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Robert and Deborah Smyth: Leading Lambs

By John Flink

Local Couple are Bright Lights at Coronado’s Professional Theatre Company

There was a time when it was common for small-town merchants to live in apartments above their stores. Mostly a thing of the past, it was an arrangement that made it easy for the merchants and their families to fully participate in the community they served.

Robert Smyth and Deborah Gilmour Smyth, however, moved into an apartment above their store in downtown Coronado in 1993 and have no intention of leaving. Coronado isn’t just any small town, it’s their small town. And their store is Lamb’s Players Theatre.

The English director and theatre scholar Peter Brook said that the theatre should be as important to the community as the grocery store; that food for the mind and spirit is as vital as food for the body. It’s a notion the Smyths take to heart.

“It has been exciting to watch how downtown Coronado has changed since we opened our doors 10 years ago,” said Robert Smyth, the theatre’s producing artistic director. “About 12 new restaurants have opened since then and we have a very nice, almost symbiotic relationship with them because we attract people to town. We are a Coronado theatre. We are a major player here and we intend to stay that way.”

Located in the 1917 Spreckels Building on the bend in Orange Avenue, Lamb’s Players occupies space that was built as a music hall, turned into a movie theater and left to languish as storage by the 1950s. The theatre opened in 1994 after a $2.4 million renovation.

“The renovation of the Spreckels Building was the catalyst for the revitalization of downtown,” said Toni Gaylord, executive director of MainStreet Coronado. “Lamb’s found the space and the space found them and it was a match made in heaven. The synergy is definitely there between the theatre and the businesses around it.”

Lamb’s Players was founded in Minnesota in 1971 as a street theatre company that played Renaissance fairs, schools, prisons and college campuses and eventually moved to warmer climes in El Cajon. Robert Smyth joined up in 1976, and the troupe opened its first resident theater in 1978 in National City, a space still used for educational outreach productions. The name comes from the founders’ adherence to the Renaissance custom of naming theatrical troupes after their patrons; the King’s Players, for example.
Committed to exploring the spiritual dimension of life, the troupe’s patron was deemed to be the lamb of god,
so the troupe became Lamb’s Players. The troupe’s spiritual theme does not imply affiliation with a particular religion or system of belief, Smyth pointed out.

Deborah Gilmour was one of the first actors Smyth hired when assembling a new resident ensemble in 1979. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Gilmour moved regularly as a child, following her father’s career in the moving business.

It was a life experience she had in common with her new boss. A native of Philadelphia, Smyth, to hear him tell it, didn’t grow up anywhere in particular. His father’s job with evangelist Billy Graham’s organization moved the family constantly, including a stretch in London during his high school years that Smyth cites as an especially formative period.

It was not love at first sight. Smyth and Gilmour’s working relationship was about work. It wasn’t until 1983 that the pair first acknowledged the romance in the air. They were married in 1984. Gilmour Smyth now serves as one of two associate artistic directors, along with Kerry Meads.

“We both act, we both direct and sometimes we play couples, although we don’t set out to,” Gilmour Smyth said during an interview at the theatre’s administrative headquarters, a restored Victorian house on Loma
Avenue just steps from the stage door. “I forget what our relationship is when we’re working. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we worked together for four years before we were romantically involved. The jobs and the marriage came separately.”

Lamb’s Players is unique in that it is the only year-round theatre ensemble in the Southwest. The arrangement
is based on the European model, in which a more-or-less permanent ensemble of artists is the norm, Smyth said. It’s also a reaction to the celebrity culture of American showbiz, in which most performers are poorly paid freelancers who have to hop from job to job and city to city in order to make a living while a handful of superstars make gobs of money and define the business in the eyes of the public.

“Lamb’s isn’t a typical not-for-profit board in which board members are just expected to go out and raise money,” said real estate developer Tom Sullivan, chairman of the Lamb’s board and a subscriber since moving to Coronado in 1994. “We raise money, of course, but Robert really asks for our professional expertise
in running the business side of the theatre. But we never cross over into the artistic side. I enjoy that.”

To the Smyths, Lamb’s Players is an artistic home in which free expression and a willingness to take risks are the order of the day. The theater regularly performs new works created through its Plays in Process program, a collaboration among playwrights, the resident ensemble and the S.W.A.T. — Slightly Wild Accessible Theatre — educational outreach program. Of more than 200 productions to date, 35 have been world premieres and 30 were regional premieres. The troupe mounts “An American Christmas” at the Hotel Del Coronado every year as part of the hotel’s lavish holiday offerings.

“Theatre can empower you and enhance your perspective in many ways, and we try to explore that,” Gilmour Smyth said.

There are 42 people on the Lamb’s Players payroll, nine of whom are actors. Such steady employment is rare for performers, and is about much more than a regular paycheck. The arrangement allows actors to stay in one place, have happy marriages, raise families and live the kind of “normal” lifestyle that comes
naturally to most folks. It also allows actors to put down roots and become invested in their communities.
Just like the Smyths have.

Ensemble member Cynthia Gerber did her first show at Lamb’s Players in 1988 and joined the ensemble in 1990. Formerly a Navy wife, she left the area twice to follow her husband but came back both times to do shows and stay connected. Her husband Craig is now out of the Navy and the couple lives happily in Chula Vista with sons Cannon, 4, and Spencer, 1.

“For an actor, Lamb’s Players is an amazing opportunity to live in the same town, have a marriage that works, raise a family and have things that other people take for granted, like health insurance and vacation time that you can actually schedule in advance,” Gerber said. “And we do such a wide variety of work that there’s always something new to discover.”

Although it’s the third-largest theatre company in San Diego, after the Old Globe and the San Diego
Repertory, Lamb’s Players hires the most San Diego actors, the Smyths said. Proximity to Los Angeles makes San Diego a viable option for LA’s enormous showbiz community. The Smyths don’t shun outsiders, they just reach out to locals, they said. And they never court big names simply to put bums on seats.

“San Diego has one of the most vibrant cultural arts communities in the country,” Smyth said. “The
national press is only starting to pick up on it.”

That community has a bright future, the Smyths believe. There are 88 production companies in the San Diego Performing Arts League. Funding for the mostly not-for-profits took a hit in the wake of Sept. 11, but attendance has been good and is inching upward, Smyth said. What’s needed are more venues in the 400- to 700-seat range, rather than small storefronts or massive auditoriums, he thinks. Lamb’s Players’ home stage on Orange Avenue seats 350 and hosts more than 100,000 patrons every year. Surprisingly, about 90 percent
of the theatre’s audience comesfrom outside Coronado.

“We don’t have any pipe dreams about becoming this huge thing, but we do have a plan for sustained growth that includes our own space in downtown San Diego,” Smyth said. “We do shows at the Lyceum, but,
ultimately, we don’t control the Lyceum. We want our own space to make our artistic home a little bigger.”


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