted to know everything I knew about theater,” he says. “I think I’m the only Rice faculty member to be hired by students.”

He immediately enjoyed being a director at a university with no drama department. “It was just me and a bunch of bright, capable students with no departmental hassle,” he says.

Believing that he could benefit from more professional experience, he immersed himself in stage work for three consecutive years: 13 shows in summer stock and 10 play readings at the Contemporary Arts Museum. Combined with his four Rice Players productions, he was doing 27 shows a year.

Havens soon turned the Rice Players into an exciting company that was having a big impact on local theater.

Ira Gruber, the Harris Masterson Jr. Professor of History and a longtime fan of the Players, recalls that during Haven’s first 15 years at Rice there was very little legitimate theater in Houston, and the Alley was a small, conservative theater.

“Sandy was much more adventurous,” Gruber says. “Some of the most interesting plays in Houston were being produced by the Rice Players.”

Christianne Mays Hagemann ’83, a local actress who was a member of the Alley company for two seasons, says Havens always set high artistic standards. “It wasn’t just ‘Hey, let’s put on a play.’ There was a deeper love for the theater and a deeper challenge.”

From the beginning, Havens has treated Rice Players as a serious professional theater company. In ’73, he brought in French mime, movement and theater teacher Jacques Lecoq, whose visit inspired the Rice Players the following year to go on an overseas tour, performing in France and Germany. Ten years later, Havens brought in the distinguished acting teacher Robert Lewis.

It is Havens’ own teaching and directing style, however, that is most responsible for the Rice Players’ high caliber of work.

“One of his great strengths as a director is staging,” says Chris Boyer ’83, who is currently the executive director of Interfaith Community Council in New Albany, Ind., and has been in theater management for much of his professional life.

“His productions are beautiful,” Boyer says. “He is able to create these wonderful visual images.”

As an acting coach Havens “lets you find your emotional capacity as a performer and gives you a safe environment in which to explore your creativity,” says Donna Yeager ’77, the Alley Theatre’s director of individual giving.

Yeager, a former actress who did repertory work in England for eight years and as an Alley Theatre company member once starred opposite George Segal, recalls that Havens “never made you feel ashamed even when you fell flat on your face.”

Rebecca Greene Udden ’73, the artistic director and a founder of Main Street Theater, believes Havens benefited from having been a Rice student in that he is “atuned to the Rice temperament: to stretch and test yourself and do things on your own.”

Ahmad Hernandez ’98, operations executive of Houston’s Express Theatre, says he was amazed to see that Havens was talented in every aspect of theater and at the same time unassuming. Hernandez took several theater courses at Rice from Havens and would be “blown away” whenever Havens would do an acting scene in class.

Becky Bonar ’72, an actress and commercial producer living in Studio City, Calif., left a university with a drama department to come to Rice to be in Rice Players. She recalls what a heady feeling it was for Rice students from many academic disciplines to transform themselves into an exciting theatrical company.

There was a sense, says Yeager, “of being a talented, smart group of people that played together.” They were egalitarian as well: She notes that “anybody could walk through the door and be cast in the lead.”

When Havens was hired as the Rice Players’ director, it was a primarily student-run organization. “Thirty-five years later that’s still the case,” he says. “With me, they pick the seasons and pick the cast.” Since ’76 the Rice Players have been financially self-sufficient by charging modest ticket fees.

Since his arrival, amateur theater on campus has grown to include residential college theater. When college theater was born in the late ’60s, Havens was supportive. He let colleges borrow Rice Players equipment and offered artistic advice. “I’m not responsible for (college theater’s) success, but I certainly could have made it hard for them,” he says.

Allen Matusow, the W.G. Twyman Professor of History and a longtime fan of the Players, notes that “other schools have good theater because they have professional programs. Rice has good theater because Sandy showed the remarkable things you can do with students who just want to have fun. If you want to know why theater flourishes at Rice, you have to start with him.”

Says Judith Brown, dean of the School of Humanities, “Sandy’s energy and dedication to the Rice Players have been an inspiration to students and faculty alike. He has instilled in several generations of students a love of theater and an appreciation of the many ways that theater and the spoken word can change people’s lives. The solid foundation he built for Rice Players and for theater throughout the campus will enable theater activities to continue to thrive on the Rice campus for many generations to come.”

In April of 2000, Haven will present his final production as director of Rice Players, “A Man For All Seasons,” which was also his first.

He’ll come back occasionally to help paint sets and will also spend his time cooking, gardening and, in summer, sailing near Helen Havens’ family home in Martha’s Vineyard. Helen Havens is a priest at Houston’s St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, where her husband is very active.

Reflecting on his 35 years as director, Havens says it has been “an absolutely blessed life.” One of the benefits of that life has been having “a huge extended family.” For years, the Havens home has been a Rice Players hangout. He recalls years ago when his two children would go downstairs in the morning to see who was asleep on the sofa.

What’s drawn generations of students to Havens is “his incredible warmth as a person,” says Hagemann. Havens was also a beloved master of Jones College from ’71 to ’77.

Says Boyer, “Sandy treats his Rice Players like young colleagues and gives them a tremendous amount of respect.

“When I came to Rice, I had just lost my mother and I was a mess. When I think back on all the people who had a positive influence on me, Sandy is first and foremost and Helen is right behind him.”

John Heaner, a story consultant for director Sidney Pollack in Hollywood, had never been involved in the theater until he auditioned for a Rice Players production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in ’79.

The experience made him a Player, stretched him as a person and, Heaner says, it had everything to do with Havens. “Because somebody believed in us so much, we could take center stage and do something beyond our own lives.

“Sandy gave us literally and figuratively the keys to the theater. He gave us a place to play, a place to be our best. Like the perfect host of a feast, he opened the table to everyone. Thanks to his energy, charisma and grace, it was one of the great feasts of our lives.”